Looking at life through a funhouse mirror
I am pretty sure I have mentioned this before, but I am a magazine-aholic. I currently subscribe to six magazines: Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, Bon Appetit, The Walrus, Cottage Life, and Toronto Life. I also get the Report on Business every month via my Globe and Mail newspaper subscription, bonus issues of Fashion (useless) …
I admit that even a very internet savvy person like me sometimes clicks on the bait. I do this knowingly. I am not like a bass chasing a shiny floating object. Jut sometimes I want to consume virtual junk food. And speaking of food, how can someone resist “30 Things Personal Trainers Will Never Eat.” …
About a week ago, the mayor of Toronto, the premier of Ontario, and the prime minister of Canada announced that the decade-long renovation of Union Station was complete. I was not there for the ribbon cutting, but I would guess that neither were they, since complete is not the word that immediately came to my …
As you may know, last week the Greyhound bus had its last victory lap. No canine rescue happening here. No bucolic retirement pasture for the hound, that, truth be told, I have called horrible. Even though I steadfastly maintain I was right, I do apologize for dissing the dog. Because I, like many other people, …
At six-thirty on a recent morning, a time when most sane people are still sleeping, especially if they are at a cottage, I was jarred awake by what sounded like the start of a Formula One race. This is what it’s like on bass derby day. I have never been at the marina when the …
Until now, I had not been to downtown Toronto in six months. First it was because of the pandemic perils, then the ice went out and I decamped to the cottage to hunker down for several months of swimming, sunning, and sloth. In May, when their office opened again, my dentist, who I’m sure thinks …
Our journey to the Dominican Republic, which occupies the Eastern side of Hispaniola, was uneventful. Just the usual de-icing delay and cabal of seemingly unaccompanied children kicking the back of my seat. At just over twenty-one million people, Hispaniola has the largest population of any island in the Caribbean and is, in fact, the eleventh …
It takes five hours on a LATAM Chile Dreamliner to get to Easter Island from Santiago. It’s mostly full of Easter Islanders and their extended families, who use it like a bus into town to stock up on provisions. Judging from the cargo they carefully stow in the overhead bins, the most valuable mainland commodity …
The Charles de Gaulle Airport is a chaotic conundrum that holds steadfastly to its belief that at worst stooping to install signage is unpatriotic and at the very least insulting to the French notion that if you don’t already know what’s going on it is your problem. I am sure Monsieur de Gaulle is happy …
If you are approaching Versailles by road from the outskirts of Paris, you wind through mostly pleasant countryside on the A5, which is infested with transport trucks that somehow don’t seem to annoy the cows lounging on the receding farmland. Our helpful guide says you can tell what country is schlepping Euro goods by checking …