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Travel at the Speed of Life


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Gander’s aviation history has a latter day champion

Although she grew up just an hour from what was once one of North America’s most important airports, Sandra Seaward says she didn’t have much of an interest in studying its past. “I never had an affiliation for history,” she says, scrunching her face into a frown. “It had a lot to do with my […]

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Proud captain sails to Canada’s other ‘distinct society’

Capt. Stan Peet is the only of five siblings not born on Newfoundland. His father was serving in the military when his youngest son was born in Nova Scotia’s Annapolis Valley. Yet, he considers himself a true Newfoundlander. Canada’s most eastern province, he says, is every bit as much a distinct society as Quebec. Isolated

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Charlottetown’s heritage homes have a champion

From its modest exterior of dark red wooden cladding, it would be easy to dismiss the small house in Charlottetown, P.E.I.’s historic downtown Hillsborough district as cute, but insignificant. Under that cladding, however, is an historic log house built in 1844 – making it the third oldest known log home in the city. It was

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New Brunswick’s Acadia region remains a ‘hidden gem’

Born and raised on the northern edge of Acadian New Brunswick, Mark Ramsay is an unapologetic hometown boy. Campbellton, in his view, is one of the great undiscovered places to live in Canada. “It’s a hidden gem,” says Ramsay, while he directs traffic at the annual Terry Fox Walk/Run being held at Sugarloaf Mountain Provincial

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Our good luck dodging wind and rain finally runs out

The ConnecTour team has been incredibly lucky with the weather through most of the ride across Canada. Yes, there was that scary day when we were hypothermic near Nancy Greene Provincial Park in British Columbia, the day-after-day intense summer heat in Saskatchewan, and a steady downpour as we headed out of Ottawa. But our rain

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Bearing witness to Africa’s climate migrants

Gilbert Desjardins witnessed the genocide in Rwanda. But not the one that dominated the headlines in 1994. Instead, the artist who lives in the small Quebec town of Mont-Laurier, about an hour north of Mont Tremblant ski resort, was a young traveller in that tragedy-laden African country in the years 1965 to 1969. It was

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This Ottawa family is all-in on the car-free, cycling lifestyle

When Richard Briggs was in his early 20s, he offered to buy his father’s Ford Fairmont which his father had decided to get rid of. But his father refused to sell it to his son, Briggs recalls, “Because you don’t need a car.” A decade later, when his father offered to sell Richard his used

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Katherine Muir Miller Gallery

Traumatic accident led former nurse to new passion and artistic success

Walking through the burnished wooden doors of Katherine Muir Miller’s gallery on the main Street of Perth, Ont., is like walking into a delightful cross-section of Canada’s natural beauty, painted impressionist in style in lush and vivid colours. Muir Miller’s large landscape oil paintings draw you into iconic places, like British Columbia’s majestic Mount Robson,

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Scaring away a middle-of-the-night invader

The ConnecTour team had the opportunity of being hosted by a Warmshowers couple in the heart of Ottawa’s Centre-Ville district, beside the Ottawa River. But the overnight campout in the backyard was filled with drama. In the middle of the night, Lynn Marshall was awaken by someone sneaking into the back yard. Fearing the person

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Amish follow a humble path to a simpler way of life

Canada’s secondary roads are not only more peaceful and scenic to ride, but they also often lead to the serendipity that adds to the richness of our experience. We were on one such road, Maple Ridge Road, in northern Ontario, about an hour’s bicycle ride east of Thessalon (near the head of Lake Huron) when

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