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Radio Canada International: back on the air

Snowbirds and others who travel frequently or for long periods of time can derive an additional bit of good news from Paul Martin’s budget. Good old Radio Canada International, a home away from home for thousands of snowbirds and expatriates and a good source of Canadian news for foreign countries, has been spared the noose [...] read »

The show must go on

The house lights dim, the curtain goes up and the magic begins. Music, dancing, drama, live theatre. There’s nothing quite like it, is there? And that’s what the Smile Theatre Company is all about. For almost 30 years, this company of players has followed their credo of “taking professional theatre to those, who due to [...] read »

A quick trip on the Noodles Express

It’s a good thing Dana McCauley’s pregnancy didn’t bring on a craving for pickles and ice cream. Instead, she got hooked on the wonderfully varied noodle dishes she found in the many ethnic restaurants of her Toronto neighbourhood. A classically trained chef, McCauley turned her cravings into Noodles Express (Random House of Canada), a cookbook [...] read »

They’re the tops

Stories abound these days about formidable feats of physical endeavour. We read constantly of records being broken by baseball players, hockey stars, runners, cyclists, all lithe of limb, and often full of themselves as they pose for the cameras and collect their big paycheques. This story, however isn’t about some testosterone-pumped athlete, but rather about [...] read »

Nobody ever wins a war

The solemn faces at a Remembrance Day service say it. Monument and cenotaph inscriptions catalogue it. Motion picture epics, such as Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan or Kubrick’s Paths of Glory depict it. And over the years, immortal war poetry, such as Tennyson’s The Charge of the Light Brigade and McCrae’s In Flanders Fields has warned [...] read »

All that (southern) jazz

Take my word for it, there are a lot of jazz fans among the thousands of snowbirds who migrate to South Florida during winter months. And there are enough good musicians playing down there through the winter to satisfy every need. From personal experience, I can only report on activities on the sunshine state’s East [...] read »

Project Sunrise

Dear one, the world, is waiting for the sunrise. Ev’ry rose is heavy with dew. The thrush on high, his sleepy mate is calling. And my heart is calling you.The World is Waiting for the Sunrise Don’t tell Jack Hutton you can’t remember the song, The World is Waiting for the Sunrise. If there’s a [...] read »

Back to school

“One of the chief objects of education should be to widen the window through which we view the world“. Arnold Glascow Betty Worden, an 82-year-old Royal Air Force veteran from Richmond Hill, Ont., stepped up to the dais at York University’s Glendon College in Toronto in the summer of 1998 to accept a bachelor of [...] read »