Candace Vetter — Ottawa Life Magazine

Articles by: Candace Vetter
Candice Vetter is Ottawa Life’s rural issues blogger. She was raised on a mixed beef/grain farm in the Prairies and lived in Ottawa for several years before moving to a small 45-acre farm near the city’s boundary. For the last 10 years, she has worked as a freelance writer from her 160- year-old farmhouse. Issues she specializes in are agriculture, water, waste disposal, environment, science, small business, women’s rights and things that make her go, What!?! Her stories appear in over 30 publications, including Ottawa Life Magazine. Ms. Vetter is co-author of Island of Biodiversity—A Natural History of the North Russell Red Shale Hill.

RURAL RANT: OLG Greed is Responsible for Slaughter of Ontario’s Race Horses

April 15, 2013 3:30 pm5 comments

I’ve been thinking about this blog ever since the Super Bowl, which is when I saw the best commercial I’ve ever seen—the Budweiser Clydesdale 2013 ad. I’ve worked in advertising and marketing many times and I’m also a fiction writer, so I recognize a good story. This story, told completely [...]

RURAL RANT: Living Locally

January 23, 2013 11:17 am0 comments

Today’s blog is more of a rave than a rant. I had the good fortune to spend the day on assignment at the Russell Horticultural Society’s fourth annual Living Locally Fair, held Saturday (January 19) at the Catholic high school in the village of Russell, about a kilometre outside Ottawa’s [...]

RURAL RANT: Ice Storm—15 Years Ago Today Power was Restored

January 17, 2013 11:12 am8 comments

For my family and me it was 15 years ago today (January 16) when our power was restored after the 1998 ice storm. It actually was the best of times and the worst of times. Rural resilience, not to mention winter paranoia, helped us sail through that trying time. There are a few [...]

RURAL RANT — Tailgating is Not Cool

January 9, 2013 11:58 am0 comments

This car was first following the truck too close, then changed lanes to follow an
overtaking vehicle. After passing the truck it swung in quickly, cutting off the truck (which cannot exactly stop on a dime) to get ahead of the other car. Its speed was over 100 km/h, and the driver was looking down at something (probably a cell phone) during the operation.

So I was driving to Ottawa recently. It was early afternoon and I took the Queensway into the city, and what to my wondering eyes should appear, but a bunch of tailgating drivers. I do not understand how the practice of driving less than one car length behind another vehicle, at speeds over 100 [...]

50 SHADES OF ROMANCE

December 17, 2012 12:03 pm0 comments

The best-selling success of E.L. James’ 50 Shades erotic trilogy has raised the profile of erotic romance fiction. Although extensive attention is being paid to it now, erotic romance has been around for years, and is one of many subgenres that fall under the romance banner. Romance is frequently dismissed, but someone [...]

RURAL RANT: Christmas in the Country

December 13, 2012 7:31 am0 comments

Keradwyn Thompson is intent on her Christmas craft which she made at the Cumberland Lions’ Club’s Breakfast with Santa in the old Lions’ Maple Hall in Cumberland on December 1.

Have you ever looked at Christmas with a cynical eye? The commercialism, the overpackaging, the strident commercials and ads demanding that you can only make people happy by spending ridiculous amounts of money on stuff they don’t even really need? Who hasn’t seen that Christmas (especially if you have young [...]

Rural Rant: Rural Women Mean Business

December 5, 2012 10:21 am0 comments

Usually I rant but this week I’m raving about the women who belong to women’s business networks in rural areas. I’ve recently been to events of the Rural Women’s Business Network (RWBN) and of the Vars and Area Women’s Business Network (VAWBN). I also know women in other business networks [...]