Since 2008 over 200 cities worldwide celebrate International Beer Day on the first Friday of August. On IBD we’re meant to: gather with friends and enjoy the deliciousness of beer. acknowledge the men and women who brew and serve beer. bring the world together by celebrating the beers of all nations and cultures. According to their journals, […]

Geography is the study of places and the relationships between people and their environments. The following dozen facts reveal how fascinating our world is as we discover unusual information about its geography. As the largest country in the world, Russia spans 11 time zones. At one end we can be sipping coffee at 7 a.m. while at […]

This list of fun facts does not identify the ten best restaurants in Vancouver. Or the ten most popular. Instead it gives a synopsis of ten restaurants, organized chronologically, that opened in Vancouver and went on to become successful elsewhere in Canada and some in the U.S. In 1928 White Spot founder Nat Bailey opened Canada’s […]

At our two homes we spend considerable time talking about water, in the form of precipitation — the surfeit of it in Vancouver and the lack in Scottsdale. Rightly so. Last November 2017 we lived through a record (tying 1953) number of rainy days in Vancouver: 27 of 30. The year before, October broke its record […]

Ever wonder when major events started in Canada and the U.S.? Following is a list, organized chronologically, giving the origin of several special events that continue to this day. 1762 The first – and still the largest in the world — recorded St. Patrick’s Day Parade was held not in Ireland but in New York City. […]

This Friday post features some random facts arranged chronologically about the progress of women, primarily Canadian and American, through the years. 1839 Mississippi was the first state to let a woman buy land in her own name. 1849 Elizabeth Blackwell became the first woman to achieve a medical degree in the United States, graduating from Geneva […]

Located in Arizona, Grand Canyon National Park is one of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World and the only wonder located within the United States. As I spend five months a year in Scottsdale AZ, I discovered a dozen other facts about this state. The Castilian and Burgundian flags of Spain, the Mexican flag, the Confederate […]

About Canadian inventors, we may know Dr. James Naismith introduced basketball in 1891 and John McLaughlin achieved the perfect formula for Canada Dry ginger ale in 1904. In 1921 a team at the University of Toronto, led by Dr. Frederick Banting, tested a new approach to preventing diabetes and regulating metabolism. Their work led to […]

In 1885 William Cornelius Van Horne, head of the Canadian Pacific Railway, chose the township of Granville — not Port Moody as expected — to be the Western terminus of the new transcontinental railway. At the time Granville, or Gastown as locals called it, consisted of about 600 people, mostly men, living in a rough […]