Travel | the write stuff

Jun 3

Ragnar Relay Niagara: five thoughts

I ran the Ragnar Relay Niagara on the weekend, my third time doing this particular event and my sixth crack at this type of two-day, team relay race. Read more

Aug 10

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A tale of two Lees, Harper and Fanny (mostly the latter)

When I would visit my friend Neal Evans’s house as a teenager, it was always full of his mother Lee’s presence. This included artistic vigour, lots of projects, and a strong dose of social activism in the air. Read more

Jul 7

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Sea to sea on two wheels

WE’D RIDDEN WELL into the evening and it was nearly dark, so we threw our bikes over a farmer’s fence at the side of the highway, gobbled a quick pasta dinner chased by a Mars bar dessert, then opted to camp on the open prairie without a tent. Our gear was strewn everywhere as we fell asleep under the stars, oblivious to the tiny flashes of lightning on the distant western horizon.

Who stole Church of Our Lady from Starkey Hill?

I’ve hiked the Starkey Hill trail many times since I moved to Guelph a decade ago. At first, I was astonished by the sudden appearance of Church of Our Lady on the western horizon as I reached “the summit” of the trail in the last quarter of the 4K loop. (It’s now “Basilica” of Our Lady, but I like the older term.) Read more

Feb 24

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Who killed Ontario’s Himalayas? There’s a smoking gun …

One of the favourite day trips from our summer cottage on Georgian Bay is to a lakeside patch of granite everyone calls “Painted Rocks,” even though it has no such name on the map. It’s a spectacular place, where the mysterious forces of deep nature are hard at work, on a time scale you can scarcely imagine. Read more

Jan 30