When Linda Coneybeare first started in the travel business, she was a fresh-faced 21-year-old, working for then British Overseas Airways Corporation at Pearson Airport in Toronto in the 1970s.
“When I began, we didn’t have computers,” she recalled in a recent interview. “We literally weighed every bag and gave the measurements to the guys who figured out the weights and the positioning of the bags and the fuel. We hand-wrote the baggage tags.”
It was a big deal when they got their first computer – named Boudica, warrior queen of early Britian. “There was one person in charge of the thing that took up an entire room. It was a game-changer when it came to booking and issuing tickets.
“I used to hand-write my tickets. We had dial phones. Then came faxes. Now, email and scanning and instant communication around the world.”
In the mid-80s, Coneybeare loved her job but decided she loved her hometown of Haliburton more. Her father was ill at the time so she came home. Her dad died in 1985. Coneybeare got married, had children, and divorced.
She started working at a travel agency in Haliburton that “morphed from name to name to name, and, in 2001, just before 9/11, Transat bought a string of agencies including mine.” She has been working for the company ever since.
Her last day was Oct. 25. She said “wonderful” things are happening in her life. She is moving to Ottawa temporarily to help her fiancé there refresh his house to sell, and the two plan to move back to Haliburton County next year.
At 72, Coneybeare jokes, “I’m way past my retirement date.” It’s been quite a career, spanning 9/11, to COVID, and natural disasters.
“9/11 was horrific. There wasn’t much travel for anybody for a couple of months until things were sorted out. A lot of people left the industry. I kept on and business returned.” She had a client in the air that day who told her the pilot didn’t say anything as the plane landed in Halifax, on route to Toronto. She’s seen Come from Away and is “so proud of what Canada did that day.”
With the pandemic, she recalled having a customer on an around-the-world cruise and the boat trying to moor in Perth, Australia. However, the government was not allowing any more people into the country. Coneybeare had to get the client home. She was not keen on routing through the U.S. but got the client back via Vancouver and Toronto. “That was a long haul, and late nights, but it was my job and I was concerned.”
When there was a “terrible earthquake” in South America, resulting in tsunami warnings, she recalled having a client on a cruise from Buenos Aires around The Horn up to Valparaiso, Chile. Ports and airports were damaged and they were not sure how to get passengers home. There was even talk of busing over the Andes to Buenos Aries. It was suggested they turn the ship around and head back to Buenos Aires, which they did, without incident. It was another experience of calls to family members and late nights before getting the client safely home.
Coneybeare added, “COVID changed everything. When my office was closed, I didn’t think I’d be able to continue working. How could I work remote?” She soon mastered that art. Last year, she was one of the top-selling agents in Ontario and won a trip to France with Transat.
The biggest perk of her career is having been able to travel extensively and take her children, and now grandchildren, with her.
“Through the 90s, I travelled a lot with my children in Europe, the Normandy beaches, and going to Yorkshire where my grandmother was born.”
However, she said the industry “is just not that great anymore” with online bookings and discount airlines.
In addition, three years ago, Coneybeare had breast cancer. She is fine now but says “it was sort of a sign. I didn’t want to keep that pace anymore.” Her daughter’s family lives in Grimsby and her son’s family are local but spends six months of the year in Florida. Plus, says the travel lover, “I have books to read and things to do and I just felt it was time to start winding down.”
Asked what she’ll miss, Coneybeare says, “The clients I made happy. It’s all about the details and I’m good on details. Some of my clients I have been booking for 30 years.”
Linda’s top five travel destinations
1. Wadi Rum desert, Jordan – “You walk around and do a complete 360 degrees, and you don’t know what century you’re in. There’s nothing that will tell you.”
2. Iceland – “I stood over the open steam fissures and had the steam from the centre of the earth coming up and covering me.”
3. Scotland’s Orkney Islands – “5,000-yearold Norwegian standing stones you can touch and people don’t know why they’re there.”
4. A big pit coal mine in Cardiff, Wales – She had ancestors work there and, “I’ll never complain about my job again.”
5. Ireland – Ashford Castle, walking in the forest with a falconer – “I’m in Ireland with a falcon on my arm.”
