Bring On Spring

REGIONAL

PUBLISHER & EDITOR

Signe Ball

DEPUTY EDITOR

Tralee Pearce

ASSOCIATE EDITOR

Dyanne Rivers

ART DIRECTOR

Kim van Oosterom

Wallflower Design

PHOTOGRAPHERS

Rosemary Hasner

Elaine Li

Robert McCaw

Pete Paterson

ILLUSTRATORS

Shelagh Armstrong

Ruth Ann Pearce

Jim Stewart

WRITERS

Liz Beatty

Johanna Bernhardt

Glenn Carley

Emily Dickson

Ellie Eberlee

Carol Good

Gail Grant

Anthony Jenkins

Bethany Lee

Alison McGill

Dan Needles

Janice Quirt

Tony Reynolds

Nicola Ross

Don Scallen

SALES MANAGERS

Roberta Fracassi

Erin Woodley

OPERATIONS

MANAGER

Cindy Caines

ADVERTISING

PRODUCTION

Marion Hodgson

Type & Images

EVENTS & COPY EDITOR

Janet Kerr Dimond

DIGITAL EDITORS

Emily Dickson

Janice Quirt

In The Hills is published quarterly by MonoLog Communications Inc. It is distributed through controlled circulation to households in the towns of Caledon, Erin, Orangeville, Shelburne, Creemore, and Dufferin County. Annual subscriptions outside the distribution area are $29.95 for 1 year and $53.95 for 2 years (including HST).

© 2023 MonoLog Communications Inc. All rights reserved. No reproduction by any means or in any form may be made without prior written consent by the publisher.

For information regarding editorial content or letters to the editor: 519-942-8401 or sball@inthehills.ca.

Find us online at www.inthehills.ca

Like us facebook.com/InTheHills Follow us twitter.com/inthehillsmag and instagram.com/inthehillsmag

For advertising, contact one of our regional sales managers:

Roberta Fracassi

519-943-6822, roberta@inthehills.ca

(Orangeville, Shelburne, Creemore and areas N of Hwy 9)

Erin Woodley

519-216-3795, erin@inthehills.ca (Caledon, Bolton, Erin and areas S of Hwy 9)

The ad booking deadline for the summer (June) issue is Friday, May 12, 2023.

Canada Post Agreement Number 40015856

Made possible with the support of

We acknowledge the support of the Government of Canada.

WHEN I WAS GROWING UP, the common coin was “Never trust anyone over 30.” But when baby boomers, a generation never inclined to cede their advantage, passed that decade marker, they smoothly transitioned to “Never trust anyone under 30.”

Either way, attaining the age of 30 marks a divide – defined by both sober reflection and a much clearer understanding of who we are and where we’re heading.

As In The Hills enters its 30th year, we’re no different. Our first issue in the spring of 1994 was 24 pages and printed on high-grade newsprint. Its oversized format was modelled on the then common weekend magazines – lots of breezy lifestyle content combined with weightier backgrounders on the issues of the day. All conceived as a leisurely “good read.”

A lot has happened since. In a practical way, many of the changes have resulted from the evolution of technology. In the second issue of 1994, a story explained the new trend of home-based offices, made possible by “microcomputers” and “telecomputing,” and envisioned a day when images could be sent through a modem – “the entire transaction accomplished in ‘high-tech’ style.” (Laugh we may, but our “high-tech style” is still plagued by rotten rural internet.)

More important, our community has changed. In 1994, the Headwaters region was just beginning to evolve from the agricultural base and firmly British heritage that had defined it for nearly two centuries. In the intervening years, the population has more than doubled, and our community is taking its place in a vibrant, multicultural world. As exciting, local agriculture, which seemed to be receding back then, has re-emerged as a driving economic and environmental force.

But two things haven’t changed. The first is our profound gratitude to the readers and advertisers who have stood by us through all the years. With your affirmation that we’re touching something relevant to your lives, we have reason to carry on. The second is our steadfast commitment to be worthy of your loyalty by continuing to reflect, celebrate and, we hope, help steward the culture, heritage, environment and enterprise that keep these hills so very dear to our collective hearts.

Like any 30-year-old, In The Hills has matured. The days when we could consider ourselves an upstart little rural magazine are well behind us. So with the design refresh launched with this issue, we’ve dressed ourselves up in some stylish new togs, and we’re ready and excited to embrace the future.

Stay tuned!

Meet Three Of The Creative People Behind This Issue

Pete Paterson

Pete has been contributing to In The Hills for more than two decades, photographing a wide array of subjects, including vintage airplanes, local artisans and our annual salute to local heroes.

After a storied career in commercial and portrait photography, Pete moved to Caledon in 1990 and began to concentrate on people and community events for In The Hills, Theatre Orangeville and others. Pete has also donated his talents to Community Living Dufferin and other organizations.

In this issue, we spotlight Pete’s fine art photography. His dreamy series of cloud photos, Look Up, is on display at the Caledon Library (“Field Notes”). His work in this issue includes the emotive portraits of three Ukrainian families who fled the war to start a new life in Canada (“Finding Sanctuary”). He also visited Erin metal artist Courtney Chard in her workshop (“Meet the Maker”).

Kim van Oosterom

A freelance graphic designer, Kim van Oosterom started art directing In The Hills in the spring of 1999 and has been the keeper of its visual identity ever since (all but one of the layouts featured in our 30th anniversary lookback, “In Retrospect,” are hers). Kim is the force behind our fresh launch with this issue, along with digital updates on our website and social media channels. For the print update, Kim toiled over every typeface and font, reimagined the cover design and mapped out page elements large and small that combine to give the magazine a contemporary new feel.

In 2016, Kim and her husband, Andrew, moved from Toronto to a remote hilltop cabin in Mulmur. A nature enthusiast, she especially enjoys art directing Don Scallen’s nature features. This summer, she’s most looking forward to the annual firewood delivery and cataloguing its arthropod hitchhikers (really!).

Tralee joined In The Hills in 2014 as a writer and editor, and though she finds it a little hard to believe, she has spent 30 years as a journalist. Half that time was at the Globe and Mail writing and editing stories on lifestyle, health and news. She started at the Ottawa Sun and worked with NOW magazine before joining the Globe. She has freelanced for magazines including Canadian Living and Modern Farmer.

Highly impressionable, after working on this issue

Tralee is considering buying a kettle with a temperature gauge for the perfect cuppa (“Our Cup of Tea”), visiting alpacas (“The Alpaca Whisperer”) and seeking help with the perfect butter chicken (“Food and Drink”).

Tralee moved to Mono when she was four. After living in Inglewood for seven years, she and her husband and son now divide their time between Toronto and the farm she grew up on.

Superior paving and property enhancement

though, in my mind, as one of your finest.

Loved your article “Metric Resistance” by Gail Grant [Over the Next Hill, winter ’22]. I can totally relate to this as a Brit who moved here as a well-established homemaker in my 40s. I had already embraced some metric changes – the currency changed during my high school exams in the ’70s, fabric measurements were totally metric, and some items in the grocery store had changed over, but there were still a few in pounds and ounces. To this day I weigh

On arrival at the fabric store in Orangeville I was traumatized to have to convert my measurements back to yards! For items at the deli or meat counter, I simply requested by number – four chops or six slices, and vegetables are handpicked as I need. So, no

Cooking, however, was a nightmare. I still import British Pyrex glass measuring jugs, to keep me straight. Brits tend to dry measure in ounces, here most things are liquid measure. There is further confusion: I already owned a set of U.K. cups, and my Australian BBQ book offers a chart outlining the difference between an Australian and U.S. cup. Most of my items are made by Pyrex, but in which

In the main I turn to a single trusted spoon! One heaped tablespoon of flour is 1 ounce, a rounded tablespoon of sugar is 2 ounces –

I always marvel at how difficult it was for us kids to add columns of money – pounds, shillings and pence (12 pence = 1 shilling, 20 shillings = 1 pound, 240 pennies in a pound) – but perhaps that is for another day! Alison Hird, www.suzannelawrence.ca

We welcome your comments! For more reader commentary, or to add your own thoughts on any of the stories appearing in this issue, please visit inthehills.ca. You can also send your letters by email to sball@inthehills.ca. Include your name, address and contact information. In The Hills reserves the right to edit letters for publication.

Sherry Park

Painter Sherry Park’s softly colourful works lie in the realm of realism, but the artist isn’t reproducing every minute detail. “I want to see the brushstrokes,” she says. She relies on photos, but doesn’t copy them grid by grid, instead using them as models in her Alton Mill Arts Centre studio. This leaves room to characterize her subjects with both honesty and affection — especially her older muses. Sherry will tell you the image of Ung Yol Park, her father, is a tender moment in the rhododendrons at a public garden in Mississauga. The woman in the award-winning Maire Kearns is a model Sherry painted in an art class. “The way she’s sitting, her gaze. She’s a very strong person who is aging gracefully,” she says fondly. www.sherrypark.ca