Call of the Cougar

I am sitting at a table in the back of the Jet Fuel coffee shop, hunting a cougar. Not just any cougar, but the cougar, Claudia Opdenkelder: modeling agency owner, 2005 winner of Dean Blundell’s Toronto radio show, Cougar Hunt, and co-founder of the controversial and increasingly popular dating website, Cougarlife.com. Jet Fuel is better known as an uber-cool Cabbagetown hangout for bike enthusiasts, local Toronto writers like Michael Ondaatje and Noah Richler, and its pull-you-through-the-hedge-backward, double-shotted espresso than it is for its wildlife. The staff are friendly and expert; the locals doubly so. I’ve never met Opdenkelder in person, but I’ve seen her picture so I know what to expect--a killer 39-year-old blonde with the body of a 25-year-old and the mind of a woman who knows how to get what she wants. From my perch at the back of the café, I can see her walk in with a guy I can only describe as “holy sh*t”. Her partner, Paul, is 14 years her junior, but somehow, they manage to split the difference. Not surprisingly, he’s also a model.

Posted in Aging on 11/14/2009 - 0 Comments

The Ultimate Challenge

There’s something a bit incongruous about Major Meagan McGrath.

On April 22, Meagan McGrath took this self-portrait while holding a GPS locating her position at 89.59.995N and 141E--almost directly at the North Pole. It was the closest she could get after scrambling to take the photo on fast-moving ice flows.

It’s not the tough-as-guts exterior. After all, she grew up besting the boys around her hometown of Sudbury, and even now, you can see the tomboy still lurks: the quick, freckled Tom Sawyer grin, the confident stride and the “Yes, we can!” Bob the Builder attitude.

Nor is it that, from next month, the 32-year-old is taking a year’s leave from her “interesting but safe” desk job in Ottawa with the Canadian Forces to take on not just the South Pole as the first solo, unsupported Canadian to do so, but some of the world’s tallest, toughest mountains as well.

What is incongruous—delightfully so—is that behind the uniform, beyond the fact that she’s already climbed mountains over 8000m, that she’s the first Canadian woman to ascend both versions of the Seven Summits (the seven highest peaks on seven continents, plus one), that she’s skied to the North Pole and has run the grueling 243km, seven-day Marathon des Sables across the Sahara . . . is that giggle.

It infectiously punctuates her sentences, your sentences and the air around her. She laughs easily and often, as the saying goes, often accompanied by a curiously girlish tendency to uptalk everything into dangling questions.

So when she mentions the very real possibility of perishing next summer whilst attempting to scale K2 -- the world’s second highest but indisputably most dangerous peak-- you do a double take.

“Yeah, I’ll have to say, yes, I could die,” she says, before quickly pointing out that “I’d like to climb other mountains during that period, too”, namely Nepal’s Mount Lhotse, Broad Peak, Cho Oyu, and Tibet’s Shishapangma. If successful, she’ll be on her way to becoming the first Canadian to climb the world’s 14 highest mountains, all over 8000m.

Meagan on the summit of Mount Everest in May 2007; the first Canadian woman to ascent both versions of the Seven Summits.

She pauses for a millisecond, giggles again and says: “And then, on first of November, I’ll report back to duty.”

Just like that. Of course, it won’t be ‘just like that’. McGrath will have taken on several lifetimes’ worth of adventure and adrenaline just “to challenge herself,” says friend and ultra marathoner, Ray Zahab, who met McGrath in 2008. “It’s not like she has a list of five things to do before you die. It’s an overwhelming sense of what she wants to do. So she just does it.” Even if she had a Bucket list, it would look something like this: In mid-November, sponsored by Sudbury’s Science North, she’ll strap on skis at Antarctica’s Hercules Inlet and traverse 1100km alone for 45 days, except for some radio contact, to the South Pole’s Patriot Hills base camp. Although fully kitted out, with help from Zahab, “if I break my skis, I’m walking,” she laughs. “I’ll have to MacGyver everything. Mountain climbing is harder, but an arctic environment is brutal on gear.”

Back home in January, she’ll attempt to attract major sponsorship for her “Magic Mountain” adventures before she takes off in March 2010, leading an Everest base camp expedition, which still has spots open. A month later, she’ll tackle nearby Mount Lhotse and then Broad Peak. If all goes well—she already climbed Everest in 2007—she’ll take on the big one: K2.

Located in a no man’s land between China and Pakistan, it’s unhappily nicknamed “Savage Mountain”: for every four people who’ve reached the summit 8,611 treacherous metres up, one has died trying. In fact, just 299 have ever succeeded, compared to 2600 who’ve scaled Everest. For decades, there was a legend that it cursed the fair sex, because until 2004, every woman who summitted also perished there, or soon after.

“Gosh, K2 is dangerous for so many reasons,” McGrath says soberly of the expedition, on which she’ll be joined by her friend, Nick Rice, and well-known Australian mountaineer, Rex Pemberton. “There’s a lot of rock fall, ice fall, slipping, avalanche, sudden storms that blow you off the mountain. The stakes are so high that safety is paramount. It will be about being smart, safe, knowing when to push and when to call it quits.” Almost anticlimactically, and “if I survive,” she interjects, she then hopes to climb the other major eight-thousander peaks throughout September and October.

On Mount Vinson

That she’s even trying doesn’t surprise Zahab, founder of the Possible-2-Impossible Foundation. “She’s a very positive person. The challenges she’s set out in the next year are extraordinary; it’s fantastic that someone is willing to push the limits of what’s possible. But I think it’s in every one of us to do so. It takes a belief in oneself, an incredible amount of dedication and hard work.”

McGrath has all three, in spades. Born in Toronto but raised in Sudbury, as a child, she’d set out with her dog and “run up a ridge, and there’s be five more, so you’d just keep going”. In 1995, she joined the military, and graduated Royal Military College in 2000. “It’s a tough school, a tough place,” she says. “I really felt like if I could get through that, I could get through anything.”

Although her current aeronautics posting is engrossing “but not very adventurous,” she admits, it does give her the scope to “dream harder for more exciting adventures.”

It’s difficult to imagine what that might entail after this year, and she giggles at the thought. “Oh, I don’t know! I just think this will be one awesome experience,” she says, her voice rising in enthusiasm. “I guess one day I’ll get to the Pearly Gates and when I do, I want to be thinking, ‘Gosh! What a great adventure that was’!”

For more information or to sponsor Meagan, go to www.meaganmcgratheradventurer.com

Article appeared in the Ottawa Citizen, October, 2009

Posted in Adventure on 11/05/2009 - 0 Comments

Getting the healthy glow

Ah, summer. The hot sun. The blue, blue sky. The golden brown tan.

At least that’s the idea. Sun worshippers who shivered through winter reminding themselves that the best season of all would soon return could be forgiven for thinking Summer packed its bag this year, called up the Sun and both headed south.

Looking a bit pasty as a result? No problem—the multi-million dollar tanning bed industry has just the solution for you. At least it did until this week, when the France-based International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) and World Health Organization (WHO) announced findings that put tanning beds in specific, and UV radiation in general, on its list of top carcinogens, along with smoking and asbestos. In fact, the IARC’s meta-analysis of more than 20 epidemiological studies found that the risk of developing cutaneous melanoma increases by a mammoth 75 per cent when tanning beds are used before the age of 30.

In other words, step away from the sun bed and pack up your two-piece—it’s not bikini weather anyway. But in a sunless summer, how do you get your glow on?

Start by protecting your skin from the UV radiation that, even on a grey day, penetrates cloud cover and windscreens. “On cloudy and even cool days, the UV index may still be high,” says Dr Ian Landells, a St John’s, NFLD-based dermatologist and president elect of the Canadian Dermatology Association. “It’s really the time of the year that determines how high the UV index is.”

Posted in Aging on 08/21/2009 - 0 Comments

20-minute Meals for Today's Cooks

I have a few things in common with Julie Powell.

If you don’t already know, she’s the hilarious, salty-tongued and eponymous blogger/author of Julie & Julia, the best-selling book and now movie (Friday) about her struggle to find meaning in life over a year by cooking all 524 recipes mandated by the art and cuisine of famed chef Julia Child.

For one thing, there’s our shared name. Also, we both love to cook, swear way too much and have a fondness for fiery food. Plus, we both have dark hair. And that’s it. Whereas Powell had buckets of time to follow all of Child’s recipes in her 1961 classic Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and patient friends like Gwen who didn’t mind waiting until 11 p.m. for Gateau de Crepes, I do not.

Rather, I have two kids, a partner and a dog, none of whom are particularly fond of either Rognons de Veau a la Bordelaise or waiting for dinner much past 6 p.m.

But I admire her enormously, cherish her culinary antics and wish that I, too, was her friend and waiting past bedtime for the calf kidneys to be done in her kitchen in Long Island City, New York. And so in homage to what she achieved — and I’m not referring to the extra poundage she gained by using a mountain of Dutch butter, gallons of cream and eating her way through the trauma of Charlotte Malakoff more than once — I recently took on a task more suited to the impatient temperament of my household. Mark Bittman’s new book, Kitchen Express comes with the kind of subtitle guaranteed to leave Juliaphiles shuddering and working mothers rejoicing. Like Child’s famous tome, it promises to expose you to a year’s worth of cooking — but in a fraction of the time by offering 404 Inspired Seasonal Dishes You Can Make in 20 Minutes or Less

. I, for one, have only a nodding acquaintance with Bittman, popular author of the New York Times’

column, The Minimalist. He’s also written the ambitiously-titled How To Cook Everything and the best-selling Food Matters

, a book that urges us to consciously eat less processed food and meat and more of the good stuff, this time to save the planet. The idea runs throughout Kitchen Express, which focuses on things that are available locally throughout the four seasons — and preparing them quickly. “When I learned how to cook, everybody learned to cook from Julia in those days, and me too. I had two kids and a pointer, so I’d take the recipes and shortcut the hell out of them,” he tells me, chuckling. “I’m not saying that a mid-20th century cook book is no good anymore, but times have changed.”

In fact, Kitchen Express is not so much a cookbook as a set of Mum’s recipes scribbled on the back of a paper napkin and translated into something approaching sense.

For example, they don’t have massive ingredient lists, persnickety amounts and precise measurements. There are tablespoons of this and that, but Bittman leaves the rest to your discretion. When he says “cut some bacon into one-inch pieces” for the Date, Bacon and Bean Salad, he means just that. You might add too much or not enough. When I point this out, Bittman shrugs his shoulders and says he trusts his readers to be experienced enough behind a frying pan to work the details out for themselves.

“It does presume a certain level of comfort in the kitchen,” Bittman observes. “Maybe that puts me in the minority of people in North America, but that’s still not a small number. People are definitely not eating out as much, but are they cooking more or just assembling pre-made stuff in the kitchen? I can just say that I’ve had my finger on the pulse for 30 years and I’m more optimistic than I ever have been that people are interested in what they’re eating. I think it’s moving in the right direction.”

The Challenge: Three recipes in 20 minutes

Over breakfast, I scan through the book for dinner suggestions. I am on a tight schedule tonightódinner has to be done by 6:15 p.m. so I can get to a motorcycle riding course at 7 p.m. — so it seems a good time to take fast recipes out for a spin. Many of the ingredients I already have, since the spirit of the book is about getting creative with common things. Suits me. Plus, I don’t feel like going to the store to find celery root. I settle on West Indian Pork Kebabs, warm Carrot and Couscous Salad and Asparagus with Sesame. Sure, the flavours span an ocean and two continents, but I live in a cultural mosaic. I can handle it.

First step: Review the recipes to see what I’m up against, then set the oven timer to 20 minutes.

Nothing tricky here, except that arm wrestling the pork off its bone requires a full two minutes. Plus, I drop a piece and the dog gets it. I puree the ingredients, then add chili flakes, just because. I’ve already used two knives, a cutting board and a food processor, so I get Will, my partner’s visiting 14-year-old son, to do dishes. This, I tell him, does NOT count as part of the 20 minutes. I can feel him rolling his eyes. I frantically rummage for skewers for the meat, find two and realize my eight-year-old has used 120 of them in three months of making crafts.

Second step: Cheat. Actually, cheat two ways: Get Will to peel and shred four carrots for the couscous salad while I e-mail the man himself. “Is it a cheat to blanche asparagus in the microwave? I say not.” Bittman’s answer comes back just as the microwave dings: “That’s what I’d do, the microwave. At least some of the time.”

Excellent. In two minutes, they’re hot, bright green and still crisp. I throw in the rest of the ingredients. Eyeballing the sesame oil bottle, I can’t tell if there really is two tablespoons in it, so I upend it all. What the hell.

Third step: Draft more help. My partner waltzes in from work and is immediately pressed into barbecue service. “Can I take a leak first?” he asks. “Use the backyard,” I snap. “Just get the barbecue fired up.”

Gonzo journalism is a demanding mistress, but I make a mental note to apologize later, anyway. Meantime, the recipe suggests boiling water to cook couscous: I prefer frying my spices to release the volatile oils, so I dump the kernels, cumin and oil, and put Will in charge of stirring. Finally, I add the water, carrots, a handful of golden raisins and some pine nuts, and call it done.

The timer goes off and although we take a few more minutes to wrap up — we DID have to empty the dishwasher and find the skewers, remember — we’re done in 20 minutes. And it’s delicious. As expected, the carrot/cumin combination works well together, the asparagus is crisp in both flavour and texture and the pork is tender and tasty. Even Will, known in two provinces for believing that hotdogs really are made from meat and ketchup counts as a vegetable, ate everything on his plate.

I e-mail Bittman, full of praise. “Just made three recipes in 20 minutes. You are a genius, and I’m a superwoman.”

Julie & Julia? Pah. Make that Julie & Mark— in under 20 minutes.

© Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen

Posted in Food on 08/21/2009 - 0 Comments

Like it or not, your next car may be a hybrid

?Experts warn fuel prices could skyrocket again, the troubled environment is on everyone's mind, and the world economy -- well, the less said the better.

So what kind of car will you be driving in the years ahead as you meet the challenges of the times? If plans by all major automakers fall into place, chances are it will be a hybrid vehicle.

Despite a serious slump in auto sales -- ScotiaCapital's Global Auto Report last month says the big four manufacturers' retail volumes were down by 40% over last year -- carmakers are pouring serious long-term research and development dollars into hybrids.

Tesla's Model S electric car.
Photograph by: Handout, National Pos

Posted in Driving on 05/19/2009 - 0 Comments

Joni's Blue Period

Waiting to meet your heroine can be nerve-wracking -- especially if she happens to be the formidable, fascinating, endlessly innovative and chronically reclusive Joni Mitchell.

Yet there she was, in a restaurant on B.C.'s Sunshine Coast last year, floating gracefully across the room in loose linens and the kind of slouchy cap only she could pull off.

"She looked so hip and cool," recalls Michelle Mercer, who met Mitchell as part of a series of interviews for her new musical biography on the singer, Will You Take Me As I Am? "At 65, she's a dish."

Not that Mercer, who had already conducted "marathon conversations" with Mitchell by phone, expected anything less. What she didn't anticipate was the moment when the otherwise friendly singer suddenly turned on Mercer over a comment made about humour and therapy, berating her and calling her ignorant.

Intimidated, Mercer nevertheless held her ground, in what became a turning point in their relationship.

"It was a critical moment," she says.

Posted in Music on 05/19/2009 - 0 Comments

Easy riders: 'Cheap as chips' electric bikes

Michel Robillard can put a price on the future of green motorbikes—and it’s about 25 cents.

That’s what the owner of Montreal’s Ecolo Cycles pays to keep his black and silver electricity-assisted bicycle fully charged and ready to roll for at least 60 km of bike paths.

Electricity-assisted bicycle? You heard right. Along with electric scooters, scooter-bikes and motorcycles powered by everything from hydrogen cells to lithium-ion batteries, the future of two-wheeled transportation isn’t just cheap as chips—it’s as green as grass, he says.

“The future is electric or hybrid vehicles, no question about it,” says Robillard, who’s manufacturing company last year sold $1.5 million electric-assisted bicycles and scooters in Quebec alone, and anticipates doubling sales in Ontario this year, largely due to baby boomers and green commuters keen on leaving their cars at home. “People are not just thinking about how fast they get places, but how much it costs to get there.”

Convinced that soon-to-rise fuel prices will push sales of cheaper, greener alternatives, Robillard is also launching a new, fully loaded $3000 electricity and pedal-powered scooter that has a range of 100km and zips along urban streets at 32km/h. Next year, after testing by Transport Canada, he will introduce two sporty electric scooters that will reach speeds of 70km/h and 90km/h.

Posted in Driving on 05/19/2009 - 0 Comments

Canada lax on clean IT principles

Bruce Calder is the first to acknowledge there is something deeply contradictory about his daily life.

Calder, the man behind the successful Ottawa startup Intertek/Ageus Solutions, helps local and foreign IT companies exporting overseas to replace computer components made with dangerous heavy metals. The goal is to bring their products up to the standards of the tightly regulated European market.

But examine his own imported computer, cellphone or printer, and you'll find an A-to-Z of contaminants including antimony, cadmium, hexavalent chromium, lead and mercury.

"It's ironic," the 35-year-old Calder says. "There's nothing restricting equipment with those heavy metals from coming into Canada in finished products. So, as a business, I can make it better for everyone else overseas, but I can't do much about the contaminants here."

Posted in Environment on 04/24/2009 - 0 Comments

Eco-engaging the iGeneration

Jennifer Cowan cheerfully admits she's been hearing voices for years. And she couldn't do without them. Some talk to her, some talk to each other. Whatever they say, they eventually end up as material for the Toronto-based television writer's latest project. These days, the loudest voice belongs to Sabine, a funny and self-righteous 16-year-old with a budding environmental conscience and a smart mouth who first 'spoke' to Ms. Cowan as a blogger in 2003. "I was walking around Lost Lake [at Whistler] when I first heard Sabine's voice. At first she was blogging about things that were senseless. Then," Ms. Cowan recalls, "she decided someone should be talking about 'all the everything going on in the world.' " That 'everything' -- from recycling and pollution to rampant consumerism -- has now formed the basis not just of Ms. Cowan's first novel, earthgirl (Groundwood Books, $17.95) -- a teen love story/ green manifesto -- but also a blog featuring Sabine herself.

Posted in Environment on 04/24/2009 - 0 Comments

Love Takes a Hit on Facebook

By the time Liane Kiar went on a first date last year, she knew everything about her prospective new boyfriend, from his favourite TV shows and hobbies to where he vacations and details of his past love life. She didn’t ask him. She didn’t need to. Like millions of others worldwide, the 27-year-old Orleans woman stumbled across the information on Facebook, the social media platform some experts say is causing a visible shift in how much more publicly we conduct our private relationships. Splitting with your boyfriend? Just change your relationship status to say so, as South African socialite Chelsy Davy did recently when she privately dumped Prince Harry then publicly broadcast it on her Facebook profile. Looking for someone new? You can display that too, along with the kind of liaison you’re into. After all, it’s nothing you wouldn’t tell your closest personal friends. But what about your 500 Facebook pals?

Posted in Internet on 02/09/2009 - 0 Comments