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.
What do I carry in a day? Honestly, when I finally empty my pockets, it's more than I realize. My work shifts constantly: design, art direction, illustration, and running a print magazine while maintaining my own art practice, prepping for shows, building new work, keeping the ideas moving. My kit isn't really a kit. I'm more of a crow, collecting as I go – drawn to things that are useful, beautiful, or just too good to leave behind.
Long before 'clean beauty' became a global marketing mantra, Cocoon Apothecary was quietly perfecting plant-based skincare in a basement lab in Waterloo Region.
I never anticipated that I could be inspired by a vacant floor of a drab 1960s office building – originally constructed to house a banking headquarters, no less. And yet here I was. On the top floor of 305 King Street West in downtown Kitchener. A building I’d grown up noticing simply because it was so impressively unexceptional. And I was energized. And excited. And absolutely inspired – all for one simple reason. Because of who I was with. Craig Beattie.
The region is in good hands, I cannot help but think to myself as I listen intently to Jason Martin and Patrick Simmons – the ‘Martin’ and ‘Simmons’ of Kitchener’s storied MartinSimmons Architects – espouse what it means for them to ‘do architecture’ across Waterloo Region and (increasingly) Wellington County.
If you ever get the chance to visit Ron Chauvin’s Circle Four Farms, go. The farm's 115 acres includes some of the most serene countryside you’re ever likely to tour. But that’s not all. Texas Long Horn cattle graze alongside Gypsy Vanner horses on fertile pasture. Free range Artisan Gold turkeys strut near pens of Tammworth pigs. And still ponds and meandering streams cut across grassy fields and picturesque forest groves.
THERE’S NO DENYING THAT THE BOOKSHELF – GUELPH’S FAVOURITE BOOKSTORE, CINEMA, RESTAURANT AND BAR – IS AMONG THE MOST IMPORTANT CULTURAL HUBS IN OUR REGION. A MAJOR REASON FOR THIS: THE STAFF WHO WORK THERE. EXPERT CURATORS IN THEIR OWN RIGHT, THE BOOKSHELF STAFF KNOW A THING OR TWO ABOUT GREAT BOOKS AND MAGAZINES, OBSCURE MOVIES, AND HOW TO ROCK A PARTY. NOW IT’S TIME TO KNOW A THING OR TWO ABOUT THEM.
As I pull into the small gravel parking lot that marks the trailhead of Waterloo Region’s famed Hydrocut, I note that Brent Ellis and Joanne Beattie have already arrived. Local cycling legend Andy Cox has yet to appear.
MEET MINGA’S AMI DEHNE & ELLA HENDERSON
BY CHRIS TIESSEN
EDITOR’S NOTE: This business has since closed. We have chosen to keep this article online as...
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.
