The first paths into Fort Chipewyan were forged by dog sleds. Life moved slowly then, but the creation of an ice road changed everything.
Living off the land
The tundra’s silence was broken by a swoosh of sled runners and the excited yips of dogs as Robert Grandjambe’s sled surged across the frozen muskeg outside Fort Chipewyan in north-eastern Alberta, Canada. He slowed his team of Siberian huskies to a stop at the centre of a lake, cleared a hole in the ice and fished the way his father taught him to – with a net...
The road to Cox’s Cove (a half hour from Corner Brook) ends in a riot of old sheds, wharves and shacks next to a pebble beach lined with orange fishing dories. When I drive into the village to find Darren Park, a fisherman who offers Newfoundland’s only dory fishing excursion, the tide is out. Hundreds of gulls call and tussle on the sandbar at the edge of the Bay of Islands. Cribbing from old wharves sags into the exposed mud.
Along the main street that twists among houses flung around this rocky coast, I see no signs for Four Seasons Tours...
It’s minus 20, and 35 centimetres of snow have blanketed Montreal over the past 24 hours – it’s the biggest blizzard of the season so far. The airport shut down soon after I landed, and the cobblestone streets of Old Montreal, where I set up camp, are as slick as a Wet Banana slide. The city has come to a full stop, and all is quiet but for the distant rumbling of incoming snowplows and the scraping of shovels on icy pavement. I’m in town to embrace winter like only a Montrealer can. I have no choice.
That’s how I end up in an abandoned lot in the Mile-End...
Port Medway—a small village with a big heart (but not for everybody)
I’m not regular churchgoer, but if the timing is right when I travel, I like to attend a Sunday service. It’s a great way to get a sense for community and catch a glimpse of the folks who live there. I’m also partial to hymn sings — especially when no one seems to care whether I can carry a tune or not.
So it was that I recently found myself walking into the Baptist church in Port Medway. As I crossed the threshold, a chap handed me the day’s bulletin, saying, “We stole this from another church.” ...
We’re skimming the waters of Frazer Bay in Ontario’s Georgian Bay in a forty-nine-foot sailboat named “Summer Breeze”.
The quartzite LaCloche Mountains, their rugged slopes white as a February snowfall in the afternoon sun, reach skyward off our starboard quarter. Far astern we can see Killarney Provincial Park and Baie Fine. Royal blue decorates the bay, mirroring the sky but for whitecaps scattered like lace collars across its wind-riffled surface.
Those landmarks inspired numerous paintings of the Group of Seven. No surprise there:...
