It would be an insult to say Sheri is a packrat; all of the hundreds of knickknacks she has have a history
Troy Media publisher Doug Firby and travel editor Lisa Monforton are part of a group of Canadians who call themselves ConnecTour. Starting in May in British Columbia and ending in October in Newfoundland, they hope to make an 8,000-km bicycle journey across the country, discovering how the COVID-19 pandemic has reshaped our lives and our…
“We need a plan to fully reopen the border so our businesses can survive”
Troy Media publisher Doug Firby and Travel editor Lisa Monforton are part of a group of Canadians who call themselves ConnecTour. Starting in May in British Columbia and ending in October in Newfoundland, they hope to make an 8,000-km bicycle journey across the country, discovering how the COVID-19 pandemic has reshaped our lives and our…
Troy Media publisher Doug Firby and Travel editor Lisa Monforton are part of a group of Canadians who call themselves ConnecTour. Starting in May in British Columbia and ending in October in Newfoundland, they hope to make an 8,000-km bicycle journey across the country, discovering how the COVID-19 pandemic has reshaped our lives and our…
Members offer a place for touring cyclists to pitch their tents and grab a shower. In exchange: an evening of conversation
Troy Media publisher Doug Firby and Travel editor Lisa Monforton are part of a group of Canadians who call themselves ConnecTour. Starting in May in British Columbia and ending in October in Newfoundland, they hope to make an 8,000-km bicycle journey across the country, discovering how the COVID-19 pandemic has reshaped our lives and our…
Nokomis Craft Ales is putting Nokomis, Sask. on the map – defying conventional thinking that only the big city yields success
Troy Media publisher Doug Firby and Travel editor Lisa Monforton are part of a group of Canadians who call themselves ConnecTour. Starting in May in British Columbia and ending in October in Newfoundland, they hope to make an 8,000-km bicycle journey across the country, discovering how the COVID-19 pandemic has reshaped our lives and our…
The bees came at us like a fleet of enemy fighter planes
Troy Media publisher Doug Firby and Travel editor Lisa Monforton are part of a group of Canadians who call themselves ConnecTour. Starting in May in British Columbia and ending in October in Newfoundland, they hope to make an 8,000-km bicycle journey across the country, discovering how the COVID-19 pandemic has reshaped our lives and our…
‘I threw down my bike and ran over to her. She was lying still on the pavement, entangled in her bike'
Troy Media publisher Doug Firby and Travel editor Lisa Monforton are part of a group of Canadians who call themselves ConnecTour. Starting in May in British Columbia and ending in October in Newfoundland, they hope to make an 8,000-km bicycle journey across the country, discovering how the COVID-19 pandemic has reshaped our lives and our…
Sandra, 69, continues to run the antique store even though she lost her beloved husband Rich three years ago
Troy Media publisher Doug Firby and Travel editor Lisa Monforton are part of a group of Canadians who call themselves ConnecTour. tarting in May in British Columbia and ending in October in Newfoundland, they hope to make an 8,000-km bicycle journey across the country, discovering how the COVID-19 pandemic has reshaped our lives and our…
Such unexpected generosity as we experience in Chinook, Alta. is what makes this ride so exceptional
Troy Media publisher Doug Firby and Travel editor Lisa Monforton are part of a group of Canadians who call themselves ConnecTour. Starting in May in British Columbia and ending in October in Newfoundland, they hope to make an 8,000-km bicycle journey across the country, discovering how the COVID-19 pandemic has reshaped our lives and our…
The average wait for a liver transplant in Canada is 287 days. Dax was one of the lucky ones – his wait was just a few weeks
Troy Media publisher Doug Firby and Travel editor Lisa Monforton are part of a group of Canadians who call themselves ConnecTour. tarting in May in British Columbia and ending in October in Newfoundland, they hope to make an 8,000-km bicycle journey across the country, discovering how the COVID-19 pandemic has reshaped our lives and our…
Tattoo artist Robb Syre moved to the Alberta mountain resort town to chase a dream with his best friend. Instead, he lost his friend to the virus
Troy Media publisher Doug Firby and Travel editor Lisa Monforton are part of a group of Canadians who call themselves ConnecTour. Starting in May in British Columbia and ending in October in Newfoundland, they hope to make an 8,000-km bicycle journey across the country, discovering how the COVID-19 pandemic has reshaped our lives and our…
By the door is an original painting by renowned Indigenous artist Norval Morrisseau, one of dozens of pieces in Wilking’s collection
Doug Firby, publisher of Troy Media, and columnist Lisa Monforton are part of a group of Canadians who call themselves ConnecTour. Starting on May 28 in British Columbia, they hope to make an 8,000-km bicycle journey across the country, discovering how the COVID-19 pandemic has reshaped our lives and our sense of community. Watch for…
Learn to take it one pedal stroke at a time. And even though that hill can look intimidating, just get into the zone and take it slow
Doug Firby, publisher of Troy Media, and columnist Lisa Monforton are part of a group of Canadians who call themselves ConnecTour. Starting on May 28 in British Columbia, they hope to make an 8,000-km bicycle journey across the country, discovering how the COVID-19 pandemic has reshaped our lives and our sense of community. Watch for…
Some of our group chose to sleep outside in tents rather than risk the ire of these troubled spirits. Two brave souls slept inside
Doug Firby, publisher of Troy Media, is part of a group of Canadians who call themselves ConnecTour. Starting on May 28 in Kelowna, B.C. (B.C. travel restrictions derailed a planned start in Victoria), they hope to make an 8,000-km bicycle journey across the country, discovering how the COVID-19 pandemic has reshaped our lives and our…
Transport trucks, cars and four-by-fours roared by us, some so close we were showered in road spray and rocked by the wind gusts
Doug Firby, publisher of Troy Media, is part of a group of Canadians who call themselves ConnecTour. Starting on May 28 in Kelowna, B.C. (B.C. travel restrictions derailed a planned start in Victoria), they hope to make an 8,000-km bicycle journey across the country, discovering how the COVID-19 pandemic has reshaped our lives and our…
Across from our campsite sat a gangly young man named Scott, who had been homeless for 10 years and was trying to find some normalcy
Lisa Montforton is part of a group of Canadians who call themselves ConnecTour. Starting on May 28 in Kelowna, B.C. (B.C. travel restrictions derailed a planned start in Victoria), they hope to make an 8,000-km journey across the country, discovering how the COVID-19 pandemic has reshaped our lives and our sense of community. Watch for…
Doug Firby, publisher of Troy Media, is part of a group of Canadians who call themselves ConnecTour. Starting on Friday in Kelowna, B.C. (B.C. travel restrictions derailed a planned start in Victoria), they hope to make an 8,000-km journey across the country, discovering how the COVID-19 pandemic has reshaped our lives and our sense of…
But, often, it requires making lemonade out of lemons
Bike touring has been my favourite way to travel since 1993 when my partner Tanya and I discovered it as an affordable way to visit her dad in New Zealand for a month. Since then, we have logged thousands of kilometres in more than 50 countries. By the time we completed a 14-month family bike…
Four of the five members of the core group who plan to cycle across the country have had their first shots. We’re ready to go
Doug Firby, publisher of Troy Media, is part of a group of Canadians who call themselves ConnecTour. Starting on May 15 in Victoria, they plan to dip their wheels in the Pacific Ocean and then head east for 8,000 km, discovering how the COVID-19 pandemic has reshaped our lives and our sense of community. Watch…
While mostly ceremonial, it can still mean something very important
The embarrassing schmozzle involving our most recent governor general, Julie Payette, has a lot of Canadians questioning why we still have a vice-regal. Actually, the close brush with a self-appointed president-for-life just to the south of us provides a pretty compelling reason for Canada to hang on to the seemingly archaic tradition of having a…
A collection of ordinary adventurers are preparing to travel at the speed of life, seeking to connect with fellow Canadians across the country
Of all the things we do that have changed since the arrival of COVID-19, one that has altered the most is travel. And it’s not only about when and where we go, but also why. Spending Christmas in a sunny, warm resort is no longer a legitimate reason to travel, as a few politicians have…
Road to Reconciliation: An examination of what meaningful consultation and economic reconciliation look like
If you relied on the headlines alone, you might conclude that the Indigenous peoples of Canada are squarely against oil and gas development. You would be wrong. Headlines, by their nature, highlight crisis and conflict in simplified terms. But the debate over Indigenous support for resource development is highly nuanced. Readers must go beyond the…
Visitors just have to be prepared to go with the flow, consider unconventional approaches and be flexible enough to adapt to travel with no reservations
To say it is a challenging year to travel out of province is to put things mildly in the extreme. With the enduring COVID-19 threat, most provinces have residents-only campsite reservation policies and national campgrounds have been booked tight for months. Yet with a little ingenuity and adventurous spirit, we discovered that British Columbia is…
The government of Premier Jason Kenney has decided to end a 44-year moratorium on open-pit coal mining in southern Alberta
Desperate times sometimes lead to catastrophic measures. In Alberta, the beleaguered provincial government is in a financial situation that could be characterized as desperate, suffering from the double-whammy of collapsed resource revenues and, of course, the massive spending required to address the social wildfire known as the COVID-19 pandemic. The desperate measure that the United…
If the Conservative Party of Canada truly wanted to turn its party-of-angry-old-white-men image on its head, to herald a new era or principled conservatism, and to reach out to voters who have not considered them in the past, then members would choose Leslyn Lewis as their new leader. But they should not do that. This…
Adding more weapons, equipment and officers doesn’t provide a straight line to happier and safer communities
Putting more force into our police forces might seem intuitively like a logical way to more effectively fight crime. Real-life experience suggests that’s not necessarily so. Experts say when using force is available, then it’s human nature for a trained police officer to fall back on that option when the going gets rough. Too often,…
The WE mess shows sunny ways have been replaced with dark days of the same old cronyism in the halls of power
Just when you think our prime minister may actually be growing into his job, he does something so ill-considered, so tone-deaf and so contrary to generally accepted political convention that all the confidence he has earned in the past few weeks evaporates in a flash. Such was Justin Trudeau’s foolish and inexplicable attachment to the…
Referendums have been the source of high anxiety and popular uprisings in recent years. Whether they’re a truly democratic way to make vital decisions that best serve the public interest is a matter of great debate. However, there really should be no debate – nine times out of 10, they’re a bad idea. Alberta Premier…
It’s time to reduce funding to police and reallocate those dollars to more proactive ways to reduce crime
Here’s a couple of questions that might have seemed crazy to many people just a few short years ago but are gaining purchase today. Do we really need as much policing as we have? Or are the ever-growing police budgets actually inadvertently leading to greater violence? A lot of us have believed that police exist…
First in a series on the crisis in policing. Routine traffic law offenders like myself are often struck with the arrival of each new ticket about how a lot of police enforcement is built around the model of ‘force.’ The point of issuing a ticket doesn’t really seem to be about changing behaviour but rather…
Troy Media publisher Doug Firby and travel editor Lisa Monforton are part of a group of Canadians who call themselves ConnecTour. Starting in May in British Columbia and ending in October in Newfoundland, they hope to make an 8,000-km bicycle journey across the country, discovering how the COVID-19 pandemic has reshaped our lives and our…
