OUR REGION IS VAST AND VARIED – AND INTERWOVEN WITH DIVERSE COMMUNITIES, CULTURES, AND FOODS. DELICIOUS, DELECTABLE, TANTALIZING FOODS. FOODS (AND FOOD INGREDIENTS) THAT, IN MANY CASES, CAN BE FOUND ONLY AT ONE OF OUR LOCAL INTERNATIONAL GROCERS. THESE DISTINCTIVE ENTERPRISES, WHICH ARE STREWN THROUGHOUT OUR REGION, ARE EASY TO SPOT – IF YOU’RE LOOKING. FOR THIS FEATURE, TOQUE WRITER DANI KUEPFER VISITS THREE OF THEM, AND REPORTS ON WHAT SHE FINDS.
AROUND HERE, THE DEPARTURE OF WINTER BRINGS ON THE URGE FOR SCENIC DRIVES THROUGH THE COUNTRY – TO CLEAR OUR HEADS, EXPLORE, AND FIND SOME UNIQUE FARM GATES AND MARKETS TO SOURCE LOCAL AND FRESH PRODUCE AND MEATS. FOR THIS FEATURE, TOQUE’S CAI SEPULIS ASKED FRIEND AND REGIONAL FARM GURU CHRISTINA MANN FROM TASTEREAL TO SUGGEST THREE LOCAL FARM MARKETS SHE MIGHT CHECK OUT. JOINED BY TOQUE PARTNER CHRIS TIESSEN AND HIS CAMERA, CAI SET OUT TO TAKE A CLOSER LOOK.
THE HUNT. ANTIQUE COLLECTORS KNOW EXACTLY WHAT IT IS: THE SATISFYING ACT OF SEARCHING FOR (VINTAGE) TREASURE – AND FINDING IT. SECURING IT. GIVING IT NEW LIFE AT HOME OR PASSING IT ALONG AS A GIFT. MARKET ROAD ANTIQUES (LOCATED BESIDE THE ST JACOBS FARMERS’ MARKET AND FEATURING OVER ONE HUNDRED VENDORS SPREAD ACROSS TWENTY THOUSAND SQUARE FEET) IS THE PERFECT PLACE TO JOIN THE HUNT.
While a blustery wind picks up and blows across the hill, I feel our chairlift sway from side to side. The biting gust assaults our bodies and blasts the grainy snow into the sky. I pull my balaclava up over my nose, adjust my goggles, and cinch my hood. My fiancé, Liz, who’s beside me on the lift, does the same. B
‘Our goal has always been to move toward one hundred percent Canadian production,’ Daniel tells me as I thumb through a rack of heavy duty plaid button-ups – searching for my size. ‘These shirts, for instance,’ he remarks as I pull a sweet green and black-patterned piece off the rack, ‘are pretty much an all-Ontario affair – with just a little help from America.’ When I glance quizzically at Daniel, he elaborates. ‘All design was done in-house,’ he tells me. Fantastic.
‘This one’s gotta be my favourite,’ I exclaim to my fiancé Liz as I finish taking a sip of the third – and final – cocktail that’s included in my flight of gin and tonics. I look down at my notes to see what’s got me so excited. Citrus pink gin with orange tonic. Refreshing. Bright. Like summer in a glass. ‘Ya – I like this even more than the one with dry gin and cucumber lime tonic,’ I proclaim.
Fully-stocked pantries are a blissful thing. As are overflowing larders, plenished shelves, loaded bookcases, and crowded lazy susans – all bursting with everything from mason jars and ceramic vessels filled with lentils, beans, and pickled things to canned goods and tinned fish; from paperbacks and classic vinyl to kitchen tools and other staples.
As I turn the truck down Clinton Street in Hamilton’s Stipley neighbourhood, my TOQUE Partner Chris riding shotgun, I can’t help but feel as though we’ve been transported to another world – to another time. Rows of detached blue collar homes dot both sides of the narrow street – seemingly distinguished only by the colour of their horizontal siding.
‘Wanna try something straight from the tank?’, head brewer of Foundry Brewing, Geoff Wiseman, asks while I'm gauging the natural light in his brewhouse – deciding where best to take photos in this snug space. My TOQUE Partner Cai and I glance at each other before nodding enthusiastically in unison.
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.
