STORY CONTINUES BELOW THESE SALTWIRE VIDEOS

Black entrepreneurs are bringing tastes of the West Indies and Africa, east and west, to rarely sunny St. John’s. Meet Frank Holdbrookand the folks behind One Nation Apparel, Sunny Days Caribbean Restaurant an Ethiopian Cuisine Plus who are driving the trend. 

Ravenous fans and rapturous reviews have propelled Benjamin Bridge’s signature vintage to sales records every year. Bill Spurr asks why. 

Tim Horton’s turned shareholders into Beliebers last quarter as sales popped, partly because of a partnership with Justin Bieber and four flavors of Timbits he came up with. None of them made our hit list though. A little old-fashioned’s more our style. 

I’ve been told cannabis “testing” used to involve rolling papers and one long drag. Things change. Bloom Labs in Nova Scotia’s hub town of Truro does a bag load of tests, for everything from potency to the presence of pesticides, mould and heavy metal.  (Not Metallica.) 

Noelle Christine is tired of losing a day’s pay every time somebody pulls up to her Cape Breton country market/gas station and pulls out without paying. So she’s taken to posting their photos on Facebook. If you see the person in this picture, tell her Noelle’s looking for her. 

Chef Danielle Duguay has found a way around pandemic diners’ and servers’ discomfort with crowds—private dining. Used to be you could hire a chef to come to your home or rent out an entire restaurant. Duguay’s Anemone is something in between.  

Jamie King’s got a lot to be happy about. He’s co-founder of Newfoundland’s Verafin, which fetched a US$2.75-billion price tag when it was bought by NASDAQ more than a year ago. King’s just been named executive vice-president at NASDAQ, where he takes over their market security business. Verafin is a leader in tracking and cracking financial crime. 

Don’t know that he’s ever worn a cowboy hat but I can almost imagine Summerside Mayor Basil Stewart as Robert Duvall in Apocalypse Now saying: “I love the smell of asphalt shingles in the morning. It smells like...victory.” PEI’s second city smashed records for building permits last year and the growth was dominated by private home and commercial construction rather than government work. 

Food professor Sylvain Charlebois says extended blockades could bring higher prices at the grocery store, a shift in trade away from Canada, and even a faster adoption of self-driving trucks. 

The Financial Post’s Kevin Carmichael’s been surveying bank rate watchers spooked by a spike in prices for inflation drivers like groceries and gas. Here’s what they have to say.

Back next Friday. Before then, I’ll be checking out a series by Barb Sweet on the people touched by an East Coast tragedy, the sinking of the Ocean Ranger. 

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