One of the first things I did after moving to Guelph more than two decades ago was buy a Wellington Brewery tee – brown, long-sleeved, with the iconic Welly Boot logo printed on the front. It felt like a badge of belonging, a way to wear the Royal City on my chest.
We've been tight with the crew at Elora Brewing Co since the doors of this regional gem first swung open just over a decade ago. In fact, more than a few early issues of TOQUE were dreamt up over pints of 'Elora Borealis' at the far end of the brewery's long wooden bar. A lot has changed since then – at the brewery and at TOQUE – so we figured it was time to reconnect with old friends.
Our region is bursting at the seams with old factories — surviving monuments to a time when this area of Southwestern Ontario was a manufacturing powerhouse of the Commonwealth. And while many of these industrial icons have, predictably, been reborn as condos and tech offices, others have taken on new life as warm, welcoming, customer-facing spaces: restaurants, cafés, boutiques — and breweries.
St. Patrick’s Ward — known fondly as ‘the Ward’ to Royal City locals — has always been a stout-hearted place: plucky, dogged, enduring. This working-class neighbourhood on the edge of downtown Guelph was built on industry and immigration. Once a patchwork of corner stores and family-run shops in step with the steady rhythm of factory life, it still wears its past proudly. You can see it in the ghost signs, the worn brick, the streets that remember.
Sometimes a development project comes along so bold and ambitious that it promises to transform an entire community. In London’s Old East Village such an initiative is taking shape: the redevelopment of 100 Kellogg Lane. For over a century — from 1913 to 2014 — this million-square-foot factory produced up to twenty-seven different Kellogg’s cereals: from Frosted Flakes to Raisin Bran.
‘I think I spot the trailhead this way,’ Liz calls to me from the edge of a tree-lined glade – anticipation in her voice. Our three-year-old husky, Ellie, and four-year-old malamute, Mot, pull at their leads – enthusiastically ‘encouraging’ her toward the entrance of the route. Leaving behind the tasting room and bottle shop that had lured me inside, I jog across the gravel parking lot toward this most photogenic threesome – juggling a tall can of McQuade’s Black Current Cider in one hand, a neat stainless tumbler filled with ‘non-alc’ rosé in the other, and my camera and lenses somewhere in between.
It’s Tuesday. Middle of May. Just past eleven in the morning. And when my TOQUE Partner Cai and I pull up to the main entrance of Anderson Brewing Co there’s already a long lineup of people waiting in a queue out the front door. ‘This place is absolutely hopping,’ I remark to Cai as we join the back of the line, ‘there must be something big going on.’
‘We harvested these this morning,’ Jeremy Morris calls out to me while he lowers the tailgate of the work truck, raises the rear door of the bed cap, and beckons me to take a look inside. 'I would’ve grabbed even more but I just didn’t have the space.’ As I come closer, allowing time for my eyes to adjust from the harsh morning sunlight to the shaded interior of the truck's bed, the smell hits me – like a wallop to the nostrils. Dank. Pungent. Familiar. Fresh hops – and a whole lot of them. But for what?
SURE, SUMMER’S OVER – THE WARM PATIO NIGHTS ARE BEHIND US, THE LONG WEEKENDS SQUEEZED OF THEIR JUICE, THE BLOOMIN’ ONIONS CONSUMED AND REGRETTED – BUT THAT’S NOT TO SAY WE’RE DONE EXPLORING THE REGION. WINDOWS-DOWN DAY TRIPS BECOME PHOEBE BRIDGERS-FUELED DRIVES, AND I’M NOT READY TO GO HOME YET. I’M LOOKING FOR A COZY PLACE WHERE I CAN TUCK INTO A TASTY PINT AND, LUCKY FOR US, WE’VE GOT A FEW SWEET SPOTS CLOSE TO HOME.
OUR REGION GETS ITS DUE PROPS AS A CRAFT BEER MECCA. AND WITH GOOD REASON. BUT IT IS ALSO HOME TO A TIGHTKNIT LOT OF AWARD- WINNING CRAFT CIDERIES. FROM CALEDON THROUGH HAMILTON, OUR COMMUNITIES’ CIDERMAKERS ARE PRODUCING AMONG THE MOST UNIQUE, EXPERIMENTAL AND TASTY BEVVIES FROM HERE TO WHEREVER.
When we’re not publishing magazines, we’re branding businesses – most often restaurants, coffee shops and craft breweries. Two of our most recent branding projects include a couple local breweries that will be opening to the public just as this magazine goes to print: Red Circle Brewing Company in Kitchener and Fixed Gear Brewing Company in Guelph.
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.
