Boulangerie Cheskie, Mile End, Montréal

Boulangerie Cheskie
359 Rue Bernard Ouest
Montréal, QC H2V 4H3
(514) 271-2253

There are many ways to pad my womanly hips here in Montréal. I don’t have a huge sweet tooth but I love baked goods — real quality baked goods, that is. I previously wrote a love letter about baguettes and how good they are in this city. Unlike in my native Toronto, Montréal suffers from a plethora of amazing bakeries; this is a problem as there are too many places to keep up with. But amongst all the French and Quebécois boulangeries dotting every neighbourhood, Cheskie’s often gets mentioned as one of the best bakeries in town. It doesn’t even bake baguettes! But the danishes, rugelach, babka, challah, cookies, and other pastries filling this shop draws a line out its door on many days, opening up the neighbourhood for the amazing scent of its freshly baked goods.

The Forks Market, Winnipeg, Canada

The Forks Market
105 Waterfront Drive
Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
1-888-942-6302
www.theforks.com/attractions/at-the-forks/the-forks-market

Have you ever been to Manitoba? As a Torontonian living in Montréal, I tend to hang around the central-eastern parts of my huge country. But when the opportunity arises, I like to cover untrodden regions of this 9,984,670 square kilometre nation and it’s not too often that I get to out west. When we Canadians talk about Western Canada (or way over there from where I’m from), we mean the province of Manitoba and its neighbours to its left — Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia. Manitoba was one of the few provinces that I had not discovered until recently when I visited the southern parts of this prairie terrain. And where’s a better place to discover Winnipeg culture than The Forks, a lovely meeting place of community and commerce for the past 6,000 years?