Catherine O'Neill

06/06/2026

11/20/2025

I had the opportunity to see the 📻podcast, Friday Focus, tape live at the Hot Docs 🎥festival. I listen to this podcast weekly, and it covers world affairs from a Canadian 🇨🇦view point. We don’t get the opportunity to listen to what events mean for or in Canada🇨🇦.

It has good moderation by Rudyard Griffiths, the head of the Munk Debates (they have a new debate in December on a two state solution for Israel), and Janice Stein director for the Munk School of Global Affairs.

Janice in particular is very experienced and insightful. 👍

The first half of the podcast is free, but to hear the whole thing you need to be a donator (donations go to support civil debate and discussions in Canada). 🇨🇦

Highly recommended.

11/11/2025

Attended my first travel points seminar 📓this weekend held by the Prince of Travel 🧳 in Toronto. Wow! There is a lot to know about how to earn, 💰use, and capitalize on travel 🧭 points. Listening to the presenters was like drinking from a fire hose 🧯but it was great.

The presenters shared that they all had about 20-40 credit cards for the points and benefits. Crazy!😝 and they all used spreadsheets to keep them straight.

If you are planning on travelling 🧳 more in the future, check out their website where it reviews the benefits and costs of each travel card and they send out a weekly newsletter 📰 with weekly updates on new offers from the different companies.

11/11/2025

Lest we forget. Beautiful presentation of remembrance ❤️ and gratitude 🙏 in front of the Manulife headquarters on Bloor St in downtown Toronto. 107 years after the end of World War 1. 🌹

11/06/2025

So it looks like we are survivalists 🪓because we filled our freezers 🥶with meat, meat, 🥩 more meat, and some 🥗vegetables. We were warned by the company, Nutrafarm, to have a lot of space available and they were right.

Earlier this year I decided to buy primary Canadian 🇨🇦and less/no US. As I had been buying organic meat 🐓in US I wanted to try a Canadian 🇨🇦alternative.

Nutrafarm is Ontario based seller of local Ontario farm 🐖products. We bought 🐄beef, 🐓chicken, a little 🐖pork, and some 🥗vegetables. This was a test to try out their food, and to estimate what we consume because they ship about one year’s worth of food to you.

The quality is very good. No disappointments and it’s as good as the products we were buying before. It’s not cheap 💰because it’s locally grown from pasture farms (vs factory farms). The steaks and chicken breasts are all smaller (which seems more natural to me) than the HUGE ones you get from other stores.

They throw in some whole chickens (which are very good and I will order more) and some “natural” concentrated 🧽cleaners (not really to my taste but I’m an old “laundry and cleaning” girl from work days).

I ordered too much chicken and not enough beef as it turns out. Who knew? I will rejig our next order. Also as it is one year of food, you don’t have to worry about food inflation. But you do need the cash 💰and the space for such a large order.

I will reorder next year. Let me know if you decide to try them.

11/05/2025

Led our local book club connect at my house just before Halloween 🎃 👻. We read Lisa See’s Lady Tan’ Circle of Women, a historical fiction based on actual characters from the Ming 🇨🇳Dynasty. Lady Tan’s text book of Chinese medicine 🩺⚕️😷is 1) one of the few books written before 1511 📜✒️still in print, 2) only one of three books of Chinese medicine 📓🦠authored by a woman. 🙋🏻‍♀️

I served jasmine and matcha teas , and used the small number of oriental themed dishes I had. Lots of great food and drink was brought for all.

I learned about the challenges women, doctors, and midwives faced during this time. It was a very good book and I recommend it. No mud, no lotus 🪷

11/04/2025

Invested 💰in myself by attending One Big Life event by The Growth Arena in Windsor this weekend. An event for women 💁‍♀️to empower, 💪collaborate, reset 👀and recharge. I also got to experience a “sound bath” 🛁for the first time.

Key take aways
✅ run your household like a business
✅ consider starting some new family traditions
✅ affection for self means not accepting actions by others that undermine this
✅ doing for others because “someone did it for me”
✅ having the courage to stay on your own life path
✅ benefit of breath work

If you get a chance to attend, I would recommend it. 🙏

10/16/2025

Not my house 🏡. But I walk past this house every morning and they are so into this season 🎃 - love it! 🥰 Skeleton petting zoo, dog 🐶 on a lease, crows 🐦‍⬛. And then they have their gnome house with a ladder 🪜 so the gnomes can crawl up. Genius. 🙏🤣👀

10/15/2025

I really enjoy learning 🎓 about investments, personal development, marketing, digital media, etc. Books, podcasts, YouTube’s, seminars; all good. 📚

Since leaving a multinational, I have had to create my own learning plan 📓 to keep up to date 🕰️ and develop my skills. 🪏

Shout out if you also like to learn and level up!