Wait, What? An 'All-Purpose' Potato? Since When Was This A Thing?!

Apparently for a while now... but nobody told me!

I popped into Walmart to grab a bag of potatoes among other things to make a batch of potato salad I was craving. The problem is, I constantly forget which potato is supposed to be best for what... until I stumbled across these spuds sitting in the produce section.

Right there on the front, printed in giant, unapologetic bold letters: All-Purpose Potatoes.

Wait. What?!

Since when did they invent a one-size-fits-all potato?

I looked closer at the 4.54 kg (10 lb) bag of Your Fresh Market spuds, and it literally claims to cover every single culinary base: "Great for frying, steaming, boiling, roasting, salads and soups."

Talk about the Swiss Army knife of root vegetables!

Naturally, my curiosity got the better of me. Did Canadian farmers cook up a brand-new genetically engineered super-spud in a secret lab? Is this just a Walmart gimmick?

Turns out, it’s mostly clever grocery packaging meeting potato starch science. Much like all-purpose flour, it's designed to take the guesswork out of dinner so you don't have to decipher botanical names in the produce aisle. Here's the culinary low-down:

• High Starch (Russets): Dry and fluffy. Brilliant for baking and crispy fries, but boil them for a salad and they disintegrate into mush.
• Low Starch / Waxy (Reds): Firm and moisture-packed. They hold their shape like champs in boiling water, but try to mash them and you end up with wallpaper paste.
• Medium Starch ("The All-Purpose Sweet Spot"): Varieties like standard Canadian White potatoes (and our homegrown Yukon Golds). Because they sit dead-center between moisture and starch, they don't turn into glue when mashed or dissolve into water when boiled. That middle-ground balance is why grocery distributors officially slap the "All-Purpose" label on the bag - one sack handles every standard cooking method, saving shoppers from having to guess.

So it's a win-win for everyone: convenience for the customer, zero inventory headaches and steady volume sales for the retailer. It’s capitalism at work disguised as a handy kitchen tip.

The Only Store in North America: The German Outerwear Brand That Chose Niagara

Like most households, my mailbox gets flooded with a steady stream of promotional mailers, and 99% of them go straight into the blue bin without a second glance. But yesterday, a glossy foldout brochure caught my eye before it hit the recycling. Between the giant iceberg on the cover and the promise of deep-sea German shipyard outerwear, I ended up reading the entire thing right over the counter - and quickly discovered a huge retail surprise sitting right in our own backyard. (And no, I am not getting paid a dime to write this - they don't even know my blog exists! This is just pure, fascinating local trivia.)

Inside the foldout flyer I received in the mail, showing the men's collection and outlet pricing.
Photo: SCG NIAGARA

The Only Standalone Store on the Continent

If you've driven past the Outlet Collection at Niagara on Taylor Road, you probably assumed it was just another stretch of big-box outlet staples. But tucked right inside Unit 427 - just down the path from Bass Pro Shops - sits a genuine retail anomaly: Niagara-on-the-Lake is home to the only standalone flagship Wellensteyn brand store in all of North America. Not Toronto. Not New York City. Not Chicago. Right here off Glendale Avenue.

DID YOU KNOW: Canada Once Printed 25-Cent Bills Called "Shinplasters"?

If you dig through an old desk drawer or inherit a family keepsake tin here in Canada, you usually expect to find worn copper pennies, old silver voyageur dollars, or maybe a crisp terracotta two-dollar bill or two. But finding a tiny slip of paper that reads "Dominion of Canada Will Pay on Demand: 25 Cents" definitely makes you do a double take...

Yes, Canada actually printed paper quarters. They were official legal tender, circulated nationwide for over five decades, and carry one of the most delightfully sarcastic nicknames in Canadian history. I recently pulled this exact bill out of my mother's old stash, and having it sit right here on my desk got me digging into its backstory—especially when I noticed an odd printing quirk that proved it wasn't quite cut the way it was supposed to...

From my mother's collection: an authentic July 2, 1923 Dominion of Canada 25-cent fractional note.
Look closely at the very top edge—the mechanical blade cut sliced off the printer line from the bill above it!

The American Silver "Invasion" That Forced Canada's Hand

You might think Canada printed paper quarters simply because pocket coins were heavy, but they were actually born out of a cross-border currency headache. During and right after the American Civil War in the 1860s, boatloads of United States silver coins poured northward across our border.

The Big Winter Drain: What Happens Beneath the Welland Canal

If you take a stroll along the Welland Canal trails once winter sets in, the view is downright surreal... where massive 740-foot lake freighters churn all summer long, suddenly there is nothing but mud, bedrock, and empty air.

Every year around Christmas, one of North America’s busiest commercial shipping routes shuts down for the season. The St. Lawrence Seaway begins its annual "unwatering" routine, draining the canal reach by reach down to Lake Ontario—leaving the chambers bone-dry straight through January and February. But pulling the plug on a waterway that holds billions of litres of water isn't quite as simple as opening a drain in a bathtub...

The exposed floor of the Welland Canal during the winter maintenance shutdown.
Illustration by SCG NIAGARA

The Careful Drain: Why Engineers Can't Just Rush It

You might think workers simply open up the gate sluices and let gravity dump all that water into Lake Ontario overnight. In reality, Seaway operators have to throttle the drainage down to a crawl—strictly keeping the drop between 6.4 and 7.6 cm (2.5 to 3 inches) per hour.

VIDEO: Threat of flooding looms over Niagara as heavy rain forecast | CHCH NEWS

Environment Canada has issued a special weather statement for the Niagara Region today, forecasting upwards of 50 millimetres of rain.

While there is no significant rainfall reported this afternoon, the next 24 hours could see the same type of storm pattern that caused major basement flooding across the region weeks ago.

“Training storms” are back-to-back-to-back systems that bring heavy volumes of rain to a localized area over a short period. This dynamic drove the initial wave of storm damage in St. Catharines and the Town of Lincoln, and remains the primary concern for the incoming system.

“The special weather advisory today kind of feels like some cosmic joke.”

— Ashley Brown, St. Catharines resident

For the Brown family in St. Catharines, the first round of storms brought floodwater straight through their basement window. “I think it makes us all shudder just a little bit,” Brown told CHCH News as residents monitor conditions and prepare for another wet 24 hours.

Video & Report via CHCH News