Category Archive for ‘Ontario’ at Canada Blog Friends

Archive for the 'Ontario' Category

Lauren O’Nizzle in London Ontario

in Blogging, Canadian pop culture, Culture Blogger, Ontario, Personal Blog and niche blogs

03/30

Lauren O’Neil, aka Lauren O’Nizzle is a 24 year old journalism student at the University of Western Ontario. She’s working on her master’s degree, but she’s already the most sophisticated, web tech-savvy pop culture princess we’ve ever encountered. This girl makes media, and in less than two years she has become an outstanding example of a new type of entertainer, a socially brilliant one girl band on a noble quest to “spew random hilarity” all over the internet.

LaurenOutLoud is the website that hosts her entire menu which includes Lauren O’Neil web journalism portfolio. In addition to this formal magazine like portal, Lauren O’Nizzle’s content is distributed across numerous social mediums including, her LaurenOutLoud blog which is complimented by her twitter page @LaurenONizzle her LaurenONeal Delicious bookmarks account, her Nizzle .Posterous email blog platform, and of course her Lauren ONizzle on YouTube account.

This isn’t your typical marketing student blog, or any form of high brow intellectual content, although her posts are smarter than you might expect from a 24yr old person; the largest search terms in her blog’s tag cloud are ‘funny, muchmusic, TV, youtube’ in that order, and these are followed by ‘jschool, internship, cute’ and ‘dating’.

lauren ONizzle looks shy sad quiet fragile and its an illusion

Lauren O’Nizzle is very creative, and a little nerdy in how she stretches ideas and goes the distance for her followers. She’s been know to scan and post original drawings, and apply advanced photo shop skills to borrowed images. Also impressive is her ability to infuse comedy into her video interviews.

The name O’Nizzle came about organically as a nickname her friends applied several years ago. When it came time to create her Facebook account etc, she decided to go with that handle to protect her future employers from seeing any scandalous photos that may or may not appear in that space. Now, most friends don’t even call her Lauren anymore, to them she is simply “Nizzle.”

When an digital artist named Cameron Stewart cartooned her, she remarked on how the picture was ‘the sickest thing she’s ever seen’, and she used it on her menu page layout. That menu is so compelling. This young journalism student already embodies the future of electronic news media and entertainment. She is a great example of how people will soon make media for other people.

lauren ONizzle in the bathrrom with a toothbrush and phone camera Born in Chatham Ontario, Lauren moved to Windsor for her undergraduate degree, and now she lives in London. As a journalism student, her blog is a place where she doesn’t have to worry about journalistic integrity and reporting on hard news. On her blog, she can have the freedom to take sides and write about what ever she desires even if it’s about creepy old naked ladies.

In a way, Lauren began blogging when she was only twelve years old, after she discovered Angelfire. In that strange space she created a diary web page called “Spaz Central.” She filled this page with animated gifs and pictures of her awkward, frizzy-haired adolescent girls posing like the young models in Seventeen magazine (pictures that had been taken with a disposable camera and scanned at the library, of course).

As a self-proclaimed soul mate of Tina Fey, Conan O’Brien and Lisa Simpson, Lauren colours her stories funny and smart.

Lauren loves to multitask and is always on the go; she’s a little obsessed with always creating content. When she isn’t being viral, she likes watching comedy TV shows, doing yoga, reading fashion magazines, dancing and eating sugar cereals. She’s an active blog reader and prolific commenter. And Lauren is not at all shy about having her picture taken, and her face can be seen mugging all over her media empire. Her openness gives followers a big window into the life of a young blond journalism school student in Canada.

She also defines herself as being the opposite of Sarah Palin, Jay Leno and Bart Simpson.

Recently, Lauren was named one of the 10 finalists in the in AXE Canada’s Ridiculously, Ridiculously Good Summer Gig Competition. Voting for the Axe Summer Gig ends on March 31st, which ironically is the very day in which her profile here on Canada Blog Friends was posted.

“Success for me is making people laugh. Every time I get an email from somebody telling me that something I’ve posted has made their day or cheered them up, I’ve succeeded. I don’t do this for the money or the perks or the mad groupie hoes. I do it for the lulz, plain and simple.”

lauren Onizzle cartoon by her friend, i cant remember his name

“I saw an episode of Ghost Writer when I was 9, where ghostwriter goes into a computer modem and fights a hacker. I thought that this was the coolest thing ever so I begged my parents for a modem until they finally got me one.”

Lauren’s considers her blog to have no true central theme. Her posts run the gamut. Funny things, weird things, pop culture, web culture, nerdities, schadenfreude and all things karma related and esp things that she observes while shopping. Half the time, she says it’s just brain vomit. Whatever is on the top of her mind at any given time is effortless transmutated into social capital. Lauren’s followers tend to be people who share her wacky sense of humour and have similar interests to her.

For Lauren (Nizzle) O’Neil, blogging is how she brings her humour, lifestyle, hobbies and career aspirations to one place so she can properly share them with the rest of the world.

Weighty Matters in Ottawa

in Activism, Ontario, Scholar, food blog and niche blogs

03/10

2

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Dr. Yoni Freedhoff is a 38-year-old married father of three that loves to read books, watch TV and BBQ meals at home. Yoni is passionate about a lot of things in life, most notably martial arts, hiking and single malt scotch. He also really enjoys being a medical doctor with a family practice in southwest Ottawa, and he’s addicted to blogging.

Dr. Freedhoff started blogging in December 2005 to give his patients more exposure to medical information about weight loss, proper dieting, and exercise training. Since that time, his web journal has matured into a fountain of first rate nutritional advocacy, and a powerful truth beacon; today Weighty Matters shines a bright light on the soft underbelly of Big Food.

Weighty Matters is an award winning health and science blog that currently ranks among the world’s top health blogs. The domain has been profiled in newspapers, and on television shows across the country, and Yoni Freedhoff even spoke to The House Standing Committee on Health in Parliament in December 2006.

Yoni jogs in the Try a Tri Challenge in Ottawa Yoni is a health nut that loves being outside and trekking in nature. He once hiked from Switzerland to Liechtenstein across the Alps without taking a single bus or car along the way. So it should come as no surprise that he now has a triathlon named after him in Ottawa; the Dr. Freedhoff Try a Tri Challenge (100m swim - 11.4km cycle – 2km run) event is for anyone who wants to do a short triathlon, and is well suited for beginners and young participants.

Yoni is a trust agent debunking the food industry and his growing popularity is certainly well reflected in the views, comments, retweets and trackbacks that Weighty Matters accrues with every post. His expert information is rare and precious, and he really is perhaps one of the most important bloggers of our time because his message is so unique.

Sweetners in Weighty Matters Stated formally on the bottom of his sidebar, his blog’s mandate is ‘to provide readers with critical appraisals of nutrition and weight related claims, products and policies so as to allow readers to make more informed decisions in those areas.’

The good doctor uses his growing authority to highlight backward government policies that cater more to well funded food industry lobbyists than on budget health industry advocates. Yoni likes to tell the truth around nutrition and weight management and isn’t scared of torching the merchandisers, marketing executives and government ministers that mislead Canadians so they can sell more breakfast cereal, or put more artificial sweeteners in their ‘health snacks’.

“It’s definitely reader-beware out there. Mom bloggers getting trips paid for by the products they promote, health bloggers with no actual background or training, illness bloggers who rely on their own personal experiences to extrapolate to the disease as a whole. It’s tough finding reputable sources.”

Weighty Matters reads like a gossip magazine of food industry cover-ups, lies and licentious behavior. Every post is a potential scandal that should get somebody fired. Right now March 2010 a number of recent posts prosecute the claims of Saralee, Frito Lay, and catch Del Monte hiding sugar behind the word fruit concentrate in so-called fruit snacks aimed at children that have more sugar than Twizzlers and worse still, have earned the Heart and Stroke Foundation’s seal of approval in the form of their Health Check.

CBC Kids morning sponsored by Kelloggs - screengrab image copied from weightymatters.ca

Yoni remarks on how Kelloggs appears a featured sponsor on the CBC Kid’s website and includes CBC staff official reaction to his blog post and their denials that ‘Eggo’ was introduced into a recent script as surreptitious product placement for Kelloggs sponsor. Good catch - who else do we have in Canada that is watching this stuff, and keeping an eye on these guys?

While Yoni goes after a great many people and policies, the two that he has hit the hardest are likely the Heart and Stroke Foundation’s Health Check which he calls a “misinformation program”, and Canada’s Food Guide to Healthy Eating which he feels is better described as, “Canada’s Food Guide to Unhealthy Eating”.

10 potentially fatal, yet still approved by Health Canada “natural” weight loss products

Registered dietician on how Food Guide “servings” are stupid

Why Health Check’s serving sizes are inexcusable

Breaking News: Official Health Check endorsement of Pizza Hut

Overweight Canadian kids not eating enough according to Canada’s Food Guide

There is very little doubt that weight and diet related illness together are now the number one preventable cause of death in Canada.

Dr. Yoni Freedhoff is the founder of Ottawa’s Bariatric Medical Institute, which is a multi-disciplinary, ethical, evidence-based nutrition and weight management centre. He writes in his blog profile ‘Nowadays I’m more likely to stop drugs than start them, and love going to work in the morning.’ Yoni is referring to how as a medical doctor he once prescribed pills, but now seeks other more natural solutions. I like how he combines the two ideas in his biography, taking drugs to go to work. That’s because such a large percentage of people do take drugs to go to work these days, and if you consider caffeine or nicotine to be drugs then the percentage is very high indeed.

“The studies on medical information and the web to date have been frightening with the vast majority of sites providing false and sometimes even harmful information. It’s tough too when you see a patient who’s educated themselves from some of the more questionable sites (which in turn are often quite compellingly written) and they don’t want to hear your opinion. Certainly it provides another degree of difficulty in effectively counselling patients.

All in all I’m living a far more interesting, exciting and richer life than I had ever expected, and it’s not a stretch to say that much of that reward has come as a consequence of my tiny, little blog.” Dr Yoni Freedhoff, March 5th 2010

Keri the Canadian Explorer

in Blogging, Culture Blogger, Ontario, Photography and Toronto

01/16

6

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KeriCDN is a talkative girl with lots of creative energy; exploring Canada is her raison d’etre. At Queen’s University in Kingston Ontario, Keri studied business, history and linguistics, but her real life education started in February 2008, when she started blogging.

Keri The Canadian Explorer has culturally significant adventures everyday, and she shares her discoveries with a growing tribe of domestic and international followers. It’s interesting that she profiles all types of Canadians, not just the ‘great ones’. She reports the facts and lets her audience decide if her subjects and settings are worthy of praise. For example, she’s quite proud of a recent video exploring the Canadian Navy.

Keri’s site contains no advertising. She has refused to do sponsored posts and thinks Google AdSense looks tacky; she doesn’t want to appear avaricious for three cents a day. The business training inside of her is however looking for benign sponsors; she would like to play a part in something larger, something sponsored by a proud and worthwhile Canadian enterprise.

To that end, she threw a blog party at the Reservoir Lounge last November. It was a big success, and helped put her at the center of a local community of like minded individuals. Since then she has banded together with some other famous web friends to create The Toronto Blog Girls which is a loose association of popular Toronto fashionistas and event bloggers that reside in Canada’s largest city. All of these girls are attractive, intelligent and artistic, and together they’re a powerful press squad.

Check out Ryan Couldrey’s photo of Keri using automatic weapons.

Keri’s biggest fault might be that she’s too darn nice. In the video she did with Five Hockey Legends, she really shouldn’t have let security interrupt her filming, and it’s so typical of Canadians to apologize and be so concerned with procedures instead of just rolling tape and saying sorry later. To that point it would have been great if she’d turned and tried to leave with Red Kelly’s NHL Stanley Cup ring… but she’s too nice.

Keri often profiles influential speakers and attends a lot of events on inspirational subjects. In most episodes the girl charms her way backstage or somehow corners presenters after appearances. Her well conceived queries combined with her compelling interview style more than compensate for the bad lighting and sound quality in these commando videos. See Gary Vaynerchuk Loves Canada!

KeriCDN Quests for the 2010 Olympic Games

Keri’s short term dream is to attend and chronicle the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. As a true Canadian explorer and premium blogger, she believes it’s her manifest destiny to be at this international event, sharing the experience with the rest of the nation. This single cause has coloured her blog for months. She entered contests, wrote letters and collectively schemed right along with her readers to get herself over to the other side of the continent in February. And then finally, it worked.

Keri had her hands on the torch in January 2010. She photographed it, wrote about it, and was questioned about it on national television. Before that, Keri charmed contest mavens with her Samsung mobile explorer video entry and issued repeated requests for votes. Her quest for Vancouver goes all the way back to September 2009 when she reviewed the Olympic apparel at The Bay, and fantasized about her wish list of events to cover. Later that month while bike riding with her friend Jody, the Olympics Games are back on her brain. She interrupts her explanation of the difference between an Inukshuk and Inunnguaq and gets completely sidetracked by a point about the Nunavut flag being associated with next year’s Olympics. Well all the obsessing finally paid off…

Keri has been contracted by Canoe.ca and Sun Media to cover the Winter Games as official press.

In addition to her blog, you can subscribe to KeriCDN videos on YouTube and follow her on Twitter @KeriCDN.

Jennifer Jilks writes My Muskoka

in Activism, Blogging, Muskoka, Ontario, Photography and Tourism

12/07

1

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banner for My Muskoka Jennifer Jilks is an Ottawa school teacher now living in beautiful Bala, Ontario. She’s over 50 and that’s a huge niche right there. She’s also a travel expert, wildlife photographer, hiker, and blogger who posts twice a week about a special little part of Canada called Muskoka.

Jennifer Jilks of My Muskoka blog My Muskoka blog is an inside look at life in five Northern Ontario towns including Bala, Bracebridge, Gravenhurst , Huntsville, and Port Carling. She also chronicles the changing seasons as reflected in the shorelines of the Muskoka lakes.

Jennifer Jilks is fifty two years old. Before living in Bala she taught school for twenty five years in Ottawa while raising three kids - now her children are adults, and they are all remarkably different. They are all professionals. Jennifer’s daughter is a hydrogeologist and married to green party candidate Jean Luc Cooke. Her second child is a gifted actor, and the youngest boy is a government statistician.

Living and Dying with Dignity

About Jennifer Jilks

You can learn a lot about Mrs Jilks by reading the sidebar of her blog. Halfway down the right hand column is a picture and link to her book

Living and Dying with Dignity, a daughter/caregiver’s point of view. She writes here that ‘My mother’s cancer, dad’s brain tumour and dementia changed my life. The book includes information, research, as well as coping strategies from real life experiences.’ And now suddenly we understand what drove her to start this blogspot. It wasn’t fame, or a marketing assignment, or a creative outlet for her photography, but an expression of true self. This woman hopes to share her healing with readers. Jennifer is a Muskoka Hospice worker and the experience of helping people living and dying with dignity rings like a bell and resonate through her life’s work. Indeed her continued care giving and volunteer work at the hospice gives her existence meaning and adds value to her perspective on life in Muskoka.

Jennifer Jilks Photography

In addition to chronicling the adventures of her three cats, Jenn’s blog images waterfowl, wildflowers and rodents in high quality photographs. She submits her pictures to a camera critters blog and to a popular Ontario photo contest website and it was through Lenzr that she first came to my attention. In late November 2009 Jenn_Jilks compiled a beautiful array of breathtaking photos, with multiple entries in all three web challenges.

Jennifer Jilks and Social Justice

Today Mrs Jilks understands the explosive power of blogging. She learned the hard way after posting a series of well researched articles detailing the political, economic and social implications of the Bala Falls hydro electric project.

Muskoka Lakes She generated sixteen comments with a particularly contentious post on the bala hydro electric project in the fall of 2008 where she was accused of being a puppet for Dalton McGuinty.

Fortunately other bloggers came to her rescue. Jenn’s site is at the center of a local blog ring that doesn’t have a badge yet, but the members appear in an earlier post. Muskoka Bloggers is a list she updates frequently and links to in her sidebar.

Last summer, Jennifer Jilks did her civic duty and published a piece on the 2009 drowning in Bala explaining the water currents better than news media. Jenn lives in the Township of Muskoka Lakes and in one posts she took it upon herself to debunk the The Myths of Muskoka.

My Muskoka blog is already publishing original stories about the 2010 G8 Summit’s impact to ‘locals’ in Hunstville and surrounding towns.

My Muskoka is a very credible citizen journalist, a passionate photographer, and a writer with a soul living inside Ontario’s premier cottage country travel destination.

Rebellious Arab Girl in London, Ontario

in Activism, Blogging, Ontario, Personal Blog and niche blogs

10/26

7

comments

Mona is the living manifestation of her rebellious blog; she’s a strong female personality in the Arab world, and that’s rare. Although core values are slowly changing, Middle Eastern culture still seems to discourage female participation; Mona’s blog is rebellious, because it exists.

Rebellious Arab Girl is emotional and writes her caustic journal to promote change. It’s a complaints blog from a girl who began blogging because she had built up a lot of anger toward “certain issues with the mentality of certain people within my culture. My message was to tell the world that I am just an ordinary girl who happened to come from a very conservative culture.”

Mona will be 29 years old in December. She started blogging on her 25th birthday because that’s when she became a rebel and really felt alienated from familial and cultural expectations. Apparently being a 25year old unmarried Arab girl is not an easy existence, and the blog was an outlet for Mona’s feelings. This girl is single and complicated, and these realities give her blog colour and purpose. She’s not using her domain to look for love, or at least not overtly, but rather to complain about not finding love, and to comment on the structure, traditions and expectations of Muslim Canadians. She writes, “I didn’t want to fall into the following category: if you are 25 and not married, then you have to or else you are screwed for life! I rather find myself first and know what I want from life, then feel committed to someone who is not willing to accept my ideologies and beliefs. Hence, my blog is a very big part of me, and many men don’t accept it. So, it is either the blog or them, and obviously I chose the former!”

Mona's amazing digital art Computer Science grad from the University of Western Ontario, Mona now works as a computer programmer in London. “I love my profession since I create web applications that so many professionals out there can make use of. No more using a pen and paper, and everything is just a click away and processed in the background. I love it. I make life simple for so many people with my skills.” Earlier in 2009 Mona was unemployed, and she blogged about job hunting and complained about the process. In that time however she created some terrific digital art. Now that she has a job, I’m sure readers hope she finds time to continue creating her masterpieces.

Mona likes London’s diversity, “It is a very family oriented city with a very diverse population. Moreover, I believe the diversity is the main reason why London is a very unique city.”

Rebellious Arab Girl likes to speak out about issues within her culture that won’t work if you “live in this side of the world”. She really believes people should keep their core values but try to change the way they perceive life and interact with the rest of the society around them. When she heard about Barack Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize for his campaign platform she created and published one of her own:

Vote for the Rebellious Arab Girl today!

1. She promises you peace in the middle east!
2. She promises you democracy in each Arab country with 4 – 6 year election time frames with citizens voting new leaderships!
3. She promises you a separation between religion and the state!
4. She promises you no more visa requirements for Arabs to visit other Arab countries!
5. She promises you Palestine to return to its rightful owners!
6. She promises you government funding for each Arab University to allow and contribute their scientific research to the world!
7. She promises you equality in the work force between the sexes!

Also along these lines, in June 2009 Mona wrote I Think its Time for Change about which she confides, “This is one of my favorite posts actually, because I created promotional fun banners because I love to create digital art. Also, I wrote this post because I always wondered when will there ever be a female leader of the Arab World?”

On Blogging & Writing
“I became a better writer over time since I exercise it almost daily though my blog. Also, last year, I decided for fun to take a couple of advanced writing courses at the University to enhance my writing skills for online publications. I wanted my writing to be convincing since I do enjoy it more than a hobby.”

Surprises?
“My biggest surprise is the size of the audience I have been receiving. It is quite extraordinary to be just another girl with hardly anyone to listen to in real life, to having such numerous amounts of readers who love you for being you, and are willing to take time out of their day to read what you have to say and comment. It is a great indescribable feeling having a blog.”

Two more of Mona’s favourite posts include, The Positives Outweigh the Negatives, of which she says “I really like this post because I wanted to tell the world that Arabs are great positive people, because they have great family values that distinguish them from other cultures.” And another on the subject of Arabs Marrying Non-Arabs, about which she writes, “I wrote this post because I receive several emails a day from people asking me if it is right or wrong for Arabs to marry non-Arabs. So I tried to explain my point of view, and I stirred a very long debate regarding this issue.”

Rebellious Arab Girl in her own words,“I don’t believe my site is targeted only to the Muslim community or even to the Arab community. My site is targeted to everyone who is willing to read the life of just another girl who happens to be an Arab and Muslim. I wanted people to realize that I am no different than them.”

Contest Queen in Oshawa Ontario

in Mom Social, Ontario, Toronto and niche blogs

08/27

0

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Carolyn Wilman is the Contest Queen, a successful professional contest consultant with over twenty years experience participating in, and promoting Canadian contests. She’s probably the most web savvy mom you’ll ever meet. Back in 2004 she became a full time stay-at-home ebusiness entrepreneur and was soon recognized at the forefront of the coupon & contest website niche. She’s now perhaps the most findable contest guru in Canada.

Carolyn writes From the Contest Queen You Can’t Win If You Don’t Enter - all things sweepstaking, contesting, lucky and fun which is pastiche of tips and tactics, news and events reporting, reviews and recommendations. This summer (09) Contest Queen wrote about Capital C web challenges, local festivals, online events and promotions. She writes about really interesting things like how to use Twitter to help win contests, and why Canadian companies host contests? and she gives hard-to-find statistics and links to other experts. Carolyn even attempts very subjective topics like how to attract good luck.

This woman is really likeable, and unusually knowledgable about many different things. She once told me to watch the movie The Prize Winner of Defiance Ohio so that I would better understand ‘contesters’ and what that term used to mean in the Golden Age of contests (when skill was required in every entry) in North America.

Forget the nostalgia, the Contest Queen is quick to talk to anyone about internet marketing. When I called her on the telephone using the phone number on her website, she answered in person. And when I identified myself as the author of Canada Blog Friends she cried out with positive cheer, and told me that she has been putting out positive messages into the ethersphere, which includes the blogosphere and that I was destined to call, or at least email, to help her achieve her quest. So all this is predestined.

Winning contests changes people

Carolyn Wilman has been both a contest producer and participant, many times. So she knows the rules inside and out and can help her clients visualize their creative promotions from their customer’s perspective. She can answer the tough questions like, ‘Do these rules make sense? What pitfalls are we missing? What’s our exposure to liability?’ and of course the simple questions too like ‘Why not Quebec?’ and ‘What happens if someone under age 13 wins the prize?’, and ‘Do we really need a skill testing question?’ Wilman’s sage advice helps corporations avoid the types of mistakes that currently plague contests in Canada. Her website contains links to Contest Auditing, Contest Pre-testing and Contest Education and Strategies services allowing companies to ensure a contest is designed to meet their objectives, and the promotion is operating properly, within government regulations, before public release.

In addition to her consulting skills, I must add the Contest Queen is also a gifted marketer. She has developed some powerful social media portals and can now spread messages to thousands of other potential contestants each week via her Contest Queen Blog, and also @ContestQueen on Twitter, her Facebook group and on her bi-monthly newsletter, The Winning EDGE. Indeed her compelling stories had me clicking her links. Great opening hooks like “Would you like a pocket full of mad money? Would you like to cruise around town in a brand new set of wheels? Would you like to bask in the tropical sun?” make me eager to know more of her wisdom. Because of this blogger we all have more insight into the business landscape of Canadian contests and sweepstakes.

Holy Mackerel in Ottawa

in Mom Social, Ontario and Personal Blog

05/13

11

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Mary Moore is a mom blogger in Ottawa who tells honest stories and gets points for being so candid. The woman just started out on the web last year, but her skill is obvious, and so is her dedication. Her latest passion is photography, and she shoots crisp digital images with her Canon EOS Rebel Xsi. Unlike other Ottawa citizens, Mary is not political; “It’s a waste of time”, she writes, “I’d rather spend my days smelling the fresh air and watching my kids enjoy life”

Holy Mackerel is a random gathering of anecdotes and daily inspirations. It’s a blog about homemaking from a loving housewife who calls her husband ‘Mr. Handsome’. She details her life with her two kids, their dog Gryphon, her quilting, old movies and television shows, Octamom, and sadly, cancer treatments.

When she wrote about a tornado that touched down in Ottawa last month, I bookmarked her blog because it was pure citizen journalism. A little while later, I went back and read more. When I found the post she wrote about the last month of her Dad’s life, she made me cry. The piece is filled with precious little details and perfectly painted with her own sadness. It’s how a blog should be, filled with reliable data and insights and observations mixed with the author’s opinions and emotions. I’ve never met Mary, but after reading her blog I feel like I’ve known her all my life.

What’s not so perfect is her blogspot template choice (personally, I’ve never liked white text on black), and there are so many sidebar widgets that some pages don’t load properly because of javascript conflicts. But let’s remember that Mary is still finding the balance between her content and all the other facets of social media available to Mom bloggers. There are lots of attractions out there and lots of distractions too.

Mary Moore was born and raised in Ottawa and got her start in journalism in high school working on the school newspapers. She was first employed as a journalist in Wetaskiwin Alberta, on a small weekly newspaper where she worked for two years as a reporter covering crime and local politics. Back in Ontario she landed a spot at the daily paper in Cornwall as a crime reporter and there covered a few national murder stories and found it to be “very exciting stuff”. That’s where Mary met Mr Handsome and right around the same time she landed her dream job as the new managing editor for Feliciter, the national magazine of the Canadian Library Association, where she worked for twelve years.

Today, Mary is a real estate agent in Ottawa. She’s thinking about setting up a photography business and has just begun to realize her blog’s potential as a marketing tool for that ambition. “My best friend introduced the whole world of blogging to me, and told me I needed to do this. So, after some humming and hawing, I just went for it, and now it’s a big part of my life, to my family’s consternation. As my husband puts it, there’s an umbilical cord connecting me to my laptop.”

Mary Moore admits that she’s “obsessed with getting old” and her posts sometimes evidence some contempt for the young. But for the most part her work is positive, especially when she shares invasive medical procedures with her readers to mitigate the psychological affects of these treatments in her own brain. Mary is passionate about volunteering, especially for kids with cancer and seniors.

Unlike so many other Moms who set out to chronicle one or another facets of their existence, Mary didn’t have a goal when she began blogging; “I found that just being able to write again, and actually have someone (anyone!) read it was an amazing feeling. I would love to be a successful, well-known blogger/writer, and maybe someday I will be, but right now, just writing and using my creative side is enough for me.”

Urban Native Girl Stuff in Toronto

in Fashion Blogger, Ontario, Personal Blog and Toronto

01/27

5

comments

Lisa Charleyboy is a very talented twenty something First Nations girl of the Tsilhqot’in (Dene) Raven Clan. Born and raised in the mountain wilderness of Williams Lake British Columbia, Lisa now lives in Toronto Ontario where she’s working hard to complete her Bachelor of Honours Degree in Professional Writing at York University.

Urban Native Girl Stuff echoes the culture shock of her paradox. Slightly more polished than an online diary, Lisa’s personal blog details her existence in downtown Toronto. She writes about clothes, new beauty products, and native cultural events like the Toronto Pow Wows.

Lisa writes about issues and topics that might appeal to girls of any race, but especially Canadian aboriginal teenagers and young adults. Urban Native Girl Stuff is a pastiche of the usual ‘single female topics’ including fashion, beauty, and nightclubs, but this urban girl is different because of her unique origins. Her best posts explore relationship dynamics and dating; here’s where we most often glimpse the girl from Williams Lake BC.

Clever readers might deduce that Lisa Charleyboy attended Ryerson University in Toronto for Fashion Communication, as well as John Casablancas Institute of Applied Arts in Vancouver for Fashion Arts. She reports her new career strategy is to work as a journalist documenting Native Canadian fashion, arts and entertainment, while sculpting her gifts as an actress in film and television. It’s a good plan. She’s a great writer and will certainly be recognized as such in time, and her beauty and ’stage presence’ suggest we’ll be seeing more of her on TV in the future.

As a professional writer, Lisa Charleyboy is off to a great start. Before school she was a contributing fashion & beauty columnist at Williams Lake Tribune (she pitched the editor and was paid). In her first year at York University she was the Contributing Arts Editor at Spirit Magazine and has subsequently written & sold articles to Inside Stunts Magazine, Spirit Magazine, and Redskins Magazine. In second year she was the Fashion & Lifestyle Editor at Excalibur Newspaper. During her first and second years she assisted with creating IndigeNEWS Newsletter for the Aboriginal Services Office at York University.

As an actress Lisa Charleyboy co-starred in the short film ‘Rezolution’ in the 2008 ImagineNATIVE Film Festival. She also has a role in the soon to be released ‘You Are Here’, and she tells readers that she’s excited about filming an new indie feature ‘The Rainbow Farm’ in Toronto this winter.

Lisa Charleyboy in earth tones Now here’s where this Canada Blog Friends profile gets really interesting. I wrote to Lisa and asked her which of her posts that she thinks is her best. This was her reply,

Decade Dating has probably been the post that has been discussed the most to date. It is a reflection on May-December relationships, of which I had recently just ended one such relationship. I think the topic is fairly controversial and also very interesting and intriguing to people as to why girls in their 20s enter these types of relationships. I even walked into a local eatery where the owner, an acquaintance of mine, was involved in a May-December relationship and said that his young wife had read this post. It was a little awkward, since my stance at the end of the blog was that these types of relationships are beneficial to only one party.

My favorite is Red Cred: Joseph (Dega) Lazare . Red Cred is a series of profiles that I will be doing to showcase Native artists. I want to highlight modern, talented, progressive Native/Indigenous artists who are paving the way to be role models for youth and who are otherwise just cool peeps that deserve a little spotlight on them. I really want the non-Native community to see other Native people who are successful, educated and superbly gifted in order to challenge stereotypes that still haunt Native people. I also want other Native people who are not necessarily tapped into the Native arts community to realize the significant contributions we’re making all across Canada and the U.S.

Well done Lisa, that’s the perfect synopsis. Welcome to Canada Blog Friends.

On many levels, Lisa Charleyboy is a beacon of hope and a great role model for indigenous women that too often must sacrifice something for education and personal empowerment. Canada Blog Friends has no doubt that Urban Native Girl Stuff will someday help unite the entire Native community all across North America. Everyone can share in her blog’s journey as she continues the Native storytelling tradition learned on the distant shores of Williams Lake, British Columbia.

Phronk in London Ontario

in Ontario, Scholar, Web Designer and movie reviews

01/12

7

comments

Phronk is an innovator and has been since June 2000. He’s friends with Dead Robot, Mod Superstar and Raymi the Minx; these four bloggers are the Southern Ontario social club. They link to each other in their blogrolls, and comment on each other’s posts, and share unflattering pictures of Stephen Harper…

But Phronk has the most colourful and compelling voice. His blog is surprisingly original, and very readable, and most of the art on display is his own. It’s true Raymi and Dead Robot sometimes borrow his artwork to spice up their posts.

Mike Phronk Phronk writes this about himself, “I’m a guy who lives in London, Ontario, doing various things, such as going to school (I’m a graduate student in psychology), going to work (I teach people and do science) and many other things. I really enjoy doing activities that are fun and eating things that taste good. I have a wonderful family, friends, and a dog. Bees make me nervous. That’s all there is to me.”

Actually there’s a whole lot more to Phronk than that. A quick scan of his domain shows that he has boundless passion in multiple genres. For example, last fall he detailed the London Zombie Walk and his comment box was full after profiling the most listened to albums of 2008,

Google superconductor Phronk.com is good for funny cat photos, and ‘ugly cakes’ especially ‘toilet cakes’ which are edible cakes shaped like toilets (with yellow jello and candy bars in the center). And let’s not forget about the vanilla chocolate cake that looks like overflowing cat litter boxes (my personal favourite).

Phronk documents lobster flavoured potato chips and good Google daily logos, exceptional movies that went straight to video, or straight to awesome as he puts it, and look at this early masterpiece Halifax Holiday photo post. Here he writes, ‘I snap a random vacation picture, post it on my blog, and one of the people in the picture manages to find it. It’s made even more incredible by the fact that everyone involved is as anonymous as can be.’

You get the feeling he’s just goofing around, but writers know its a lot of hard work. Pretty much everyday this author explores something new. Most frequent topics include “life, music, movies, TV, psychology, philosophy, science, parapsychology, skepticism, technology, video games, horror, books, writing, news, stupid internet stuff, and whatever else comes into my head. It’s all pretty self-indulgent, really.”

There’s a lot of Phronk to read - visitors should journey back to the year 2000 just to see how it all began. Phronk art After a post listing his favourite movies, and another promising to make his new blog the repository for all his best stories, readers are treated to a very unusual sasquatch thriller wherein the monster appears on the highway and rear ends the car Phronk is test driving with a car salesman…

Some final wisdom from Phronk:

Contemporaneously should not be a real word.

Only semi-retarded emo kids post their crappy art to their blogs. Do you like the art? Check out Phronk’s scrapbook, phronk.tumblr.com

Gigababy in Ontario

in News Media and Ontario

12/08

0

comments

Cindy Smith lives in Bowmaville Ontario and works Monday to Friday in downtown Toronto. She’s a commuter, in her late twenties, married with one child. And If I told you she’s also a blogger, you might expect a personal diary full of home cooked recipes, pet anecdotes and pictures of her kid. But no, Gigababy has evolved her blogspot meme into something Canadian society desperately needs, and something thousands of readers have come to depend on for a different kind of comfort.

Gigababy’s Web Creed Education for the Driving Masses is not like other traffic blogs, and that’s because this is primarily a traffic event blog (there is no such word as accident in Cindy’s vocabulary). Gigababy’s Web Creed creates interactive news media that’s focused on one subject – car crashes.

Every single day, even on Christmas and New Years Eve, Gigababy reposts local news media on the worst traffic incidents across Canada. If two people are killed on a highway in Quebec, you can expect to find a newspaper report (usually from the area) with all the details on the subject reposted on Gigababy’s Web Creed the next day.

Why does Cindy do this? Because someone has to do this. Gigababy gets almost dozens of comments a day from people that need to grieve and write something somewhere to clear their minds before they can go on with their lives. The comment box is where the action is; sometimes the relatives of the victims and the friends of the accused get emotional, at each other – then Cindy locks up the comment box and everyone has to move on. There are no advertisements on the website, except to raise awareness for charities.

Billie Mintz with Gigababy Billy Mintz, the Corporate Social Responsibility expert storyteller behind ARC Artists Raising Consciousness put Cindy Smith on camera for his Message in a Bottle video series that focuses on the dissemination of the responsible drinking message. These two experts met on Sat December 6th 2008 at Cindy’s parent’s house in Toronto – that’s Cindy’s mom directing the shooting in the background. Gigababy has a lot to say about how Canadians legislate new laws, prosecute offenders and mourn fatalities. She writes everday as an advocate of change - and she’s finally starting to get some real attention.

How did Gigababy get started?

Years ago, and for reasons only she knows, Mrs. Smith internalized the sad story of David Glenn Virgoe of Innisfil, Ontario, a driver for Wilburn Archer Trucking who swerved to avoid a street racer and flipped his tractor trailer at the side of Highway 400 near Bradford, Ontario, on June 18, 2007. Although an air ambulance was called to the scene, Mr. Virgoe, 48, died before he could be transported to hospital. But it was his quick selfless reaction, for which Mr. Virgoe was hailed as a hero by witnesses and Ontario police, who said his actions saved the lives of countless others that truly inspired Cindy. She paralleled her own father’s career as a truck driver and his stories of highway driving and she took action in the form of a blog.

Three men were arrested for dangerous driving resulting in death. Mr. Virgoe left behind a wife Debbie, and three children and five grandchildren - and Gigababy’s Web Creed was born. Today and everyday Cindy Smith writes Gigababy to make Canadian roads safer.

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