Dianne Rinehart

Freelance writer and journalism instructor. 

Former foreign correspondent.

Former parliamentary correspondent.

Former newspaper editor.

Former magazine editor. 

Toronto Star •

Most Torontonians will never own a home. Good thing there’s a straightforward way to make rental life not just livable, but great

There has been a seismic shift in the real estate market in recent years. According to a CIBC report released last spring that echoes others, 76 per cent of Canadians who aren’t homeowners feel entry into the housing market is out of reach.What governments are not doing is putting the same energy and incentives into creating rental housing that people want to live in for life. This oversight is short-sighted because the lack of appropriate rentals is also contributing to the rising cost of housi...
The Hamilton Spectator •

‘The Disappeared’: Afghan despots remove women from public view completely

In the late ‘70s, Argentina’s military, which had taken control of the government in a coup, took anyone they deemed to be in opposition to them, drugged them and threw them out of planes, semi-conscious, to be killed without a trace in the Atlantic Ocean.Now, in present day Afghanistan, women are The Disappeared, if not by killings (and there are many of those), then through the most heinous of “vice and virtue” laws that women’s voices will not be allowed to be heard in public places, and they...
Toronto Star •

I chose to rent my home instead of owning — and I’m much happier. Here’s why

If a home is where the heart is, why are we inundated with messages from well-meaning parents, friends — and real estate agents — that buying is the be all and end all for choosing where we want to live, even if it means giving up on what makes us happy.For me, being able to live in a neighbourhood I love, even if I can’t afford to buy there, is much more important than all the promises about home ownership, about building equity and being in control.For most of my adult life, there was no way I...
Toronto Star •

We must listen to kids when they reveal abuse. It didn’t happen for me

One elderly woman from South Korea had been a so-called “Comfort Woman” — kidnapped and forced by the Japanese army to lie in a bed while soldiers lined up outside the door to take turns raping her. She could never have children because of damage to her body.Another woman from Brazil, who had once been a beauty queen, told us about how when she broke up with her boyfriend, he threw acid in her face. Scars covered her face.And then there was the very young woman from the United States. When she w...
On The Bay Magazine •

A Landmark Revival - On The Bay Magazine

“We’re trying to keep as much of the old feel as we can,” says Aysia Garbe, who has a large chandelier planned for the entranceway. The same goes for the arched windows on the second floor. Straw Hat sourced the best window guy around, says Harrison.
And in some places, the old stone foundation, called rubble, needed to be shored up and strengthened with rebar and concrete. As Bowman says: those old foundations are strong, but rubble doesn’t like to be disturbed!
Another challenge underground wa...
Toronto Star •

For women, the dangers of misogyny are real and unpredictable

I was walking down a forest trail with my dog recently when I ran into another woman, alone with hers. She warned me that she had just had a verbal altercation with a man on the trail.He said he wasn’t comfortable with dogs on the trail because he never knew what they would do. She replied, now you know how women feel when we pass men on trails.That’s right. Recently, the New York Times published a story about a woman who was standing at an intersection waiting for the light to change when a man...
On The Bay Magazine •

Hot to Trot! - On The Bay Magazine

If you haven’t noticed, Southern Georgian Bay is horse country.
The region is dotted with dozens and dozens of horse barns specializing in English or Western-style riding lessons (the difference starts with how you hold the reins and the style of saddle).
Many, too, offer coaching for competition riding, and host camps and clinics for beginners from kids to senior citizens.
Some, such as Mountain View Stables in The Blue Mountains, offer trail riding experiences by the hour.
And though developme...
On The Bay Magazine •

The Queen of Plates - On The Bay Magazine

If you’re ever wondering what you can possibly talk about with people you are hosting for the first time for dinner, give Collingwood artist Jacqueline Poirier a call.
She’s a specialist in breaking the ice—no matter how formal, expensive or intimidating the dinner party.
And she doesn’t do it by teaching you which fork to use, or how to tell amusing stories.She does it by hand-painting one-of-a-kind, white porcelain charger plates in crazily imaginative ways—hence her business name: The Crazy P...
On The Bay Magazine •

Never Too Late - On The Bay Magazine

Adrian van den Hoven aboard the Ophir II.



Everyone knows the basics of staying fit. A well-rounded exercise routine should include moderate to vigorous-intensity pursuits such as walking, hiking and running, plus strength training and activities that improve balance, such as yoga.
This is especially important as you age. And what could be more fun in the summer than achieving all those fitness goals on, and in, the water? How?
Let these five “seasoned” athletes from around the...
On The Bay Magazine •

Wet and Wild - On The Bay Magazine

My dog Daisy is part husky and part German shepherd. Those breeds aren’t known as big swimmers. But tell that to her. She’s never met a body of water she doesn’t want to jump into—winter or summer.
So, I’m always on high alert to make sure she doesn’t get in over her head, so to speak.But I didn’t consider how fast she was—when I was walking her off-leash along the Pretty River this spring when the water was peaking with runoff and the current was strong.My phone rang, and for a nanosecond I was...
On The Bay Magazine •

Good Grooming - On The Bay Magazine

My dog, Daisy, is a rambunctious husky/German shepherd mix. There is not a frou-frou, I-want-to-be-groomed bone in her body.
Indeed, her idea of a good grooming is to jump in a red-clay puddle on the side of Blue Mountain and sink into it up to her neck, then race around the hills and roll in any animal doo-doo she can find.
I cannot overstate the “ew” factor. I even once found fur and skin caught in her collar from her enthusiastic foray into some dead, um, thing. But on this day, she is going...
On The Bay Magazine •

Small Footprint, Big Impact - On The Bay Magazine

It doesn’t hurt that this gem of an environmentally-conscious home—it’s only 1,638 square feet—is set down, modular piece by piece, on a gorgeous, forested lot in Meaford, with a view of Georgian Bay in the distance.
But letting the beauty of the surroundings speak for themselves in the actual design of the home was the genius of their collaboration with MAFCO’s Diane and Dan Molenaar and Gilchrist.
Step into this sleekly simple, bare-bones home and you somehow feel that you are out-of-doors. Th...
On The Bay Magazine •

The Great Escape Artists - On The Bay Magazine

Oh boy. This is a dilemma.
I finally have my sweet Husky mix, Daisy, who bolted to chase rabbits, cornered. But where she is sniffing and snooping is a bit of a problem. She is on a stranger’s front porch.
I am praying, as I approach stealthily, that I can nab her before anyone sees me. This will be a bit challenging, though, because the homeowner’s living room windows face directly onto the porch.
“Please, please don’t let anyone be sitting in their living room naked,” I plead. Or, worse: “Plea...
On The Bay Magazine •

Priced Out! - On The Bay Magazine

Kirsten Schollig had been living in her lovely, brand-new townhouse on George Zubek Drive in Collingwood for about a year with her boyfriend when they received notice that their landlord was selling.
And no wonder. The owner had purchased it as an investment in February 2019 for $424,284. Two years later he sold it for $708,000—way, way above his asking price. Then a year later, the new owners sold it again for $976,500.
“I couldn’t blame him,” says Kirsten, a photographer whose studio, Captured...
On The Bay Magazine •

How to de-stink a dog - On The Bay Magazine

As my friend, Nancy, and I emerged from a forested trail at Clendenan Dam into meadowlands last fall, we suddenly hit a wall of, well—smell.
It was like a stink bomb had gone off at our feet.
We looked at each other querulously. “Do you smell that?” I asked. “What is it?”
Nancy said it smelled like farmers had just put manure on the land. But the land we were looking at wasn’t tilled.
Then our dogs bounded up behind us. There was a second’s pause while we were still focused on working out what t...
On The Bay Magazine •

Blooming with Daisy in a pandemic - On The Bay Magazine

I am not alone — in two ways.
The first is that I am among 3.7 million Canadians who felt compelled to adopt a cat or a dog during the pandemic, according to research commissioned by Purina. The second — and more important reason — is that with Daisy at my side I am never alone.
It’s not just that she is with me (and what an entertaining, waggish companion she is), it’s that when I am with her everyone wants to greet her — and then, with such ease, we begin to talk.
A woman describes her marriag...
On The Bay Magazine •

Small Town Living - On The Bay Magazine

The house is set way back from the side street it faces, and the yard behind it is deep and wide.
So, the two approached the developers who were working on it and asked if they would consider selling it before finishing it. Bingo! Their lives changed, dramatically.
At first it was going to be a ski and summer place for the couple and their daughters Devon and India. Jennifer has long skied at The Georgian Peaks Ski Club and had owned in the area in the past, though recently the couple had been r...
Toronto Star •

Anatomy of a blockbuster: The Da Vinci Code

It took a deadly shark to draw us away from summer fun and into a darkened theatre. Steven Spielberg’s Jaws captured our attention through the scorching months of 1975 and it firmly and forever conjoined the terms summer and blockbuster in our minds. And so, as we wonder what the next big hit of this season will be, Star writers look at blockbusters of the past — not just in movies, but in everything from art to music to books — looking for lessons on what made these works ripe for such phenomen...
Toronto Star •

Summer snapshots: Rocky Mountain High

My sandal-clad feet timorously search for the terra firma under the slippery gravel, rocks, and humongous boulders that lie on the road ahead. Most places, it would be pitch black at this time of night, but in Banff, in summer, there’s a midnight blue quality to the sky and my friend and I can just make out our downward route — if we stare hard enough.My friend is from the prairies. He seems to understand the land, if not the mountains. So when he suddenly says, breaking my concentration, “I thi...
Toronto Star •

Smoke River tells the story of the Caledonia standoff

So when Foss, who lives in Hamilton, watched the barriers go up in nearby Caledonia in a 2006 land claim dispute between developers and residents of the Six Nations of the Grand River lands, the former journalist was interested in knowing the stories of neighbours on both sides of the barricade.But “there was this huge disconnect,” she acknowledges. Her mother always told the kids they were part native. “She had this connection to this history that he (Foss’s grandfather) was completely afraid o...
Toronto Star •

Facing down rape: Women stand up to say they are not ashamed

“Sexual violence remains a dirty secret,” Freedman writes in the prologue. “Through statistics we may know of rape’s pervasiveness ... — one in three women worldwide, one every 10 seconds — (yet) the social and cultural pressure on women to keep their stories private is, for many, an insurmountable hurdle. As a result, survivors of sexual violence remain anonymous, effectively closeted,” she says. “This is deeply regrettable. It both reinforces the shame that we struggle against and widens the g...
Toronto Star •

Author Miriam Toews talks about the family experiences that lead to All My Puny Sorrows, her latest book

“I spent so much time with my sister during those months, during the months she had made these attempts, and I came to realize she was very, very serious. That she was saying she was competent, that she was suffering and that her suffering was profound. That psych pain is as real as any physical pain, and it was manifesting itself as physical pain as well as psych pain. There’s a point in the book where Yolandi says to Elfrieda: ‘Now you have to fight,’ and Elfrieda says to Yoli, ‘I’ve been figh...
Toronto Star •

LaineyGossip blogger Elaine Lui reveals all in her new book

“Mrs. Chiang’s daughter is a doctor now. What a hardworking, humble girl. So conscientious! Five years and she didn’t even go out once, not even to see a movie. And now she’s a doctor at the big hospital. Mrs. Chiang is so lucky. Poor me. All I got was a girl who did well on one test. So what? One test and she’s shaking her ass all over the block. Mrs. Chiang’s daughter is healing people and saving lives. My daughter just knows how to shake her ass … Shake your ass when you show me your doctor’s...
Toronto Star •

NDP MP Olivia Chow talks about her new book, My Journey

First she confesses, as she introduces a friend who is just leaving, that he was there to help her take down her Christmas tree, and clean up. Then, as a photographer moves to the far corner of her comfortable but utilitarian living room to set up, Chow warns with an impish grin that he’s about to uncover the holiday decorations hidden in the corner.“This book is about immigration, adversity, public service — and about love,” she says. “And if there’s one thing the book hopefully can do is say t...
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