Raise a Toast to the Best
Raise a toast…“Here’s to The Best!” We all have cravings. I’m sure more than a few Vancouver and Toronto hockey fans were craving one more win. Some cravings, however, are a bit easier to indulge. Best Cravings is one of the largest sections in our Best Restaurants Readers’ Choice Awards. I know you can almost taste them, the french fries from Jeffer’s... Read More
Brain Insight Hits all the Right Notes
A monstrous amount of scientific evidence is showing that the human brain is most active when listening to or playing music. So it seems fitting that this column appears in the music issue of Okanagan Life because from my musical perspective, Fiery Cushman has written one of the best articles I have ever read. Titled Confabulation, it appears in the book This Will Make... Read More
25 Years of Memories
Do you remember who was on the cover of the first issue of Okanagan Life? If you don’t have that memory, you might be surprised to know that your brain most likely does. In this instance, we can find out who was on the cover. In fact, 25 years of Okanagan Life memories can be tested, coached and adjudicated because we have kept copies of each issue. You could read... Read More
Social Media Showdown
I just read yet another blog predicting the demise of magazines. I’m a little confused because, in reality, the T-shirt I’m wearing has more views than his website. I leave the blogger-dude, wondering how I ever found him, to summon up the Obi-Wan Kenobi of the Internet—Google herself. I gasp out loud at the news that there are 627 million results for “the death... Read More
Hockey Fans – Les Misérables
Most hockey fans believe that the NHL lockout has been a necessary epic struggle, not unlike the game itself and not dissimilar from the French historical novel by Victor Hugo, Les Misérables. Pitting mere mortal millionaire hockey players against the aristocratic billionaire owners should make for a blockbuster musical. Les misérables can be translated from the French... Read More
Democracy Reigns Supreme for BOTO
Twice each year for 18 years, readers of Okanagan Life have come together in an exercise celebrating democracy, to vote for their favourite pastimes, businesses and people. It appears the Best of the Okanagan (BOTO) brand is alive and well in the Okanagan—you only have to walk along any Okanagan or Shuswap main street to see the award certificates in the windows and... Read More
Randomness of Fire: Peachland Heros
“Have you ever been forced to leave your home because of a threatening fire?” asked my brother Danny in a hurried call last January. Danny lives south of Calgary on what British Columbians would call the bald prairie. Before I could visualize anything remotely combustible there in the middle of winter, he blurted, “It was a grass fire that started when a hydro... Read More
Case of the Missing Cake
It was 1967. A culprit had made off with a piece of cake and Mom and Dad were on the case. Deliciously, I anticipated and welcomed the trial as we assembled in the kitchen because innocence was mine. My eight-year-old eyes sneered at my seven older brothers and sisters, intent on intuiting who the thief might be. Glances around the room should provoke the offender into... Read More
Wine, Music, Cowboys…
Did you know that music can influence your wine purchases? In a new study, researchers played German music in a store for a day and 73 per cent of the wine sold that day was German. The next day when French music was played, French wines made up 77 per cent of sales; a clear and sobering demonstration of how easy it is to subliminally influence us all. So it got me thinking,... Read More
Advertising
Forget everything you thought you knew about advertising … “The most effective advertisements are the ones consumers don’t even realize they have seen.” He must be mad! Yet Dr. Mark Changizi seems sane enough. Does his statement sound crazy to you? Or is it possible that you have been influenced without your knowledge or consent? If you read Changizi’s... Read More
