
Flavour conduit
Despite our year-around attraction to the barbeque, we are now entering the time of year when we also begin to think of “comfort food”. Rich stews, casseroles and marinated meats and fowls will begin to headline the bill of fare. All these menus are enhanced by the addition of a suitable wine, which—by adding a […]

The County comedian
We were fortunate this week to catch up with the County’s own Jacky Rosenhall, the stand up comic who recently took the fabled Las Vegas comedy venue, Club Brutus, by storm. Rosenhall explained to us that he had always longed to be an actuary, but decided comedy was for him after watching former Conservative MP […]

Context
When Justin Trudeau was asked about the gender parity of his cabinet, he answered simply that it was 2015. It was time. And yet months later, south of the border, thousands protested the Oscars for their lack of racial diversity in 2016. Then Hollywood announced The Birth of a Nation, a dramatization of the story […]

The good old days
The first few days of school have passed. It’s been hot in our house. It’s been hot on the street. It’s been hot in the backyard. It’s hot in those classrooms. Not many of the windows in our local public schools have blinds or curtains on them. Indeed, in some classrooms at PECI, the windows […]

A challenging time
There are many factors that determine whether a particular vintage is great, average or poor. We have seen this many times in the County: a late spring that reduces the potential crop, or last year’s early spring promise that was broken by a heartwrenching killer frost. And even if local wine producers make wine from […]

Thank you Halifax
So Halifax is initiating a program called “Fares for Firearms,” whereby gun owners can turn in their weapons for um, well, er, um—bus tickets. That’s right. This is the second time Halifax has tried a manouevre of this sort. In 2009, it started a “Pixels for Pistols” progam that saw over a thousand firearms turned […]

Future arts
Parents, no doubt, want the best for their kids. They dream of their children entering professions a step up from their own generation. Jobs with good pay, job security, a retirement plan. Careers that will allow those children to expand their horizons, get a leg up and even heighten their social status. And, in all […]

9/11
And then it happened. Fifteen years later, the headline story in the Toronto Star for September 11 wasn’t a harkening back to that day in September of 2001. Nope,the Star editors chose to run, as their headliner, a story about TIFF. Yup, the Toronto International Film Festival is headline news today, Sunday September 11, as […]

A very long struggle
There are four teams in the American League East Division that are virtually deadlocked as we approach the final weeks of the season. Following tonight’s game, the Toronto Blue Jays head west to take on the Los Angeles Angels and the Seattle Mariners on their last western road trip of the season. Traditionally, western road […]

Bleeding out
I caught up with an old friend the other day. She had come home for a few weeks before moving to California to start a new job. After updating each other on our lives and having a bit of a laugh, I asked her a burning question: Why California? From a young age, my friend […]