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The Ontario Northland Railway station in Cochrane – a sleepy Franco-Ontarian boreal hamlet and the birthplace of Tim Horton – looked every bit the embarkation point to places off the grid. A mob of passengers waiting to board the 9:00am…
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We are in zodiacs, cutting a frothing wake against a torrent of snowmelt running into the sea. Our boats veer towards land and approach the edge of a wide estuary, its banks rising several feet above us. After tying to…
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While on a hunting expedition in the Balkans in 1859, British explorer Samuel Baker made a stop — along with his travel companion, a maharaja from India — at a slave market town in what is now Bulgaria. Baker was…
Continue reading“There’s way too much cloud up ahead,” said our Cessna pilot, betraying an iota of fluster that marred his showy demeanour of unflinching calm. We were on a two-hour glacier flight over Canada’s highest peaks, yet the promised view of…
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Tahir Shah’s Timbuctoo has arrived with eerie, serendipitous, timing. In the months leading up to its publication, a coup d’etat and ensuing power vacuum in the West African nation of Mali has resulted in extremists taking over the country’s north…
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