A fun-loving, positive, quirky family from Fayetteville, Arkansas – whose prank videos, social media challenges and crocheted tops have made them an internet sensation – is coming to Guelph.
According to one of their TikTok videos that has a half-million views so far, they're coming because ChatGPT says Guelph is is the Canadian city most similar to Fayetetteville.
They're the Beaver family (username 'lovebeav') and they have over a million followers on TikTok.
In February they posted a video of mom Amy Beaver talking about Guelph after ChatGPT suggested Guelph was the most similar Canadian city to Fayetteville. The video took off and has 577,600 views.
@lovebeav Then a couple days later she says she wants to stay 😂 she is all of us right now
♬ original sound - TheBeaverFamily
Amy has never left the U.S. so when she got her passport in 2024 her family asked her where she wanted to go. She had no idea and since she doesn’t like change it was hard for her to picture what country she could see herself in.
ChatGPT suggested Nelson, New Zealand, because it is similar to where she lives. Amy’s daughter Emily studied abroad in Australia so she knew how expensive flights are. She told her mom flights to Canada are about $350.
Amy switched gears to use Canada as a parametre in ChatGPT.
On March 11, they posted a video about how they have plane tickets and are coming to Guelph. They’ll be in the city in April for a couple days starting April 11.
They were surprised at the response from their first video. People were welcoming and friendly, said Emily. Her dad Jeff noted the video reached people outside Guelph because the number of views was beyond the city’s population.
They received recommendations of where to go and what to do from people in the comments. The Beavers have decided to go to the Arboretum, a Thai restaurant and the Elora Farmers’ Market. Emily is a rock climber so she’s looking forward to The Guelph Grotto.
Jeff isn't unfamiliar with Guelph. He travelled here in 2012 for agricultural research. “I mean it seemed like a really nice little town. It was really easy to navigate. I love Tim Hortons,” he said.
He noticed Guelph has outdoor activities similar to where he lives and this interests him because he’s an outdoorsy person. Another similarity is around climate change, Fayetteville is a green city. It also has a connected trail system.
What resonated the most with the family about Guelph is its active LGBTQ+ community. “You can be gay in Guelph. So I can still tell everybody ‘we’re gay in here, we’re gay in Guelph,’” Amy said in the video.
The family is involved with the LGBTQ+ community in their city.
The University of Guelph’s student experience Instagram page posted an edited version of the Beaver’s video. The family said the university invited them to have lunch at the cafeteria.
They are looking forward to seeing what the public transit system is like here. In Fayetteville they think people can get around better by bike than public transit. Amy and Jeff took the mayor on the bus to show him how bad the transit system is.
“We're involved with local politics. We're involved with local initiatives. We have a large sense of community, a big sense of community here and when we posted about Guelph it seemed that there was a large sense of community there,” said Amy.
Since there is a divided political climate in the U.S. Amy wants to travel to a place where people are community oriented and aren’t as upset as they are in the states.
With the ongoing changes to tariffs between the U.S. and Canada Emily was pleased to see how Canadians have come together to not buy American products and take a stand. Her family supports local as much as they can and aren’t shopping at Target or Walmart.
“I can’t wait to come to Canada and stimulate your economy,” said Amy.
Jeff hopes through their trip it could cool the temperature between Canadians and Americans. Whatever is going on politically isn’t about the people, we’re all trying to live our lives, he said.
Amy hopes Guelph is like Fayetteville but better. If her dream of travelling by RV comes true she said she'll probably park her RV in Guelph and never leave.