A viral Vancouver Island tourism video attracted hundreds of visitors and healthcare workers, sparking the National Healthcare Infusion Movement across 44 Canadian communities. Now there's a free handbook with timelines, checklists, and recruitment tactics so other towns can replicate the model.
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The biggest Canada project Jocelyn and I have ever worked on is ready. And I want to tell you how we got here. All of this, the National Healthcare Infusion Movement, the Canadian Snack Project, the Chucklehead Fundraiser, the Canada's Not Broken Project, all of it started with a dumbass little video I made a year and a half ago inviting Americans to come up to Vancouver Island for the weekend and spend some of their beautiful freedom dollars in our economy. We thought maybe half a dozen people would show up. 300 came. Then we did it again the following year, last month. More than 600 showed up. A third of them healthcare workers checking our community out. We started a website and a chat room to help those people called the Nanaimo Healthcare Infusion, and that model is now working in 44 communities across the country. But the big weekend event, the tourism-focused one, we want to help you pull that off in your community too. Over the last month, evenings and weekends, Jocelyn and I have been working on a tourism infusion handbook. A huge resource guide with everything we learned about setting one of these up. Timelines, checklists, promotions, the website, who to call, how to get that big photo, how the info tables work, how to tell the politicians they only get 30 seconds. Everything we did and everything we would do differently too. There's an entire section about the healthcare recruitment part of this, along with videos from some of the Health Authority people who put it together. And today, we are giving it away. All of it. For free. There's no form, there's no paywall, you don't even have to set up an account. It's at tourisminfusion.org right now. There's also a link to the first in a series of live Q&A sessions that we'll be doing about setting up an infusion, so you can bring your questions. All Jocelyn and I ask is that you use it. Open it up. Pass it to your mayor or your chamber of commerce or that neighbor who keeps saying that someone should do something. This is such a beautiful country full of relentlessly decent people. It's time we show the world what they're missing. And, you know, maybe a family doctor, or an oncologist, or an ICU nurse will decide to stay. And because we want this to be a truly national movement, the handbook is also in French, translated by actual French-speaking Canadians. Because somewhere right now, a pediatrician in Ohio is googling Canada. Maybe for a weekend holiday. Maybe for a better life for her family. Either way, let's make sure she finds your town.
