When you first meet Leslie Zinger, you quickly understand how she has built a successful farm business raising livestock. She cares deeply about the welfare of her animals, is passionate about a great product, and is a natural when it comes to building strong relationships with clients. Leslie and her family operate Top Market Meats – a fourth-generation, eighty-acre rabbit, goat, pork and poultry farm located in Ariss, just outside of Guelph.
‘The dining room table is, arguably, the most sacred space in any household,’ notes ThreeCrow Woodworks’ Bryce Hill as we walk in a soft drizzle through a seeming ocean of woodchips towards the sawmill he and his uncle built for themselves near the back of the large property. ‘It’s where family, friends and neighbours come together,’ Bryce continues, ‘to break bread, eat, drink, and take refuge from the speed of life for a little while, at least.’
There are times I wish I lived in Elora. Usually when I find myself swept up in the comfortable, generous ambience of Elora Brewing Co – a craft brewpub so agonizingly perfect that TOQUE partner-in-crime Cai Sepulis and I seem to find almost any excuse to make the trip from Guelph up Highway 6 and along Wellington Road 7 to what’s become one of our favourite destinations. For lunch. Afternoon pints. Production meetings. Brainstorms. For Whatever.
‘The story of my business is the story of coffee,’ notes Founder and President of Balzac’s Coffee Roasters, Diana Olsen. We are sitting at a two-seater inside her Guelph location. It’s a favourite destination of mine: located at the foot of downtown Guelph just across from the farmers’ market to the east and Guelph’s landmark basilica, the Church of Our Lady, to the north.
‘When I began my career in real estate, I told myself that I’d leave the business only after I’d completely figured it out,’ Robb Atkinson tells me. We are sitting together in his boardroom on Speedvale.
With lunchtime queues that regularly spill out the door and wind onto Macdonell Street in downtown Guelph, Crafty Ramen’s owners Jared Ferrall and his partner Miki have what any restauranteurs dream of: early and dramatic success. Our region is undergoing a culinary renaissance, with independent ‘boutique’ establishments like still-newish Crafty Ramen leading the way. In late August, Guelphite Emma Rogers sat down with Jared for some rapid fire questions
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.
