I’m not the best environmentalist in the house – I admit it. Sometimes, if the compost bin is full, I put the onion skins in the trash instead of taking the compost outside and emptying it. But then again, I sometimes justify it by thinking that putting things in the compost bin is only the tiniest fragment of the environmental job. It’s easy for everyone else to claim the environmental high ground, even though they don’t ever take the full bin out to the composter and empty out the ...

A woman lucky enough to find a spa where she feels completely at ease in the hands of one of its technicians should probably work on maintaining that relationship for life. But a woman lucky enough to find a spa where she feels completely at ease in the hands of cosmetic doctors should just thank her lucky stars. When I first learned about True MediSpa, owned and operated by Dr. Romy Saibil and Dr. Francine Gerstein, I thought it...

Making it through turbulent times often seems like a gift from the gods: a matter of fate, of luck, of good fortune. When I examine things that have gone well for me, there is often a foundation of hard work, of strategic planning, and learning from experience that rests at the heart of these endeavours. Stephen Tallevi, general manager and co-founder of Grocery Gateway (an online grocery retailer), understands this very well. One key ...

Opportunities abound in this economy. I have a shameless sense of optimism that I find myself holding back because I feel the weight of worry in the air. This holding back reminds me of seeing an old friend at my father’s funeral. His death brought horrible change to my life, and the thought of living without him locked my jaw tight. But then I saw my friend. The warm memories pushed my grief aside and relaxed my jaw into a smile. She tried not to smile back, but some things must never be stop...

Nine years ago, the Canadian television industry went through a major restructuring. By the end of it, the number of potential employers in the industry was substantially reduced, and my husband was out of a job. It was a lousy year for us, just like this year is a lousy year for a lot of people. So that year we decided to cut and run. We started our own business and we relocated to the country. The decision to cut our dependence on someone else for my husband’s paycheque was based on t...

Everyone I know does it: wake up in the morning, shuffle to the bathroom, flush the toilet, turn on the tap. Some jump in the shower for a warm, refreshing rinse. I can be found in the kitchen, chin on palms, leaning on the counter waiting for my water to boil. I never questioned this ritual, let alone my general use of water, until I was in my little cousin’s bathroom. This particular bathroom was littered with Betty and Veronica comics. Casually flipping through one, my attenti...

The economic downturn will change my consumption habits, but for the time being I have a load of electronic junk. There are three laptops my children and I cycled through and found not up to the task of broadband downloads. I have a full desktop unit, at no small expense only four years ago, that slowed down when I ventured into uploading and watching video. A monitor. A printer. Cables galore. Old cell phones. Even an old PDA. Oh, and the television sets, those unbearably heavy and deep ve...

It would be a pair of Canadians, wouldn't it, who would connect satellites and trees? Mikro-Tek, the brain child of Marilyn Wood and her husband Mark Kean, is a small Canadian company based in Timmins, Ontario. Like many northern Ontario companies, Mikro-Tek makes its money from the forestry industry, but in this case, it’s postmodern forestry. Forestry with a twist, for the new millennium. Mining and forestry are naturally a big part of economic life in Timmins and both mining and forestry...