It’s 6 ‘o clock on a smoldering afternoon in Victoria and my wife and I are hiking down the main drag, one blistering cobblestone at a time. We’re desperate to get back to our hotel room out of this ocean of people and car exhaust. Sure, we could hang out downtown but our dinner reservation isn’t for another couple hours and I’ll be damned if I’m going to sweat in this hipster inferno any longer, especially with all these MEC bags full of biking gear and cookbooks weighing me down.
I’m ready to start shoving tourists and crusty punks out of my way when I see the Rialto Hotel off in the distance; its grand double doors wide open, inviting me to drop everything and sit at the long marble bar where an angel with wings of cascading vintage glassware is pouring two fingers of Victoria Gin into an icy shaker with a wry grin.
I grab my wife’s hands and drag her inside, bags discarded along the way. We collapse into the tall chairs lining the bar and breathe in the stillness, seemingly miles away from the heat and crowd. The marble is cool to the touch and I can smell mint and lavender bitters on the air… We’ve arrived at Veneto, Victoria’s premier craft cocktail oasis… Thank the Gods! Read More
The zoning meetings haven’t even finished and the buzz has begun: It looks like Campbell River is getting its very own craft brewery. According to the 
When one of BC’s most respected shellfish farming collectives exists only a fifteen minute ferry ride away, it’s no surprise that here in CR we get a lot of opportunities to eat pristine, local seafood. Sometimes it’s at a well-connected cafe-bistro or a shellfish festival or maybe you just know a guy who knows a guy… And that guy is Dave Ritchie. 
A month ago – Back when