Best Cultural/Historical Feature • [node:field-award-placement] • 2014

Award Year: 
2014
Award Recipient: 
Loveable Leipzig by Nancy Wigston
Category Sponsor: 
Québec City Tourism

Published in TraveLife Magazine, July 2014

On a bright autumn afternoon, I’m nursing a warm cappuccino at a café in Old Leipzig’s pedestrian-friendly heart. Hard to believe just across the plaza, in St. Nicholas Church a movement began that would bring German communism to its knees.

Monday “peace prayer” groups had long been meeting in the pretty, while-columned church. Just a dozen-odd people at first-- no big deal-- but word spread, and crowds grew until, overflowing the church, they spilled out onto the streets. By October 9, 1989 they numbered 70...

Best Cultural/Historical Feature • [node:field-award-placement] • 2014

Award Year: 
2014
Award Recipient: 
Retail Zen by Natasha Mekhail
Category Sponsor: 
Québec City Tourism

Published in Mercedes-Benz Magazine, November 2013

Experience the refined simplicity of the Japanese aesthetic where you would least expect it: in the bustle of Tokyo’s shopping districts.

“The whole ideal of Teaism is a result of this Zen conception of greatness in the smallest incidents of life.” From The Book of Tea by Kakuzo Okakura

In a Japanese tea ceremony, the walk to the tearoom is the first step in the ritual. In this short stroll through a garden, forest or bamboo grove, guests...

Best Cultural/Historical Feature • [node:field-award-placement] • 2014

Award Year: 
2014
Award Recipient: 
Act of God by John Lee
Category Sponsor: 
Québec City Tourism

Published in NUVO Magazine, Spring 2014

It was the smaller, follow-up earthquake that did it for Christchurch and its eponymous primary landmark. The first – a 7.1-magnitude rattler that struck New Zealand’s third-largest city on September 4, 2010 – had injured locals, shaken buildings and raked downtown’s beloved cathedral with cracks and broken windows.

But the 1881-built Christ Church Cathedral – a hulking Gothic Revival icon that loomed over the city centre and dominated South Island postcards – remained standing, comforting Kiwis as a symbol of...

Sailing Turkey’s Aegean

Award Year: 
2012
Award Recipient: 
Remy Scalza
Category Sponsor: 
Canada's History...

Published in Bombardier Experience Magazine, December 2012

The most beautiful and pure blue in the world is here.

Cevat Sakir Kabaagacli, Turkish novelist Hassan is a man of few words. So when he begins shouting in Turkish early one morning and pointing to a spot off the stern, I spring to my feet and crowd the rail. The bonito are jumping: Dozens of rainbow bodies shimmer in the sun, then plunge back into the chalky blue water off Turkey’s Aegean coast. Hassan, a deckhand who moonlights as the ship’s cook, reaches for a fishing rod, while the captain veers...

Russian city of Ufa intrigues outside hockey arena

Award Year: 
2013
Award Recipient: 
Lucas Aykroyd
Category Sponsor: 
Travel Alberta

Published in Georgia Straight, February 27, 2013

To most Canadians, Ufa is best-known for Team Canada’s fourth-place finish at this year’s International Ice Hockey Federation World Junior Hockey Championship. I was there as a journalist to cover the tournament, and I discovered many quirky dimensions to this Russian city of more than one million inhabitants, both inside and outside the rinks.

The 439-year-old capital of the Republic of Bashkortostan lies 14 time zones away from Vancouver and almost 1,200 kilometres east of Moscow, in the Ural Mountains. It’s an oil...