Yvonne Bambrick has been on a bike since she was a baby. On the back of her father's bike, a few decades back. But now she gets around Toronto under her own steam, and in her own words. Bambrick is the author of the Urban Cycling Survival Guide. It's an introduction...
Travel & Culture
Susan Musgrave Forages and Falls in Love With Food on Haida Gwaii
Susan Musgrave is a Canadian author of children’s books, fiction, non-fiction an poetry.
The Last Colour Carbon Transfer Printer in Canada
John Bladen Bentley isn't in a hurry. This is a man who spends five days making a single photographic print. A man who has spent 15 years of his life perfecting a form of colour printing from the 19th century. Who measures chemicals to the microgram and can see days...
An Exhibitor Sampling at the Guelph Organic Conference
It is, perhaps, the only place in Canada where you can buy a bacteria-killing, see-through garden hose, heritage tomato seeds and plant pots made from cow poop. The vendors at the Guelph Organic Conference and Trade Show offered a remarkable variety of organic...
The Espresso Institute of North America
The little, blue Dymo label on the metal door belies what's just behind it. But in an nondescript alley in mid-town Toronto, a former tool and die shop has been transformed into the Espresso Institute of North America. The institute is the work of Ezra Braves, a...
Horses Are My Therapy
Dr. J. David Richardson is a Viking with a heart of gold. The retired Dundas, Ontario family doctor now runs Christieview Farm, just outside of Hamilton, Ontario. And, he's using his rural perch, on the lip of the Christie Conversation Area, to help folks recover from...
5 Tips For Making It Through a Canadian Winter
Winter is here, and for too many Canadians that means a lot of time spent being inactive inside. While we humans may not hibernate per se, nothing seems more natural on a cold winter’s night than to bundle up inside with a good book or in front of the TV, with a...
A Child’s Christmas in Danger
I remember surviving it all…
One Of A Kind, The Recycled and the Strange
We dropped by the One of a Kind Show and Sale in Toronto this week. We were looking for artists and craftspeople who were doing something a little different or making good use of recycled material. We found them. From a former pig farmer who now does cycle sculptures...
Alpaca Ontario at the Royal Winter Fair
Alpacas are gentle animal with hair that makes wool on par with cashmere.
The Birdseed Man of Safari Road
Back in 1874 Barry Bogle's ancestors farmed the land of Safari Road just to get by. Now a sixth generation does the same to keep the birds of Hamilton thriving through the winter. High in the rafters of Barry Bogle's wild birdseed barn is an old rack lifter. It's a...
The Future of the Royal Winter Fair
Karen Poncelet fills us in on the future of the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair and her hopes for a royal visit for its centennial. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVQ_MGL4ntg&t=6s
What’s Killing Our Country Bees?
Though not native to North America, the diminutive honeybee has become an important aspect of this continent’s agriculture and biodiversity. And now this species is facing some serious threats. Apis mellifera is also known as the western honeybee and European...
Cow Comfort Farm
If you were a cow, you could do far worse than find yourself at the Joe Loewith & Sons dairy farm in Lynden, Ontario. The 100-acre property is as close to a bovine spa as you can get. The 850 herd of Summitholm Holsteins are fed a careful diet of high nutrient...
The Seeds of Survival
You wouldn’t expect the survival of the world food supply would depend on a hole in the ground 1,300 km from the North Pole. Deep inside a mountain on the island of Spitsbergen, Norway is the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. The last line of defence in edible plant species...