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.
When I heard that Guelph-based Frontiers Design + Build had merged with Eric Small and his team at SL Builders Group under the Frontiers name earlier this year, I knew something special was taking shape. After all, Frontiers and SL Builders have long been go-to names in the world of high-performance construction across the region.
At the time of writing this, the future is uncertain, to say the least. Talk of tariffs is giving us whiplash with all its pausing and unpausing, while the flood of news headlines is, quite frankly, exhausting. In the last five minutes alone, I received another alert with tariff updates: this time they’re targeting our cows. (Moo! I mean…Boo!) Dairy jokes aside, it’s hard to predict where this will end and, as much as I hope things will have calmed down by the time you read this, it’s quite possible at least some of the chaos will remain.
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.
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.
Step inside Wills & Prior — a haven for all things home and design in the heart of Stratford — and it’s as if the world exhales. A calm breeziness infuses everything here: the lofty ceilings and pendant lights draped in oversized fabric shades; the reclaimed wood floors and towering windows that flood the two-storey space with natural light; the fresh floral arrangements and subtle signature scent; the staff — stylish, approachable, and genuinely helpful — gliding quietly through the space.
In a crowded market, Mica and Jill Sadler are attempting to redefine what a real estate experience can be. As principals at Kitchener-based Sadler Real Estate Group, Jill and Mica blend sharp market insight with a data-driven, client-first approach that’s rooted in strategy and trust.
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.
