In some places, summer comes with certainty. Those places, people pack away their sweaters and jackets without a second thought. Those places, backyard barbecues don’t come with rainy-day contingency plans.

Vancouver is not one of those places. For us, summer is a tentative, shy season that creeps in and out like a stray cat. Each time we have a burst of sun, we wait cautiously to see if it will be followed by two weeks of grey skies. We wait for that one sure sign that summer is finally here: strawberries.

By Sheena Starky • Photos by Andrea Chlebak

Drews Driessen is sandwiched between two metal racks in a room the size of a large closet. Coils of sausage hang like oversized hoop earrings on either side of his smiling face, which is framed by wavy brown hair and a greying beard. The storeroom may be small, but it suits Driessen just fine, for he has a focus as narrow as the space. “Sausage making, that was my thing from day one,” he says.

On a grey day, I step out of the car and onto a limestone path at Colony Farm. I have come at a time when I really need to walk, need to be out of the city, and Colony Farm Regional Park seems the perfect intermediary zone of re-wilded agricultural land: fields putting on their old clothes of willow and blackberry, returning to themselves. The sound of traffic recedes to an acceptable distance. It almost feels comforting, like the whoosh of a fan on a hot summer’s day.

By Debbra Mikaelsen

This might come as a shock to you, but not everyone loves Caesars. Imagine my own shock when my husband made a face and said “blech” the first (and also the second) time he tasted one. Despite my extensive attempts to build them up (“so delicious!” and “the salad as cocktail!” and simply “but, yum!”), he still remains firmly in the not-liking camp.

When I was a kid I was not terribly interested in school and my effort could best be described as lackadaisical. As a result, it was not all that uncommon for me to hear, in reference to my homework, “This doesn’t quite cut the mustard.” I was at least a sensible, if not studious, child and found myself wondering “What the h-e-double-hockey-sticks could that possibly mean?