Business
My European Favourites – Day Trip From Amsterdam

The Netherlands is a great place to visit either as a main destination or as a stopover for a couple of days. I have always enjoyed flying KLM and use them often for our many groups travelling throughout Europe. Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport is an east hub to fly into from North America, and I like the airport layout over other big and busy European airports.
Amsterdam itself has many interesting places to visit and explore. The city is full of history, great architecture, canals, bridges, museums, great shopping, cyclists, interesting cafes, the Anne Frank House, the Heineken Brewery, and yes, the notorious red light district. Not many people venture outside the city during a stopover, but one of our favourite day trips is from Amsterdam. We always try to do it on a Wednesday, so we catch the Edam cheese market show.

De Huisman Windmill exterior and interior grinding spices. Clog machine at work and the final products.
Zaanse Schans
Our twenty minute early morning trip to Zaandam starts after a good breakfast at our centrally located hotel in Amsterdam. On the way, you can enjoy the beautiful Dutch countryside including dikes and plots of land reclaimed from the water, called polders. Starting in the late 16th century, the Zaandam and the Zaan river area were important wood milling regions during the “Dutch Golden Age” with thousands of saw windmills. In the 19th century, the area became a leader of the “Industrial Age” in the Netherlands.
Starting in 1961, the Zaanse Schans was turned into an open air museum with windmills and buildings from the 18th and 19th centuries. Various wooden houses, barns, shops, warehouses and windmills were transported here starting in 1961. The buildings along with traditional farmsteads, paths, ditches and fields depict how village life was like during that prosperous time.
When we arrive at the Zaanse Schans parking lot, you will undoubtably smell chocolate from the nearby cacao processing factories. Entrance to the Zaansee Schans is free, but some of the workshops and windmills located throughout the grounds are museums and require an entrance fee. You can purchase a ticket to have access to all the museums.
One of the first buildings you will see on arrival is the Kooijman Souvenirs & Clogs Wooden Shoe Workshop. Here you can see a wooden clog machine demonstration. Afterwards, wander throughout the site checking out the bakery, fisherman’s house, weavers house, clock house, merchant house, cheese house, pewter house, pancake house and see how vats and barrels are made at the cooperage. With a little breeze, you can see the sails of the windmills slowly turning while the inner workings churn away. The windmills saw wood or mill oil, flower, spices or pigments to dye cloth. Some windmills allow visitors to climb up to the deck via narrow stairs for a nice view of the river and the area.
The Zaans Museum, located by the parking area, opened in 1998, and contains clothing and artifacts from the area. At its Verkade Experience you can see original chocolate and biscuit factory machines from the early 20th century at work. The museum also has a café and shop.

Traditional houses that are now workshops and museums. Like the Catharina Hoeve Cheese House.
Edam
Another short 20 minute drive, and we reach Edam, which is famous for its cheese market that started in1520. Edam cheese is round with a flattened top and bottom and is coated with a red paraffin wax which allowed it to age well and not spoil on long voyages. Its unique taste plus the lack of spoilage made it extremely attractive for exporting throughout the world. The market was closed in 1922 when cheese began to be made in factories rather than by local farms.
At the original market, farmers would bring their cheese using horse drawn cart or by boat. Once they arrived, the cheese carriers, who wore different colored hats depending on which cheese guild they belonged to, would load the product onto wooden barrows. Once the barrow was loaded, the carriers placed carry straps over their shoulders and walked the precious cargo to the cheese tasters. The tasters would drill a core sample from the cheese and based on the exterior wax, smell, taste and other factors began to bargain the price with the seller using a series of shouts and hand claps. When the price was settled the cheese was taken to the weighing house to determine the final amount to be paid.
Every Wednesday in the summer from 10:30 to 12:30, the town re-enacts the hustle, and bustle of the market at the Jan van Nieuwenhuizen Square. The colorful market includes many family members, including children, wearing traditional costumes, dresses and clogs plus kiosks selling cheese. Throughout the performance, horse carts and boats arrive, cheese carriers scurry at a comical pace and bargain shouts and hand slaps can be heard. So visitors understand everything that is happening, there is a person on a microphone explaining the entire process. It’s quite interesting and fun to witness.

The Edam cheese market square, unloading the boats, cheese carriers and girls in traditional costumes.
Smoked Eels
Next, we will travel from Edam to the seaside fishing village of Volendam to visit a local smokehouse that was founded in 1856. Smoked eels at one time were an important staple food in the Netherlands but recently a drop in the eel population and the resulting price increase has made it a delicacy. Today, the 5th and 6th generations of the Smits’ family keep their family’s secret fish smoking process and traditions alive. The smoked eel is their specialty and during the eel fishing season the entire family is involved in the cutting, gouging, skinning, digging and filleting of the eels. The Paviljoen Smit-Bokkum offers private tours of the smokehouse to introduce people to the traditional eel fishing, processing and smoking activities. In addition to eel, they smoke salmon, dorado and sea bass using pine wood. The eel is delicious and at their restaurant you can try various local dishes. The location also has a shop and a small Palingsound (eel sound) Museum dedicated to Volendam’s unique and famous pop music.

The Paviljoen Smit-Bokkum, our guide with smoked eels, smoked fish and a fish display in Volendam.
Volendam
Volendam, once a simple catholic fishing village, is now Holland’s best-known seaside town and is visited by millions annually. The Volendam Catholic fishermen had their own typical costumes and dialect. The town’s boardwalk, once home to fishermen’s wooden shacks, is now adorned with colorful wooden houses, tourist shops, cafes and restaurants. As you walk through the town and its shops, you will see locals wearing the traditional clothing. If you explore the village’s narrow lanes in the old neighborhoods, you can still see some of the old fishermens’ houses.
There used to be hundreds of vessels at one time when Volendam’s fishing fleet had access to the North Sea, but after closing its access, the harbour contains only a few fishing vessels doing fresh water fishing on Markermeer lake. Nowadays, leisure boats and the ferries that go to the nearby island of Marken occupy the majority of the harbour space.
Some restaurants offer tasty local seafood dishes and cool drinks on patios overlooking the harbour. For a quick lunch, food stands and take away restaurants sell kibbeling (battered and fried fish nuggets), herring, shrimp and of course smoked eel.
A visit to the Volendams Museum provides an interesting look into the town’s history, costumes, traditions and art. If you have time, you may consider taking the Volendam Marken Express boat to Marken.

Volendam’s boardwalk with shops and restaurants. The harbour area with leisure and ferry boats.
Cheese Farm
On the way back to Amsterdam, and a short distance from Volendam, we will stop at the Henri Willig Jacob’s Hoeve cheese farm. The staff wear traditional clothing, and they give a short introduction and demonstration of the cheese making process. The number of cow goat and sheep cheese varieties is quite overwhelming but very interesting to sample. Some flavours you might encounter include truffle, cumin, pesto, red chili pepper, coconut, pepper, rosemary and garlic. They are all for sale in various sizes along with other Dutch souvenirs and foods. You can also see the cows in their new stable especially designed for the organic farm’s herd of Jerseys.

Henri Willig Jacob’s Hoeve entrance, the cheese making demonstration and the many cheeses for sale.
It is only twenty minutes back to Amsterdam and as you enjoy the countryside you can decide on what great restaurant you will go to tonight. I think an authentic Indonesian “rijsttafel” or rice table would be a great way to end the day. The rice table was brought back to the Netherlands from the Dutch East Indies where it was created by the Dutch as a festive way to showcase their colony’s diverse and multi-ethnic Indonesian cuisine. The rice is accompanied by a multitude of small meat, vegetarian and condiment dishes that may include spring rolls, satay meat skewers, curries, fish, boiled eggs, spicy sauces, peanut sauces, vegetables, and fried bananas. It is great for sampling different tastes and for sharing. You can find Indonesian fast food and restaurants throughout Amsterdam, but a place like Tujuh Maret or Ron Gastrobar Indonesia offering a rice table is definitely something you should experience.
Explore Europe With Us
Azorcan Global Sport, School and Sightseeing Tours have taken thousands to Europe on their custom group tours since 1994. Visit azorcan.net to see all our custom tour possibilities for your group of 26 or more. Individuals can join our “open” signature sport, sightseeing and sport fan tours including our popular Canada hockey fan tours to the World Juniors. At azorcan.net/media you can read our newsletters and listen to our podcasts.
Images compliments of Paul Almeida and Azorcan Tours. This article was original published in March 2021.
Business
Cannabis Legalization Is Starting to Look Like a Really Dumb Idea

Back in March 2024, I wrote about some early indications that Canada’s legalization of cannabis was, on balance, causing more harm than good. Well it looks like we’ve now moved past “early indications” and entered the “nervously searching for the exit” stage.
The new concerns follow the recent release of a couple of groundbreaking Canadian studies: Cannabis Use Disorder Emergency Department Visits and Hospitalizations and 5-Year Mortality which found evidence relating cannabis use to early death, and Convergence of Cannabis and Psychosis on the Dopamine System which describes a possible biological mechanism linking cannabis use to psychosis.
Canadian governments had very little moral liability for the medical consequences of cannabis use before they legalized it in 2018. However, legalization predictably led to a near doubling of consumption. In 2012, according to Statistics Canada, just 12.2 percent of Canadians 15 and over had used cannabis in the previous 12 months. By 2022, that number had climbed to 22 percent – representing nearly seven million Canadians. Cases of cannabis use disorder (CUD) treated in Ontario hospitals increased from just 456 in 2006 to 3,263 in 2021.
The government’s decision to legalize the drug¹ has arguably placed millions of additional people at risk of serious health outcomes.
Let’s take a look at the new evidence. The mortality study used hospital care and mortality data for more than eleven million Ontario residents. The researchers were given meaningful access to raw data from multiple government sources and were apparently compliant with all appropriate privacy regulations. They tracked 107,103 individuals who, between 2006 and 2021, were treated in an Ontario hospital for cannabis use disorder.
The main control group used for statistical comparison was all Ontarians. And the secondary control group was made up of individuals with incident hospital-based care for other substance use disorders, like alcohol, opioids, stimulants.
The primary outcome tracked by the study was all-cause mortality. The secondary outcome was mortality subdivided into alcohol poisoning, opioid poisoning, poisoning by other drugs, trauma, intentional self-harm, cancer, infection, diseases of the circulatory system, respiratory system, and gastrointestinal system.
The researchers adjusted for age, sex, neighborhood income quintile, immigrant status, and rurality (urban vs rural residence). They also controlled for comorbid mental health and care for substance use during the previous 3 years.
In other words, this looks like a well-constructed retrospective study based on excellent data resources.
What did they discover? People who received hospital-based care for cannabis use disorder were six times more likely to die early than the general population. And those CUD-related deaths lead to an average 1.8 life-years lost. After adjusting for demographic factors and other conditions, the added risk of early death was still three times greater than the general population. (Although people with CUD incidents were less likely to die young than those with other substance abuse disorders.)
CUD incidents were associated with increased risks for suicide (9.7 times higher), trauma (4.6 times higher), opioid poisoning (5.3 times higher), and cardiovascular and respiratory diseases (2 times higher).
The Convergence of Cannabis and Psychosis study was performed in and around London, Ontario. This one is a bit beyond my technical range, but they claim that:
Elevated dopamine function in a critical SN/VTA subregion may be associated with psychosis risk in people with CUD. Cannabis was associated with the hypothesized final common pathway for the clinical expression of psychotic symptoms.
Which does indicate that there may be more connecting cannabis to overall harm than just social or economic influences.
I’m not suggesting that the government should restore the original ban on cannabis. Like alcohol prohibition, the moment when that might have been possible is now long past. But I am wondering why politicians find it so difficult to wait for even minimal scientific evidence before driving the country over the cliff?
Business
‘Experts’ Warned Free Markets Would Ruin Argentina — Looks Like They Were Dead Wrong

From the Daily Caller News Foundation
The current state of Argentina’s economy is a far cry from what “experts” predicted when they warned that President Javier Milei’s pro-free market leadership would devastate the country.
The chainsaw-wielding libertarian rose to power on promises to slash government spending, implement free-market policies and lift strict currency controls to rescue a nation crippled by inflation, debt and entrenched poverty. Though the pundit class warned that Milei’s policies would spark an economic collapse, the results so far have been a rebuke to those warnings.
Just days before the November 2023 presidential election, 108 economists from around the world signed an open letter claiming that Milei’s “simple solutions” were “likely to cause more devastation in the real world in the short run, while severely reducing policy space in the long run.”
“His policies are poorly thought through. Far from building a consensus, he would struggle to govern,” The Economist’s editorial board wrote in a September 2023 piece describing “Javier Milei’s dangerous allure.”
Well over a year into Milei’s presidency, Argentina is showing its strongest economic performance in years. The country’s gross domestic product (GDP) jumped 7.7% in April compared to the same month in 2024, far exceeding expectations.
The GDP is expected to rise by 5.2% in 2025, compared to declines of 1.3% in 2024 and 1.9% in 2023, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
Inflation, a long-standing hallmark of Argentina’s economic dysfunction, dropped to 1.5% between April and May, reaching a five-year low. Annual inflation has plunged from 160.9% in November 2023 — just before Milei took office — to 43.5% in May.
Meanwhile, poverty rates have also declined sharply, falling from 52.9% in the first half of 2024 to 38.1% in the second half of the year.
Argentina’s rental housing supply also increased by 212% between December 2023 and June 2024, after Milei repealed the country’s rent control laws, according to the Cato Institute.
“Against the background of a difficult legacy of macroeconomic imbalances, Argentina has embarked on an ambitious reform process, starting with an unprecedented upfront fiscal adjustment. Reforms have started to pay off. Inflation has receded and the economy is set for a strong recovery,” the OECD noted in its new analysis of the Argentinian economy. “Maintaining the reform momentum will be key to restore confidence, boost investment and productivity growth.”
Milei — a self-described anarcho-capitalist — has been an ardent supporter of President Donald Trump’s efforts to downsize the U.S. government, including the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE) push to cut spending.
“I come from a country that bought all of those stupid ideas that went from being one of the most affluent countries in the world to one to one of the [poorest],” Milei said in a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2024. “If you don’t fight for your freedom, they will drag you into misery … Don’t surrender.”
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