As soon as I saw the Yahoo! headline - Canada's Least Sexy City - I knew what I'd find on the other side of that link.

Yes, to quote the Boss, this is myyyyy hoooometown.

According to the article, most Ottawa residents were "surprised, and more than a little offended, to learn their fair city ranked...

I'm thrilled to announce that a piece I wrote with World Hum in mind over a year ago - before I discovered Matador, started blogging, went to the Book Passage conference, and generally starting seeing any sort of progress in my travel writing efforts - was published today on, yes, World Hum!

It's...

I visited the 1000 Islands area of upstate New York a couple of weeks back - I wanted to see the region from the southern side of the border. It was a great visit, and I'm at work on a few articles about the trip - but in the meantime, here are some funny signs I came across.

The tent city is the first thing I notice - or don't notice, I should say. When I visited New Orleans in March, I drove past dozens (maybe hundreds) of tents huddled under the freeway at Claiborne and Canal. Now, when I walk under the overpass on the way from my Mid-City digs to the French Quarter, the...

I landed in New Orleans last night.

On the flight, I was nervous. It's not every day, after all, that you fly back for a second visit to the city that so captivated you the first time around, that you quit your job, gave up your apartment, and booked a return flight as soon as you got home. Talk about...

It's been a hectic couple of months since I returned from Barbados and started life as a full-time freelance writer - good for the most part, but definitely a little crazy. I thought I'd post a few links and notes explaining what I've been up to, and where I'm headed next.

The adjustment has been harder...

"I work...to travel," the man behind the counter says in careful English, spreading his hands to gesture at the narrow confines of the convenience store. Then he tells me a little about his travels - to Mali and Niger, to West and North Africa, to Europe. He reels off a list of languages he speaks: English,...

Some of you might remember that I blogged awhile back about an unarmed Polish immigrant who was killed by four members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police at Vancouver International Airport.

Well, the various inquiries into Robert Dziekanski's death specifically, and police use of Tasers more...

It’s that time of year again: the season in which I inevitably find myself in a foreign country, asking around to see if there’s any chance I can catch the hockey game on TV.

The tradition started in my undergraduate years. At the end of the winter semester, in early or mid April, I’d rush off...

I don’t mean for this to sound (quite) as harsh as it probably does, but coming home to Ottawa is a bit like stepping into a black hole.

I’m always excited to get home; the problem is that within days, or even hours, of arriving back here I start to forget that I ever left. I’ve been home this...

I’m a late-comer to the discussion about Chuck Thompson’s Smile When You’re Lying. In January, I read Rolf Potts’ review and followed its epic comments thread at World Hum with interest. I also read the BNT...

As promised, some photos of the extraordinarily happy stray dogs of Bequia, the northernmost island in the Grenadines chain.

There was more to it than love at first sight, of course.

To be honest, when I first got out of the cab in downtown Kingstown, here in Saint Vincent, late on Saturday afternoon, I had to keep a firm grip on my positivity. The streets were littered with smashed glass, odd smells, feral-looking dogs that...

It took me less than five minutes to fall hopelessly in love with Bequia. I'd just checked in to my little hotel and was sitting in its open-air cafe, facing the beach and Admiralty Bay. Yachts nodded gently in the water. The wind rattled the palm trees overhead. In the kitchen, the young cook was...

It's easy, and common, to write the Caribbean - and particularly, these smaller, more elite islands of the Eastern Caribbean - off as resort-saturated, tourist-tsunamied outposts of travel consumerism. Most folks looking for "authentic culture" probably figure the islands are well and...

I spent a good portion of this afternoon dodging around under the spreading branches of a huge mango tree in the front yard. My dad was on a ladder, using a long hook-ended pole to knock the ripest fruit from the tree, and I was running from side to side, awkward in a skirt and flipflops, trying (and...

I came across this piece in The Globe and Mail today: Some People "Really Didn't Want This Movie Made". It's about film-maker Denis Villeneuve, and his recently-completed film, Polytechnique, a movie about the "Montreal Massacre" of December...

Growing up in Saskatoon and then Ottawa, I was a long trek from the nearest wave. Surfing was not an option. But water, whether fresh, chlorinated or salted, has always been the only antidote to my natural scaredy-cat tendencies: as a kid I wouldn't even think of climbing a tree, and I once told...

I'm sitting on the back patio of a large white-plastered house, on a ridge about a kilometer inland from the south west coast of Barbados. Ahead of me, and stretching to the horizon on all sides, is the Caribbean Sea - and let me tell you, the view from this - my new "office" - sure beats the one I just...

As the plane circled over the south east coast of Barbados yesterday afternoon, I found myself trying to do too many things at once: catching the last few minutes of a Hillary Swank tear-jerker on my mini-screen, craning my neck to catch glimpses of searingly bright beach and ocean below, and hastily...