Travels to Iran

Enter Toronto’s Art Gallery of Ontario and you can’t help be mesmerized by Canada’s source of artistic pride, the Group of Seven. These renowned landscape painters first exhibited together in 1920 at this same museum. Peering at the impressive mountains, lakes, and sky, I’ve often thought to myself that I’d love be at these exact spots in person. Over the years, some of my favorite stories have been following in the footsteps of artists, like visiting Winslow Homer’s Prouts Neck, Maine, or Georgia O’Keeffe’s Lake George. Now I’m hoping to get the chance to visit the landscape that inspired several of these Canadian greats, specifically A. Y. Jackson and Franklin Carmichael who used northeastern Ontario as their backdrop. First stop is Sudbury, where I’ll see many more works by these artists at the Art Gallery of Sudbury, and my first scenic overlook, the A. Y. Jackson Lookout outside of town. The highlight is Killarney Provincial Park where I’ll be hiking and paddling smack dab in the middle of a Carmichael canvas, ringed by the La Cloche Mountains. I’ll continue along the Georgian Bay coastal route, with a must-stop at Manitoulin Island before returning to Sudbury.
I had the pleasure of meeting Andrew Barnard last night at an event in Boston. His family has owned the BodyHoliday and Rendezvous resorts on St. Lucia for 50 years. Barnard, an endurance runner, was experiencing gastrointestinal problems on his runs until he consulted a doctor at BodyHoliday who did a detailed analysis of his health, only to discover that he had a severe allergy to eggs. Avoiding eggs these past two years, Barnard told me that he feels better than ever. Now he’s helping his guests. In 2014, BodyHoliday implemented a BodyScience program that combines western medicine with the Indian practices of Ayurveda. Complete a detailed questionnaire at home and send it back to BodyHolday along with DNA samples. Once onsite, each BodyScience guest consults one-on-one with a physician who tests heart rate, blood pressure, body fat, lung capacity, sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system, cardio and arterial fitness, hormone levels, and food allergens. Based on the results, BodyScience doctors will provide a unique nutrition and lifestyle plan to help the body handle stress and reduce the risk of chronic disease. Already a leader in the field of active lifestyle resorts, it seems like BodyHoliday is now setting the bar even higher with this wellness initiative.
Last Memorial Day, I returned to a network of mountain biking trails I first wrote about in 1996 for Men’s Journal magazine. Back then, two or three avid fat wheelers were connecting farmland and cutting a web of trails through the woods of the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont. The rolling countryside dotted with mountains, rivers, meadows, forest, and dilapidated barns is one of the most majestic sites in the Northeast, especially behind Darling Hill Road. So I wasn’t surprised to see cars from as far away as Connecticut and Ontario sampling the trails. And they were sweet, rolling up and down the hillside under the towering pines and atop ridges with vistas of the whole valley. What surprised me even more than the popularity of the mountain biking was how quickly my 13-year old son Jake took to the sport, grinding up and sweeping down the challenging terrain. He kicked my ass and I was happy to write about the experience for The Boston Globe.