By Tik Root, Photo: Patrick T. Fallon/AFP/Getty Images, The Washington Post, February 7, 2022
A trip to the doctor can yield any number of recommendations, including bed rest and medicine. But as oflate January, Canadian patients can be sent home with a more novel note: a prescription for a national parks pass.
“There’s almost no medical condition that nature doesn’t make better,” said Melissa Lem, a family physician and director of the PaRx initiative, which partnered with Parks Canada to help distribute the initial batch of 100 passes. While similar programs elsewhere have offered regional or local park visits, Lem says this is the first such initiative with a national annual pass.
“Visiting a park once is great,” she said. “But it doesn’t in a very meaningful way reduce the barrier to nature access.”
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