‘Bartering is an amazing way to offset the costs in your life,’ says a Toronto financial planner After a customer paid for a haircut with beef and potatoes, a family-run barber shop in southwestern Ontario began accepting other food offers in exchange for a fresh cut — which may not be that unusual given the high cost of things these days. In fact, Toronto-based financial planner Shannon Lee Simmons says there’s a growing interest in bartering, driven by a tough economy. “Bartering is an amazing way to offset the costs in your life,”Read more

‘We are running out of space, particularly in the Lower Mainland’: cemetery designer Bill Pechet A little more than 25 years ago, John Douglas Carnahan bought the rights to two burial plots in the northeast corner of a hilly cemetery in a dense area of Burnaby, B.C. Back then, they cost $750 each. As years passed and space grew scarce, the cost of a single plot in the same cemetery surged to more than $10,000. After Carnahan’s death at 91, his widow decided not to use the plots. Her battle for the right to sellRead more

Île-à-la-Crosse school operated for more than 100 years, survivors not included in previous settlements Hundreds of boarding school survivors are in Saskatoon this weekend. It’s the first time so many people who were forced to go to the Île-à-la-Crosse boarding school in northern Saskatchewan are together. Organizers of the event, which is running until Sunday at TCU Place, are calling it a “survivors’ gathering.” They say it’s a chance to share stories and push for recognition for physical, sexual and emotional abuse they endured at the school. Survivors drove from allRead more

Canada willing to accept 15,000 migrants through legal channels, but 40,000 crossed in 2022 Quebec immigration experts say closing Roxham Road to asylum seekers may go against Canada’s international obligations and could result in more deaths at the border, after an already deadly year. Two men died attempting to cross the Canadian border within two months of each other. The first, 43-year-old Fritznel Richard, was trying to reach his family in Florida in time for the holidays. His body was found in early January. The second, Jose Leos Cervantes, 45, was alsoRead more