Journalism can't just be words on a page

In the highly visual and interactive world we live in, it's obvious journalism has to move in the same way and interpret information for people visually. A good place to get information that can be a story with a visual component is Stats Canada.

I found some information about travelers to Canada, excluding the United States. I thought it was interesting to see how many people and from what country visit Canada. I think this information could be used as a story about tourism to Canada: what countries visit Canada the most or who is spending their tourism money in Canada. I also thought this information was interesting too because it's pretty recent. It' from 2011, which is up to date compared to some of the information on Stats Canada.

So here is the chart I found:

Country of residence	2011
	July	August	September	October	November
Total travellers from Europe	193,519	191,745	196,759	195,948	199,285
Total travellers from Africa	7,629	8,067	8,129	8,304	8,162
Total travellers from Asia	111,838	112,149	107,879	106,958	109,861
Total travellers from North America, Central America and Caribbean	24,953	26,017	26,758	26,976	27,709
Total travellers from South America	15,683	14,990	15,786	15,576	14,397
Total travellers from Oceania and other Ocean Islands	25,672	24,902	25,816	25,179	23,875

But looking at these numbers in a chart isn't that exciting. So I put the numbers into Google fusion tables and this is what I got:

This one didn't work out so well...

I thought an intensity map would actually work the best for this data, but it didn't seem to be working for me when I put in my data. I think it's because I maybe needed to refine my locations, which just goes to show that visualization is a special skill that takes some knowledge and work.