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Canada

Nice to see some love coming Canada’s way as we get ready for our 150th birthday party on the weekend. Just in time for Canada Day (July 1 for those of you keeping score at home), a number of travel companies are offering special deals for travel to and from Canada. One of the best is a Canada 150 deal from Regent Seven Seas Cruises, which is rolling back prices on 20 voyages to the year 2012, when the Canadian dollar and the U.S. greenback were at par. That’s a huge savings versus today, when the Canadian dollar is trading Read more

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NORFOLK COUNTY, ONTARIO – “A lot of agriculture is dominated by men,” says Susan Judd, marketing manager at Burning Kiln Winery. “When it’s all women like we have here a kind of magic happens, and it’s a very special bond.” Farming in general, and growing grapes in particular, have traditionally been a male concern. But at Burning Kiln , which sits on a bluff high above Lake Erie, the six people at the top of the management ladder are all women. They didn’t plan it that way. But neither are they overly concerned at upsetting the gender balance cart. “It’s Read more

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KINGSVILLE, ONTARIO – Henry Noestheden and Cor Boon had hoped to start things slow. Maybe ease into their chocolate-making business a little, as a pair of guys aged 68 and 75, respectively, might want to do. But on their second day of business at ODG Chocolates (it stands for Old Dutch Guys) they sold one of their bird-shaped chocolates to a journalist who was heading to nearby Pelee Island and wanted to give a gift to a bird-loving author who spends her summers there. Yeah, a certain Canadian writer named Margaret Atwood. “She loved the bird so much she put Read more

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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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