Agriculture & Food Museum

What’s a farm doing in the middle of Ottawa? It’s the  Central Experimental Farm attached to the Canada Agriculture and Food Museum. It’s about a third petting zoo, a third agricultural science, and a third agricultural innovation. After looking at honey and bees inside the museum, visitors are treated to Read more

2022 IPRA Canada Finals

The International Professional Rodeo Association based in Alberta held its 2022 Canada finals in St. Tite, a small town of 3,000 in Quebec. I’ve been to the annual Festival Western de Saint Tite in 2021 when it first reopened after the pandemic. The biggest difference between the western festival and Read more

Château Dufresne

Not actually a castle in the classical European sense, but still a grand 20th-century home. Casa Loma in Toronto is the only true castle remaining in North America. The museum in the ornate Beaux-Arts home in Montreal records the life of the wealthy Dufresne family and how the rich lived Read more

Écomusée du fier monde

A very, very local museum all in French in the heart of Montreal‘s Centre-Sud community is a must-see to learn about how the industrial revolution impacted work conditions and leisure in the city. I can think of no better-suited province than labor-friendly Quebec to interpret the issues of child labor, Read more

Boréalis

Effectively the Trois-Rivières museum of industry, Boréalis is housed inside the former water treatment plant of Canadian International Paper. There used to be four paper plants in the city with the CIP being the last to close. A long long time ago, it was powered by the water that ran Read more

Barbie Expo

The Montreal Barbie Expo is the largest collection of Barbie dolls in the world. With over a thousand dolls and free admission, this unassuming exposition in a small shopping centre is not to be missed. Apart from the newer Fashionista dolls featuring figurines in wheelchairs and with prosthetic legs, there Read more

Ottawa Ribfest

Don’t shower before you come here because you’re going to leave smelling like burnt charcoal. The haze of smoke can mean only three things: pork and beef ribs, corn, and a whole lot of chicken. Ottawa‘s 2022 Ribfest was a blast for hungry carnivores. Each stall decorates itself with tables Read more

Nearly-real fake salmon

In January 2022, I stood outside Toronto Metropolitan University’s Digital Media Zone building, where the university’s startups are incubated, in the bitter Canadian winter waiting for Chris Bryson, CEO of New School Foods, to let me into his lab. A bunch of other visitors met up with another startup and Read more

TTC McCowan Carhouse

It’s not usually open to the public, but the once-a-year Doors Open Toronto event invites everyone to take a peek inside a collection of heritage buildings and city infrastructure. Open Doors Toronto this year was one of the last times the public will ever get a glimpse into the inner Read more

2023 Toronto EV & Charging Expo

I attended the 2023 EV & Charging Expo in Toronto for work, but I also arrived early to have some fun before official work hours started. It’s an industry showcase of where changing infrastructure stands and what kinds of commercial electric vehicles are available. Everything from the (relatively) tiny Ford Read more