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CA N OES , KEGS & C A M A R A D E R I E : ED D ES
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ALFE
ELORA
NAVIGATING OUR REGION WITH ELORA’S FINEST BY CHRIS TIESSEN ‘This really did seem like a good idea when
kegs of Elora’s finest from the downtown
we first came up with it,’ I comment to Elora
brewery to Kitchener’s Lancaster Smokehouse
Brewing Company’s Jenna Harkness while
and, afterwards, the Blackwing Coffee Bar in
we tread ever so gingerly across a thin
downtown Galt.
column of slippery rocks toward a larger cluster of boulders in the middle of the river. A biting wind surges up my sleeves and down my neck. My bare hands – clenched tightly
Our delivery route: the Grand River. Our means of transport: canoe.
to my camera and gear – burn with cold.
Why? Because Elora brewer Mike Brooks
About twenty feet out from the safety of the
thought it would be awesome. (But really – what
shoreline, my right foot mistakes a clump of
doesn’t that guy find awesome?) And because
autumn leaves floating on the water’s surface
when Mike first presented this dream to me
for solid ground and plunges into the drink.
over a couple pints of Elora Borealis – months
‘Not so much any more,’ I add. And then, as
before, on a hot, sunny, summer afternoon at
I pull my frigid sopping foot from the water,
the brewery – I thought it’d be awesome, too.
ask no one in particular: ‘Whose idea was this,
(Like Mike, I’m a glutton for awesome.) Surely
anyway?’
this would be a fun way to further convince
It’s not even nine in the morning. Late October. Wisps of white from the year’s first snowfall still linger in places on the cold ground. My foot is ice. My only dry pair of shoes is back in Guelph. And this adventure has only just begun. The objective? To deliver
folks that our region of communities – Elora, Guelph, Kitchener-Waterloo, Galt, Hamilton and everything in between – can, and should, be traversed. Regularly. Seamlessly. Always. And what better way to do it than on our region’s most majestic waterway: the Grand River. Fantastic.
