Mezbauddin Mahtab's Blog

 [ Continued from Victoria ]

The last stop on Vancouver Island was the beautiful city of Nanaimo.

Nanaimo is a beautiful city, between Victoria and Tofino, and is nestled on the coast of the island. Nanaimo experiences a temperate climate with mild, rainy winters and warm, dry summers. With plenty of water nearby, hiking and fishing opportunities everywhere, this makes it a great place to retire.

Maffeo Sutton Park is a where you must start your visit to Nanaimo. It has a beautiful harbor area wher...

[ Continued from Vancouver - Some Lesser Known Attractions   ]

It was time to proceed from Vancouver to Victoria, which is on Vancouver Island. For that, you need a BC Ferries ticket. We booked our ticket long ago in advance. The advantage is that you know your time slot, and if you make it to the ferry terminal an hour before your launch, you are now guaranteed a spot. It's a reservation, after all.

Note: the number of passengers in your car (and their age) must correspond to what you have booked i...

  [ Continued from Whistler ]

There are quite a few attractions in Vancouver, easily doable if you are in the city for a few days (three days minimum). Since we had already visited a few of them on our last trip, such as the Capilano Suspension Bridge, the Olympic Cauldron, we decided to go to a few places that we had not seen before. These are also the lesser visited tourist places, so it's not as crowded (for now).

Deep Cove is a small town by the bay in North Vancouver.

With its proximity to for...

 [ Continued from Vancouver - Stanley Park ]

The last time we had visited Whistler, it was at the end of a harrowing journey through Duffey Lake Road, a section of Highway 99 from Lillooet to Whistler that features steep hills, sharp hairpins on a hill that set some heavy trucks brakes on fire, and massive drops. The bridges you'll cross are often single lane.  Cell phone coverage is unreliable. Little commercial traffic follows this route. There is no gas station along the route.

This time, we dr...

It has been 9 years since I last visited Vancouver's Stanley Park. As I said even then, you cannot come to Vancouver and NOT visit this magnificent park. It's a huge public park surrounded by the waters of the Burrard Inlet and the English Bay. On a sunny afternoon, we cross the Lions Gate Bridge to enter the park.

Prospect Point is the first place you must stop. It has grand vistas of the Bay and the bridge, and makes for fantastic photo opportunities. Parking near the cafe is limited but you al...

I have been watching a few videos of people who returned to (mostly) India after staying in Canada as PR for some time. Also watched a couple of videos of people who went to Dubai. 

Pretty much all of them had mostly good things to say about Canada:

great summer weathereveryone is punctual, nicelaw and order is goodno corruption. School admission no hassle, etc.

Then, when they delve into why they left, it is usually:

feeling lonelyneed a car, distances are vastno food options when you go outside (I...

 I am detailing some of the costs associated for a typical desi wedding in the GTA. This is a pretty standard wedding ceremony, not elaborate. You can, of course, pay more for a more extravagant ceremony.

Girl:Wedding Lehenga - $3000-$4000 (times two if there is a separate walimah function apart from the nikah reception)Dress for the nikah / akht - $1500Dress for halud / mayoon / haldi - $1500Makeup - $600 (times three for each occasion, and this is lower end)Henna artist - $200 - $600Boy:Wedding...

Point Pelee National Park is a unique national park located roughly just under 4 hours of drive south from Toronto. The first long weekend of the summer, the May 24 weekend, was showing a beautiful forecast, so we decided to visit this park. 

There is something unique about the park as well, which I will get to later. We started early in the morning, and thus reached Point Pelee around noon.

To get to Point Pelee, once you take the exit from 401 highway, you go through lots of small roads. Some of...

Anyone who has lived in Scarborough, Ontario in the 1990s knows the name Paul Bernardo. His name symbolizes pure evil. He raped and murdered several women, often brutally. What was even more despicable was that his wife Karla Homolka helped him rape and murder her own younger sister. 

I arrived as a young man in Canada just after the trials in 1995. I can still tell you how fresh the news was in everyone's mind then, and had continued to remain in public consciousness even after nearly three deca...

As many of my friends may know, I have done a lot of digging (and writing) on Islamic mortgage options available to potential homebuyers who want to avoid interest. At one time, it could be said that most are scams, but that is no longer true. There are some options available nowadays, but of course there are big problems with all of them. Not all are 100% Islamic (sadly), but some are better than others.

I am writing this post to explain why when you go to an "Islamic" mortgage, you actually end...