RICE LAKE AND ENVIRONS, ONTARIO – A deep-in-the-woods garden with hundreds of Zimbabwean stone sculptures. A new winery run by a young couple who refused to let naysayers ruin their dream. Maybe the best butter tarts in the country. And a great family resort on a beautiful stretch of water. I live in Toronto and have been writing travel stories full-time for 11 years, but I’d somehow never made it to the area around Rice Lake until a recent, late-summer weekend. What I found was a surprisingly diverse array of attractions run by wonderful, passionate people with the kind of Read more
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This is encouraging. The Canadian government today issued a new tourism strategy that talks about new ways of getting more tourists out of the big cities and into other great areas of this wonderful country of ours. They also want to boost numbers in slower seasons, when hotels, attractions and restaurants could surely use the boost. I want to see how the funding develops, but the mere fact a federal Cabinet minister is actually talking about new funding for tourism is great news, as that’s seldom been the case in this country in my experience. Canada’s tourism numbers grew 1.2% Read more
SCOTTSDALE, ARIZONA – I get to travel to some pretty amazing places in the world, and I check out a lot of great hotels. But I try not to research things too much for fear of raising my expectations and spoiling a nice surprise. That was definitely the case for my brief stay at the Sanctuary on Camelback Mountain Resort in beautiful Scottsdale, Arizona. I was in town for a travel writers’ conference and didn’t arrive until late in the day. But I was immediately taken with the wonderful lobby entrance and the look and feel of the place, which Read more
Jim Byers photo Pull up a Muskoka chair at the Killarney Mountain Lodge and watch the boats go by in the channel. KILLARNEY, ONTARIO – Low-key, country charm and a dash of city glam. Folks heading to fabulous Killarney, Ontario are lucky to have several places to stay. I tested out two outstanding – and very different – properties during my visit. Killarney Mountain Lodge is a low-rise, old-fashioned kind of country spot with a big, screened-in porch, a central unit with several rooms and a series of small, wooden cottages spread over acres of grass and lovingly tended, colourful Read more
WANDERING THE NAPA VALLEY IN CALIFORNIA – I often tell folks in Canada that I vastly prefer Sonoma Valley to Napa Valley when it comes to wine tasting and generally tooling around. But I think I have to them back on pretty even ground. I spent a lovely day in Sonoma a week or so ago. We then drove over to Napa for a night at the Napa Valley Marriott Hotel and Spa, which doesn’t look like a chain hotel. There are lovely flowers and a really nice-looking, free-form pool in a courtyard surrounded by large trees. They had an Read more
