How to describe Wanderlight Alpaca Experience’s newest offering, Alpaca Quest? The popular Lakefield-area business offers some excellent agritourism experiences, like the Private Alpaca Walk that provides guests a chance to commune with a loveable group of alpacas. Alpaca Quest, though, is the first of its kind—best think of it as a time-travelling outdoor escape room, … Read more
The village of Youngs Point may look tiny, but boaters exploring the Trent-Severn Waterway know it packs a lot in. For instance, there’s the historic Young Points Bridge, one of the oldest metal bridges in Ontario—and plenty of good eating. Dock a boat at Lock 27 and you’re not far from Lock & Anchor Eatery, a family-owned and operated restaurant that feels more like a home than a business after 30+ years and many owners and variations.
With no prior restaurant experience, Janice and Max Costa purchased Granny’s Kitchen back in 2016 in the hopes of inspiring their kids to move nearby and get involved. Having owned a restaurant myself, I can confidently say this is not a great reason to open a restaurant. The husband and wife team dug in nonetheless, and transformed the space into something they and their kids would be proud of.
Ennismore Waterfront Park is a charming place. It has shady trails, a sandy beach on Chemong Lake, and a playground for the kids. This summer, keen-eyed visitors may stumble across its latest attraction—the Ennismore Secret Garden, a lovingly designed green space filled with wildflowers growing inside the foundation of an historic barn. The new garden … Read more
Forty-three years ago, a group of brave souls jumped into Chemong Lake on a chilly February weekend. Little did they know the tradition would not only be alive and well four decades later, but their little gathering would grow into a community-wide festival featuring dozens of events and businesses in and around Selwyn Township. On … Read more
Bingo isn’t usually this rowdy. It’s a game associated with retirement homes and second-language classrooms, but tonight the crowd is hooting and hollering, laughing at bawdy jokes between each call. That energy has everything to do with Betty Baker and Sahira Q, two drag queens on stage at Farmhill Weddings outside Keene. Drag queens aren’t … Read more
“Observation is probably the biggest thing—noticing small details,” Fred Preddy says. He’s sitting in an evocatively lit parlour, wearing a waistcoat that would have been the height of fashion a century and a half ago. As one of the owner-operators of Escape Maze south of Peterborough, Fred’s used to fielding questions about how the experiences at his interactive gaming facility are designed.
The David Fife cabin is far from the grandest building on the grounds of Lang Pioneer Village. It’s a rustic 18’ x 14’ room, built in the 1825 by new immigrants racing to complete their shelter before the cold hit. Apart from a window into life two hundred years ago, however, the cabin is significant for another reason—it was the first Canadian home of a family that that would leave an indelible mark on agriculture in North America.
At the start of 2020, Beau Dixon wasn’t sure where his career was headed. Even as a multidisciplinary artist with credits in music, theatre, and television, the closure of so many performance venues was nerve-wracking. “The first few months were very scary—how’s this going to work, what am I going to do, should I go back to school, you know, take up plumbing,” he recalls. In one of the pandemic’s many unpredictable twists, he found himself working on two prestige TV productions instead. “Weirdly enough, this has been the most successful two years of my life, my career, primarily because I landed a TV series called Station Eleven. I had a substantial role in that and another series, a sci-fi series called The Expanse. So that helped during my rainy days.”
Check the shelves in a grocery store on either side of the country, and you’ll find plenty of foods that taste exactly the same as they do here in Ontario. So many experiences these days are standardized for consistency, it’s a real thrill to find something uniquely tied to a place and a community. That’s … Read more
Melissa Payne sits in the front row of Peterborough’s Market Hall, having just stepped off stage after a performance of her song “September Skies.” Like every performer in the Meet the Musicians series she has special connection to the venue, but Payne’s story has a fascinating symmetry.