The rain is just starting to fall as Clara Reyes and I begin meeting, so we duck into a covered cabana at Seaview Beach Hotel in Philipsburg, the capital of the Dutch side of Sint Maarten. Sitting on white couches, we smile at each other, two strangers sizing each other up. Clara is the Director…
In his 1954 novel Lord of the Flies, William Golding describes what happens when the worst of human nature comes to a tiny island paradise. Rather than work together, a group of people devolves into little better than animals, descending into a savagery that undoes any attempts at civility. And so it could have been…
Blue skies, although in true tropical fashion they do give way to a brief rainstorm before returning immediately following. Azure waters. Green iguanas and brown pelicans. A ruined colonial fort, and one of the region’s leading historians and archaeologists to explain the intricacies of it to me. Yeah, in my world, this qualifies as a…
When Christopher Columbus sailed past the island we now know as St. Martin in 1493, the native Arawak and Caribe peoples had already left it. But the Arawak had a name for this island: Soualiga, the Land of Salt. While Columbus claimed the island for Spain despite not setting foot onto it, it was the…
It’s really impossible to distill just how cool of a city Toronto is. There is an energy that rivals New York, a cultural mix reminiscent of London, an urban beauty in the mold of Chicago, and classical Canadian friendliness. The place is incredible. And while there really isn’t a single must-visit sight, and nothing overly…
Sometimes, a day just seems to work out. Here I was, armed with a Toronto VIP Pass from Destination Toronto, with a free day downtown before meeting family to attend the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. (As a total aside, the concert and venue were both wonderful.) What to do? I gazed through the list of activities…
Sometimes my only plan for a day in a cool city is a nice walk in the sun. I might have a building or two in mind that I’d like to see and to photograph, a restaurant I want to try, or something else that draws me to a particular walk in a particular area,…
At the turn of the 20th century, Toronto was booming. Mining in northern Ontario, shipping on the Great Lakes, and a huge new financial sector led to rapid growth both in the city and in the money found there. With that came a new elite class, one that could make its money locally in addition…
It dominates the skyline like few other buildings in the world, standing head and shoulders above the rest of what has become one of the meccas for skyscrapers. Toronto would look unnatural without the CN Tower, and though it isn’t the city’s official logo - that honor belongs to the “new” city hall building -…
After the 2024 election, I left Twitter. Elon Musk’s acquiring of the platform and subsequent turning it into a right-wing disinformation center was too much for me, and I just couldn’t continue. I joined Bluesky. (By the way, if you are on that platform, please find me here. And if you aren’t on it, please…