Tillsonburg Travel celebrating its 65th anniversary

As Tillsonburg Travel celebrated 65 years this month, the company's owners gathered to reflect on its ups and downs over its history. Left to right are: Lisa Hirt, Luc Van Maele, and Mary Beth McElhone. (Jeff Helsdon Photo)

Jeff Helsdon, Editor

Just about everything in the travel industry has changed from the days when Tillsonburg Travel opened its doors in Market Square 65 years ago, except for the need for top-notch customer service.

In the 1960s, travel agents manually wrote out airline tickets after inserting a ticket blank into a credit card imprinter. A travel agent received different inserts for the machines from each airline. Tillsonburg Travel founder Luc Van Maele recalled those days, along with Lisa Hirt and Mary Beth McElhone, who worked for him and bought the company after he retired.

The company started through a series of circumstances that came together for founder Luc Van Maele. When the Van Maele family came to Canada from Belgium in 1955, Van Maele was trained as a chef. After a year working on a tobacco farm, he was employed at the Tillsonburg Golf and Country Club as a cook in the summer and by Canadian Leaf Tobacco Company in the winter. He started a weekly radio program on CKOT in 1957 for the Belgium community in the area.

“I was approached by a travel agent, not from Tillsonburg, and he said you should do a group trip to Belgium,” Van Maele recounted.

After a successful trip in 1960, the agent suggested partnering on a travel office in Tillsonburg. Although his partner bailed at the last minute, Luc and his wife Nicole went ahead with the venture, opening a small office near the former town hall.

In 1962, Tillsonburg Travel was the first Canadian travel agency to operate a non-stop charter flight from Toronto to Brussels on the Belgium airline Sabena. Many more flights followed, including the first international flight from London, ON, which also went to Belgium. Van Maele recalled in the early days the Malton Airport, now Pearson International, was just a single hangar.

A travel agency had to be approved by each airline it wanted to sell tickets for at the time Van Maele built the company. Tillsonburg Travel gradually built its repertoire of companies it worked with.

Talking about how the company started, Van Maele remarked, “In my case, it was a lot of coincidences, it wasn’t planned.”

He took some travel courses after he started, but wasn’t formally trained in travel.

As Tillsonburg’s industrial base grew, Tillsonburg Travel booked flights for many of the companies, including the tobacco board, TDS, Hoover and DDM. The company moved on to Broadway in 1971 and to its present location in 1980.

Through the years, Van Maele continued to book the flights to Belgium. He was knighted by the Consul General of Belgium for promotion of tourism between Belgium and Canada and for his 46 years of involvement on the Belgium Program on CKOT.

In 2005, when Van Maele retired, Hirt and McElhone purchased the business. McElhone had been working at Tillsonburg Travel since 1985, after graduating from the travel and tourism program at St. Clair College and gaining industry experience at two other employers. Hirt started in 1996 after completing travel and tourism at Fanshawe College, and working in Norwich for five years.

McElhone stayed in Tillsonburg after starting there, liking to work with familiar faces.

“There’s something that makes you feel good about working with people you know,” she said.

Hirt also liked working in her hometown.

McElhone commented on the technology over the years as the largest change, saying they used to have to call every tour company to get a price and make a reservation.

“You had a phone stuck on your ear all day,” she said.

Technology and online booking also made an impact on the travel business, but in a serendipitous way.

“We thought when 9-1-1 occurred, and it shut down the world for two days, it was the worst thing in travel,” McElhone said. “Little did we know with Covid it would be shut down for two years.”

During the Covid years, both McElhone and Hirt worked from home. There was barely enough business to keep the two of them going. Then, when travelers were frustrated trying to navigate the refund process during Covid, many came back to booking through an agent.

McElhone retired in 2024, wanting to travel herself and visit her children in Australia and Alberta more, and Hirt purchased the business.

Today, Hirt says the company offers personal and professional service customers can’t find through online agencies or by booking themselves. She and the other three agents are well-traveled and can offer insight into a destination. Tillsonburg Travel belongs to Travelsavers consortium and is one of its top 30 agencies in Canada. Pricing can match what is offered online, and in some cases, there are special offers not available through web purchasing.

Hirt is seeing a trend towards more adventurous traveling in the last few years.

“People want more off the beaten track, an independent tour,” she said.

There are still challenges, such as world issues, with the “media blows everything up” making it worse. The present fuel prices aren’t helping; the weather is more extreme, and Cuba, one of the popular winter destinations, is currently shut down.

“But I love it,” Hirt said, adding there are still many options to travel, including cruises on sailboats, and on smaller boats.

“There’s something for everyone,” she said.