These days a great coffee shop doesn't depend on beans alone. Atmosphere, aesthetics, and a certain ineffable charm matter just as much as a flawless flat white. Across Morriston, Guelph, and Kitchener-Waterloo, a trio of newcomers is proving the point with spaces that feel as thoughtfully devised as the coffee itself: moody, atmospheric, and confidently unique.
There's something to be said for a late-summer Friday escape – windows down, wheels rolling, fields unspooling in neat green and golden cords as the city – and its worries – slips behind. On a Friday morning in mid-August my TOQUE partner Cai and I find ourselves steering northwest from Guelph through farm country toward Millbank, a village with a legendary canteen – Anna Mae's Bakery & Restaurant
Piccolo Farm Organics is a two-plot experiment in abundance rooted in the backyard of founders Steve D'Alimonte and Lisa Lopez and extending to the fields at Ignatius in Guelph, Ontario. Together, the Piccolo garden sites form a small but expressive canvas where Italian heritage meets regenerative practice.
In a world of fast imported fashion, stalwart Canadian clothing brand Muttonhead continues to serve as a guiding light for the modish set bent on quality duds and dedicated to supporting local. (Shop Canadian, eh?) In March, the TOQUE team spent a morning in Toronto at the Muttonhead store with company owners — and sisters — Meg and Mel Sinclair, fashion mavens who spent their formative childhood years in Kitchener.
When’s the last time you biked from one community to the next? Few feelings beat hitting our region’s open roads or groomed trails in search of whatever lies one town over. With that in mind, Wellington County has crafted seven signature cycling routes connecting communities across Guelph and Wellington — Elora to Fergus, Harriston to Clifford, Rockwood to Guelph, and more.
When Christine and John Veit (along with their two daughters) sold their family home in Fergus in 2020 to purchase a lovely twenty-five acre farm plot just outside Belwood, they had dreams of becoming homesteaders. They would engage in a bit of subsistence agriculture. A touch of husbandry. Some honey. Canning. All in the family.
‘I’m jumping in,' I exclaim to Liz as I launch off the wooden dock and sail through the air. Within a short second I hit the water – disturbing, with circular ripples, the glassy surface of a pristine corner of Grass Lake near Burk’s Falls just north of Muskoka. Before long I see Liz a few metres away, deftly navigating a paddleboard with our intrepid husky Ellie standing proud behind her.
In early September, on what turned out to be the first glorious ‘sweater weather’ weekend of the season, Willibald Farm Distillery & Brewery hosted its inaugural charity car show: Willibald Motorfest.
In late May the TOQUE team took on the lavish task of completing the trail in a single day (or two). Did we succeed? Was it tasty? What’s bacon popcorn, anyway? Follow along to find out.
Travel tends to sharpen taste. It introduces new ideas, uncovers unforeseen obsessions, and offers the occasional epiphany – nudging your sense of beauty and your grasp of craftsmanship in new directions. For Ryan LeClair, founder of Makoto Watch Company out of London, Ontario, it was travel – and specifically a trip to Japan – that transformed his infatuation with watch collecting into his initiation of a brand built on craft, restraint, and everyday practicality.
Almost nothing we carry defines us more clearly than the books in our bags: tactile objects filled with ideas and stories – testimonies to time well spent. They tag along with us, mark our days, and shape the rhythm of how we move through the world. In Uptown Waterloo, three long-standing independent bookstores – Carry-On Comics & Books (46 years young), Words Worth Books (42 years), and Old Goat Books (25 years) – offer distinct ways to build this bracket of everyday carry: a nostalgia-driven comic haven built for the thrill of discovery, a curated literary hub grounded in conversation, and a densely-packed used bookstore where the search is part of the reward. Together, these enduring fixtures map a reading life – charting not just what we read, but how we come to find it.
In my line of work – as writer, photographer, editor, regional explorer – EDC isn't a trend. It's infrastructure. Most days I'm in motion: tracing backroads toward a brewhouse, mapping my way to an artist's studio, or sliding into the corner of a coffee shop where I turn field notes into final copy and RAW files into photographs that will pop on paper. My office is wherever I set my bag down. My tools make it possible.
Stratford – and, by extension, Perth County – lends itself to takeaway. A coffee to carry, a sandwich in hand, something sweet tucked alongside – then out into the streets for window shopping, into the theatres for a performance, or down to the riverbank for a nosh.
