The ingenuity of some people knows no bounds. And Kathy Lyte is one of those people. Kathy has what you might call an eagle eye, the ability to scan lists of things and cross reference them to other lists and find discrepancies. Not sure what you¹d call that on a resume, but in Kathy’s books…

Evelyn Tuck has always been a woman ahead of her time. Let’s look back, please, to the Great Depression, the 1930’s, and Barrie was as deprived as anywhere. People helped each other when and where they could. And Evelyn Tuck returned to Barrie to open a milliner’s shop. After a decade of apprenticeship in Toronto,…

Every parent in the world has leaned into the cradle and picked up a screaming baby and moaned, “if only you could talk. You’re not wet. There’s no pin sticking into you (dating myself, aren’t I?). You were fed half an hour ago… what IS it?” Every parent in the world has wondered why their…

It’s funny how one comment can send you into yesteryear. We were on holiday at the cottage having a very rare family meal together. Now that the kids are grown and mostly gone, it’s precious when we all sit down at the same time. We had just cracked open our first jar of Arnie’s Latvian…

It all started with a Dress For Success event at the Barrie Native Friendship Centre. Dawn Bolduc’s employment training work for native people centres itself on resumes, employability skills, interview rehearsals, and job presentation. It was logical, then, to hold a Dress For Success fashion show, with the models selecting their own, economically-priced clothes and…

For the past eight years, Charlie Zeihr has been turning steel into practical and whimsical products from a barn in Barrie’s north end. I’ve called on his skill to make cottage end tables out of iron floor grates. He made a beautiful chandelier for us in 1998. And I called on him this year for…

Many of us are familiar with Doug Crawford’s fabulous photographs of Barrie’s firefighters. A true girls’ calendar, this fundraiser celebrates a little skin, a little sweat, some firefighting garb, great backdrops (but, who’s looking at backdrops?)… all in the name of charity. Money raised from the calendar goes to Camp Bucko, a facility for kids…

Pack the lunchbox, put a love note and a heart inside. Fold up the sleeping mat. Get out the camera. Put your tear ducts on hold. Take your little child’s hand in yours and walk the munchkin up to kindergarten. Send your baby out to the world. First day. …nine years later… Grab the kid…

When Brittany Murray was diagnosed with Ewings Sarcoma, a cancer of the bone, in her knee, she feared two things: not being able to play sports, losing her hair. Her 13 year old brain didn’t take in the potential mortality of this cancer. It had taken one of Terry Fox’s legs; it had ultimately taken…

For 34 years I’ve lived with a phobic. My first husband, I like to call him. He has bat-o-phobia, a crippling fear of those black mice with wings that squeak in the night and make a whoosh-whoosh-whoosh noise as they flap around the kitchen, or the upstairs hall, or the bedroom. Our current house is…