With less than 150 days until Canada officially kicks off a grand celebration of the 150th anniversary of confederation, it seems like everyone is taking a reflective look back in time these. Black and white photos and travel articles about the way things used to be seem to be extra special.

So, inspired by Maclean's hilarious look at the early days of 25 Canadian websites, we're doing our own round-up of a look back at some of the earliest websites of Canada's most popular travel companies. Just like Maclean's, we used the Wayback Machine to find the oldest archived versions of some of those websites. 

In some cases, the earliest websites weren't available, in others the images for those sites weren't preserved and in many, many cases, today's travel companies are using different URLs than they used to. For this piece, we only used companies that are still using the same URL they did 15+ years ago. 

Enjoy this look down memory lane.

Westjet (1996)

A pretty snazzy website for 1996. When most sites were using tables and grids to define their layout, Westjet was demonstrating its free spirit. It doesn't show on this JPG, but at the bottom there's an airplane flying off the page. Very high tech. Also not shown on this page, airfares from Edmonton to Regina starting from $59.

Fairmont Hotels (1998)

Another site ahead of its time. Sure we'd use full-page graphics now, but in 1998, Fairmont was already doing a "magazine style" layout with a different story (hotel) featured with each issue. 

Four Seasons (1998)

Not all the images rendered on this early version of Four Seasons' website, so it looks a bit choppy. But the site sure does bring us back in time when left menu sidebars were all the rage.

Goway (1998)

We love how Goway was already using the upside down "Downunder" treatment 20 years ago. Of course the logo has been seriously updated since then, but the itself has always done a pretty good job of letting people find what they need.

VIA Rail (1998)

Man, we love that cute little train. Maybe VIA Rail will bring it back during Canada150 celebrations. 

Brewster Travel (1999)

The classics never get old. We've seen that feature image (of the VIA Rail and the elk) on VIA Rail's Facebook page. Hard to believe its (at least) 17 years old. Same as Goway, Brewster Travel does a pretty good job of helping their web users find the information they need. 

Tourism Vancouver (2000)

As you can see, by the web content, this was an all-new web design for Tourism Vancouver in 2000. (Early versions of the site wouldn't render on the Wayback Machine. Although the lack of feature photography is symptomatic of older websites, this is one that could still easily work today.

Air Canada (2003)

Earlier versions of the Air Canada site couldn't render, but the simple graphics and interface aren't too different from what you find on Air Canada's top-level landing page today.

Flight Centre (2003)

Flight Centre did a pretty good job using graphics instead of fonts and links back in a day when font choices were limited. The entire site could have easily been comprised of blue, underlined text links, but since it wasn't it made an exceptionally busy landing page much easier to navigate.

Sunwing (2003)

Using this page to represent Sunwing's website probably isn't fair, since Sunwing opted to use a annoying Flash intros on their landing page. This image represents just one small part of a moving slide show. Fortunately the link to "Skip Flash Introduction" meant people didn't have to sit through that every time. The next page didn't render well, so we opted not to use it, By 2004, Sunwing had already moved to a landing page using its signature orange color and a look that isn't that different than what they are using today.

Truth be told, with the major advances the internet has taken in the last 15-20 years (heck even the last two years), the travel industry's earliest websites were pretty cutting edge. Sure we'd use bigger images and rely less on cute "book now" or "click here" graphics,, but if you take a look at the early sites for some of Canada's banks and other institutions at the Maclean's article, it will make you pretty proud to be a part of the travel industry.

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