• Toni Blodgett: Keeping Jazz Alive

    Jazz has been America’s cultural gift to the world for a little over 100 years. The improvisational art c ...

    Jazz has been America’s cultural gift to the world for a little over 100 years. The improvisational art captured on record for a century is Victoria-based traditional jazz pianist Toni Blodgett’s insp ...

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  • SKOKI LODGE HIKING ADVENTURES

    Every summer for the last two decades, my wife and I have hiked for a week in the Rockies. It took me qui ...

    Every summer for the last two decades, my wife and I have hiked for a week in the Rockies. It took me quite a while to get into hiking, as I didn't get much out of it at first. It seemed like I’d spen ...

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  • JOE COUGHLIN: DON’T EVER GIVE UP!

    Big band jazz dominated popular music between WWI and WWII. Every band had a vocalist and big band record ...

    Big band jazz dominated popular music between WWI and WWII. Every band had a vocalist and big band records by Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra and other singing stars amplified the musi ...

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  • JAPAN’S JUXTAPOSITION

    It seems like a lifetime ago. November 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic, my wife and I visited Japan du ...

    It seems like a lifetime ago. November 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic, my wife and I visited Japan during the island nation’s vibrant fall colours. She was returning after 40 years. My first trip ...

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  • House Exchange Experience

    Back in the early 1990s, when my family joined Intervac, an original home exchange network and pioneer in ...

    Back in the early 1990s, when my family joined Intervac, an original home exchange network and pioneer in the sharing economy, we didn't have a home computer. Intervac, short for International Vacatio ...

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  • Volunteering

    When I took the buy-out from Victoria’s Times Colonist after over two decades as their popular music colu ...

    When I took the buy-out from Victoria’s Times Colonist after over two decades as their popular music columnist and later, Go-Explore page and travel writer, I never imagined I'd spend the rest of my l ...

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