The gravy days are over in the Canadian financial services industry. Tempestuous times face the industry as the financial landscape changes at enormous speed, driven largely by a number of ‘macro’ forces in Canada and throughout the world. Advances in automation and comput...
They control three-quarters of all the personal wealth in the country; buy 30% of all food consumed in the home; have more than $7 billion in RRSPs; are 97% debt-free, and dine out frequently. The over-50s, or ‘grey market’, also account for 55% of the discretionary spendin...
THE FACT that the consumer population is aging and getting richer is good news for the Canadian beauty market. As we get older, we’re paying more for paints and potions than ever before, and cosmetics companies are showing their laughter lines all the way to the bank. The Ca...
Selling cars by contemplating the beauty of the ocean’s ebbing tide seems an intriguing paradox. But Nissan Motor’s new TV and print advertising campaign in the U.S. for its new Infiniti line of luxury cars (due to appear in U. S. showrooms this month and in Canada next fal...
Graham Denton says the reason why his product development firm is so successful is because it has developed a research methodology which is the next best thing to a time machine. Denton, 42, founder of Product Initiatives and former winner of the American Marketing Association�...
Oil of Olay is one of those classic, international skincare brands that seems to have been around forever and has always had a high level of consumer awareness. It has been the best-selling brand in its category since the mid-1970s, so its recent repositioning, repackaging and ...
Baby products giant Johnson and Johnson has managed to carve a proprietary niche in the $38-million liquid laundry detergent market in Canada with its new Baby Laundry Liquid. The idea for the product, still in its test-market stage – a liquid detergent designed to draw consu...
When Beverly Topping made a bid to purchase Great Expectations back in 1983, the previous owner, Harry Haken, chose her from a number of potential suitors because he felt she would ‘know her audience’. Haken felt that Topping, as a woman, a wife and a mother, would have a ge...
IN THIS HIGH-TECH, FULLY-AUTOMATED AGE, you’d think that the faster life got, the more sense electronic media – such as radio and television – would make for advertisers in the 1990s. Well, that ain’t necessarily so, according to Pegi Gross, Senior Vice President and D...
Although sterling silver has been a strong seller for much of the past decade, rarely has it enjoyed as much popularity as it does right now. Suddenly, women of all ages, especially the young, are sporting silver jewellery, often in the form of over-sized earrings, brooches and ...
It’s always difficult to predict a season’s top-selling retail items in the jewellery market. But complicate the task with a troubling economic climate and the job becomes truly formidable. Just to prove the old adage that no two experts will ever agree on anything, most maj...
Laptop personal computers are no longer executive toys. The latest models to hit the market now offer end-users portability, without sacrificing power. With improved displays, more advanced processors, greater memory and longer battery life, laptop technology is now at a point w...
Today’s International Volunteer Day – the day we celebrate and give thanks for the many people across our country who give of their time selflessly to help others. Here in Barrie we’re fortunate to have some outstanding volunteers in our midst – people who make a differ...
Here in Barrie we’ve come to expect sneak peeks of Olympic-level skaters at the Mariposa Club, and Elvis Stojko was, for many years, our adopted hometown son. But if you can find a parking spot at the Goodlife Fitness Club on Commerce Park Drive – which is pretty difficult, ...
Kyle Newton, a Grade 10 student at Eastview, wants to run away to the circus. The 15-year-old, who’s been doing gymnastics for almost a decade, hopes to have an audition with the world-famous Cirque du Soleil in Montreal this summer – and we in Barrie have every reason to ro...
The good news these days is that we’re all living longer. The average Canadian life expectancy is the highest it’s ever been, at 75 and 81 for men and women respectively, according to the most recent data from Statistics Canada. The medical research community is meanwhile h...
The Barrie Public Library is currently looking for teens aged 14 – 18 to help with its Reading Buddies program. The program, which is intended to help elementary school children with their reading, matches up a teen with a younger child for one-on-one sessions, which typicall...
It’s pretty common in today’s North American society for people to be afraid of the idea of death and dying, despite the fact that, like taxes, it’s pretty inevitable. Sooner or later, it’s a fact that everyone will need to confront. Perhaps many of us are afraid of a p...
When Dee Nguyen, who with her husband, Lang, owns the East End Variety Café on Blake Street, flew to Australia last month to take her second child to begin law school at the University of Sydney, it was an event she couldn’t possibly have imagined almost 30 years ago B...
When Dr. David Suzuki, the Canadian environmentalist, scientist and broadcaster, began his speech to a room of nearly 800 students at Barrie North Collegiate last Friday, he told them that Leonardo DiCaprio, the Hollywood actor, had phoned him just the day before. “Come with ...
When local artists, woodworkers, photographers, performers and musicians gather this evening to celebrate the Annual Streetlight Gala in aid of the David Busby Street Centre, they’ll be supporting a tremendously worthwhile cause. The Centre, currently located at Trinity Angli...
More than 3,000 visitors attended this past weekend’s 18th annual Pow Wow, hosted by the Barrie Native Friendship Centre. Tribes from across Turtle Island – the native expression for Mother Earth – were in attendance, both aboriginal and non-aboriginal, and the event inclu...
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When Rosie Romita of Rosie’s Diner at 24 Dunlop St. W., decided to try to raise $10,000 to help the victims of last week’s downtown fire at Mary and Dunlop, she knew she’d need collaborators to get the job done. Rosie, who hosts Christmas and Easter dinners for the poor a...
There’s good news for francophone residents in the City of Barrie. The French language radio station, CFRH 88.1FM, has recently moved its transmission tower from La Fontaine to Blue Mountain, making the station much easier to pick up clearly here in the Barrie area. The stati...
The charitable organization Canadian Guide Dogs for the Blind were once again chosen as the recipient of all the funds raised at Sunday’s annual Paws for a Cause Open House at Pet Country Estate, the 10-acre dog breeding and boarding kennels establishment on the 20th line of I...
Photo Don MacNeil, Chair, is a broadcaster and local community activist with a 20-year career in radio. He is proud to help provide a warm, safe and non-judgmental environment where those in crisis can obtain the help they deserve. Photo Paul Wessenger, Vice-Chair, is a for...
Healthcare Aileen Carroll for the Liberal Party * RVH has been given more than $10 million in new funding by the Provincial Liberal Government through the Wait Time reduction plan, which will provide over 22,000 additional procedures in five key areas. * RVH has also receive...
A visceral gasp was heard in the main auditorium of Central Collegiate last Sunday afternoon when whispers passed around the crowd of close to 1,200 people, many of them students, that Stephen Lewis had entered the building. As one of Canada’s most internationally-recognized s...
Downtown lawyer, Peter Thompson, hasn’t let the diagnosis of an incurable illness almost six years ago deter him from his creative passions. A former professional musician, and a painter and photographer of some repute, he’s found that in the time he’s had Parkinson’s Di...
Dr. Rubin ‘Hurricane’ Carter stormed into town last Friday night as the Guest Speaker for the Third Annual David Busby Street Centre Gala at Georgian College. The audience of almost 150 people listened attentively as the former middle-weight champion prize fighter told his ...
Two local musicians have been invited to open for Toronto-based singer/songwriter, Big Rude Jake, at a concert here in Barrie on Saturday May 10th. The pair, Sandra Ruttan and Paula Terry-Lancaster, were spotted by Jake, whose real name is A. Jacob Hiebert, when they were perfor...
In its quiet north central residential district, Barrie had a fresh and rude awakening last weekend. It was a small, living room affair, no laser light shows or industrial strength subwoofers hammering away at the body and brain. This city attracts big-name stars to the noisy gl...
‘Integrated marketing’ is one of the latest catchphrases to scourge an industry which loves a novelty. But what exactly does it mean? Currently it’s lacking an industry-endorsed definition – at least a consistent one – and different practitioners and clients offer dif...
If you think that people who claim to be ‘environmentalists’ or ‘Green activists’ always think identically on every single environmentally-sensitive issue, it’s time to think again. Right now, the Barrie area faces three significant but tentative proposals – the Big...
STRESS. The very word is enough to make your head throb and your chest tighten. It’s everywhere – the Zeitgeist of the 1980s. Ever since those cunning psychologists came out of the closet, attempting to demystify their latest phenomenon and wreaking havoc among the busin...
INTEGRATED marketing – using a panoply of media to communicate a unified marketing message – is making waves in the advertising community. ‘With the advent of cable, television was no longer an affordable way for many marketers to reach their audience,’ explains Peter...
The website for This Is London, the überchic club on Richmond West that hosted last night’s Rally for Democracy, boasts that it has the ‘opulence of an old-world English Gentleman’s Club’. And that may be true, but it’s precisely the more pernicious aspects of the Old...
As the election nears, with formal advance polling beginning tomorrow, the subject of fiscal responsibility in government continues to be an issue dear to many electors’ hearts. And the current federal deficit means many non-profit and not-for- profit organizations have seen t...
For a fifth consecutive year, National Youth Week will run in Barrie from May 1 to May 7, and the city has a full roster of activities in which youth aged 11 to 19 are invited to participate. The event, which runs under the auspices of the City of Barrie, is a collaborative cel...
Another autumn, another election. And, in the Barrie tradition, on Friday, Sept. 16, the Simcoe County Alliance to End Homelessness is hosting its popular Night Out in the Cold, letting marginalized people directly access candidates. This unique event yanks candidates fr...
Many long-time Barrie residents remember our city as a kinder, gentler place 20 years ago, before subdivisions began to sprawl on its perimeters, when everyone knew their neighbours, and doing business was an entirely more personal experience, likely involving someone whose fami...
Jill Pangborne is a bit of a human dynamo. To enter her charming home in a downtown Barrie neighbourhood is to be greeted by a commotion of paws and at least a couple of wagging tails. Before you’ve hung your hat, it’s clear that this is an animal-friendly place, and that’...
One of this year’s election issues is the decision that the federal government took last year, without any kind of consultation, to scrap the mandatory long-form census for the first time since its inception 35 years ago. Instead, a voluntary national household survey will b...
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