Don’t go in the red for Christmas, but try to make it green

It’s a colourful time of year and red and green really are the colours of the season — red for our budgetary concerns post-holidays and green for our environmental concerns (and for the money we spend). Retailers kindly started the countdown for us right after Halloween, as storefronts changed from orange and black to colourful Christmas displays. (As if time …

Get beautiful naturally with local, great-smelling products

Kate Campbell and Allie McKeachnie like to keep things simple. If they can’t recognize or pronounce the ingredients in a product, they typically don’t buy it. That led them to create their own line of body care products, Kate and Allie’s Beauty by Nature, in the summer of 2007. Kate told me that, “With allergies and sensitive skin, we can’t …

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Don’t reward Big Three for not knowing how to be profitable

The recent bailout of the financial industry in the United States made me uneasy. White House officials said they had little choice as they doled out $700 billion to buy up bad loans that basically shouldn’t have been made in the first place (and I thought the U. S. didn’t negotiate with hostage-takers). Hard-working entrepreneurs and corporations cringed at the …

By showing us possibilities, Obama mobilized more than a nation

I have never been so interested in the results of an American election. I am thrilled that Americans voted for change, putting a black man in the White House, but I quietly wonder why anyone would want to take over the reins during one of the bleakest times in the country’s history. Fortunately, the grey clouds looming on the horizon …

Looming winter, spooky holiday and recession — October is scary

Knock knock. Who’s there? Boo. Boo who? Don’t cry. Put your investment statements away and go give the trick-or-treaters some candy. Yes, once again we find October turning into a dark, gloomy month. It’s cold, dreary, and grey. The trees have lost their colour and have given way to a skeletal appearance perfect for Halloween. The knobby, exposed, bare branches …

Look around you — there is a lot for which to be thankful

Thanksgiving is my favourite holiday: focused on food, friends and saying thanks for having both (and still joyfully uncommercialized). Inspired by Thanksgiving, here is my thank you tribute to the world around me. I give thanks for nature’s stunning colours that we have yet to improve upon; the yellows and oranges of monarch butterflies and golden sunflowers, red velvet roses, …

No longer ‘leaving it to beaver’, Bell adopts a suffix as its new brand

Er . . . I just don’t get Bell’s new direction: bye-bye beav, hello er? On Aug. 8, Bell launched a new brand with the opening of the Olympics. A new logo, tagline, and advertising campaign were initiated to support its new strategy and goal. George Cope, President and CEO of BCE and Bell Canada, said in a company release: …

Want to win my vote? Promise and deliver benefits for this region

I’m so excited we are returning to the polls Oct. 14. Aren’t you? Don’t you want the opportunity to redo something you just did? I think I’ll throw out the lunch I just made for my daughter and make it again. Why not? While I’m at it, I think I’ll go back and repeat high school and recommend that my …

Desperately seeking summer: if not here, somewhere else

Weather-wise, this has been a pretty bad summer. I hesitate to even use the word summer because it is a stretch. Really, we’ve had a nice spring or fall, but certainly it has not shaped up to the season usually marked by weeks of gloriously hot, sunny days. There have been only glimmers of summer weather, so few in fact, …