Olena Bykova: Passionate traveller is off to English college

 

Olena Bykova, 23, is graduating with an Honours BA Human Environment from the Department of Geography , Planning and Environment. Her honours thesis was titled “Tourism in Old Montreal: The Residents’ Perspective.”

If history is humanity across time, Bykova said, geography is humanity across space. It encompasses a multitude of subjects, such as “cities, economies, even migration.”

She’s enthusiastic about her own upcoming migration. In September, she’ll be going to England to study at King’s College London. A Commonwealth Scholarship will cover her travel, tuition, living and research expenses as she pursues a one-year Master’s in Tourism, Environment and Development, for which she gave up SSHRC and FQRSC scholarships.

She sees it as a stepping-stone to an academic career. “I always wanted to go to the U.K., but I knew that I would need a sizeable scholarship.” Part of her strategy for getting where she wanted to be was to apply for eight different awards.

By 2010, the World Tourism Organization, a UN offshoot, predicts that tourism will be the largest industry on the planet. “In poorer countries, tourism is viewed as an agent of development, but it comes with a price tag. That’s what I want to study, to see if I can make it better.”

The scholarship commits her to research that will benefit Canada; she plans to study the Caribbean, one of Canada’s top three tourist destinations. She is interested in the increased opportunities for local people that tourism can bring to traditional societies.

Originally from Ukraine, Bykova lived in Cyprus from the age of 12 to 19. Initially she had trouble obtaining a student visa to study in Canada. When she was awarded an International Student Scholarship from the Faculty of Arts and Science, she decided to study at Concordia.

Though she loves to travel, she can’t be a conventional tourist. “I went to Cuba and I loved it, but everywhere I looked, I would always see these patterns. I impose this stencil on everything,” she said, laughing.

-Beverly Akerman