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June 2017

Hong Kong makes sense. Certainly Tokyo. But Athens? And how does my home city of Toronto end up fifth best for food in Canada? Booking.com today released a list of the top destinations its travellers enjoy for great food. There are some obvious inclusions and some surprising exclusions, if you ask me. (Which you technically didn’t). Here’s what booking.com customers came up with for a ranking of the food scene in Canada: 1. Vancouver 2. Montreal 3. Halifax 4. Winnipeg 5. Toronto I don’t want to get all parochial here, but there’s not a chance Toronto is only the fifth Read more

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THIS ITEM ORIGINALLY APPEARED IN POSTMEDIA PUBLICATIONS IN CANADA ON FRIDAY OF THIS WEEK. This is crazy, folks. Almost every Canadian believes that spending time outdoors is good for us and reduces our stress. But a new study says nearly three in 10 Canadians spend less than half an hour a week in the fresh air each. That’s less than five minutes a day! The 2017 edition of the Coleman Canada Outdoor Report, a survey of more than 1,500 Canadian adults hosted by Angus Reid Forum, found that 98% of Canadians feel that being outdoors enhances our well-being. It also Read more

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Great local explorations. Fantastic food. And one of North America’s best hotels. The new “Off the Eaten Track” program is being offered exclusively for guests of the Ritz-Carlton Toronto features four distinct programs to help visitors truly engage with locals and learn about the Toronto food scene on an up close and personal basis. The programs are being offered with the help of Culinary Adventure Co., one of Canada’s top food tour companies. “It’s all about giving guests a personal experience,” said Kevin Durkee of Culinary Adventure Co., a long-time foodie who learned to cook at a young age. “We Read more

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A new study by reputable pollsters Angus Reid is giving Air Canada officials something to think about. It also suggests Canadians are none too happy with airlines in general. An Angus Reid report I spotted today found that 50% of Canadians rate Montreal-based Air Canada as “good” or “excellent,” while 17% gave our biggest airline a rating of “poor” or “terrible.” Things were considerably brighter for Calgary-based WestJet. Angus Reid said its study found that 77% of Canadians rate WestJet either good or excellent, while a measly 4% gave them a poor or terrible rating. That’s a pretty big difference, Read more

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We all want to save money on our travel. So here’s a good study; a report from www.kiwi.com that looks at the cost of flights in 80 countries around the globe and comes up with what they call a Flight Price Index. Suffice to say Canada came out as fairly expensive, but not nearly as bad as Belgium. More on that in a minute. For now, here’s background from the Kiwi press release so you can see what they did. “We took into account short-haul and long-haul flights from 80 of the world’s most frequently visited countries and cities, calculating Read more

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