As Canada’s 150^th birthday approaches it is interesting to see what is going on in South Western Ontario. There is so much happening in the area, so many different and interesting activities, that I have no idea what I am going to do for the day to celebrate!

Grand Bend and Area

There are many activities happening in the area this coming Canada Day. A few include Forest Kiwanis Canada Day 150 Celebration and Grand Bend Canada Day Celebrations.  At Forest’s celebration you will have the chance to watch a parade starting at 1:30 pm, see the unveiling of the new memorial carving, and enjoy a BBQ and live entertainment until the fireworks at dusk. The Grand Bend Canada Day Celebrations will have live music at the Rotary Community Stage and then fireworks starting at 10 pm.

KW and Area

This Canada Day there will be fireworks being held in multiple locations throughout the KW region. A few locations include Bingemans, Columbia Lake Fields, Riverside Park, Kitchener City Hall, Norm S. Hill Park, and Schmidt Park. Other activities include:

• Canada Day in DTK: Kitchener City Hall will host free country music including the River Town Saints and James Barker Band as well as food vendors and fireworks off of City Hall.
• Canada Day at the Waterloo Region Museum: Learn about how people lived and ate in 1914 and enjoy games such as croquet and horseshoes.
• Joseph Schneider’s House: This July 1st also celebrates the 201^st anniversary of the building of Joseph Schneider house. Celebrate with cake at 2 pm on Saturday and free admission for the weekend.
• University of Waterloo Canada Day Celebration: The award winning children’s performers Bobs & Lolo will perform for the kids and then Tom Cochrane with Red Rider for the adults, followed by a firework display!
• Cambridge Canada Day Celebrations: There will be live entertainment, a parade, Children Area and Carnival, and fireworks.
• McDougall Cottage Canada Day Celebration: Here you can celebrate the Scottish-Canadian heritage with tours, treats, crafts, and music.
• SteamFest 150: Take a ride on the 100 year old steam train, starting and ending in St. Jacobs. Enjoy jigger rides and steam cooked food as well!

This isn’t all--There are a ton of other activities happening in the area as well!

London and Area

In London there is a large variety of cultural and Canadian celebrations throughout the city and surrounding area. A few I personally found interesting include the Sesquifest, Dominion Day at Fanshawe Pioneer Village, and the Confederation Party.  Here is a summary of these events and a few more:

• Fireworks: Some locations you can find fireworks include White Oaks Parks, Harris Park, Argyle Arena, Prince Andrew School Park (Lucan), Main Beach (Port Stanely), Pinafore Park (St. Thomas), Lake Whittaker Conservation Area.
• Canada Day at Harris Park: This gathering includes a First Nations gathering, Canada birthday cake, exhibits honoring famous Canadians, and fireworks.
• Sesquifest: If your Canada Day is already packed like mine, this is, luckily, a 5 day celebration in downtown London. Here you can experience a 360-degree projection drone, go ice skating, see iconic Canadian headliners and as always, enjoy food and beverages.
• Dominion Day: Dress up in your Sunday best and party the old fashioned way. Enjoy cake, lemonade and other activities at the Pioneer Village that bring the past to life!
• Confederation Party: Party like its 1867, 1917, and 1967! Enjoy carnival games and historically themed performances, tour the Eldon house, and enjoy live music.
• South London Canada Day: At this celebration you are able to leave your hand print on a Canada 150 banner, have fun in a photo booth, enjoy food and end the night with a drone light show and fireworks.
• Canada Day at Delaware Speedway: Go and watch the APC series, Ontario Legends Series, Open Wheel Modifieds, and fireworks!
• Canada Day Train ride: This is a round trip scenic rail ride starting in Port Stanely.

Norfolk County

In Norfolk County things kick off in Delhi on Friday, June 30, at 7pm. At this time the Tobacco Kiln will receive its official heritage designation. Throughout the evening, you are able to enjoy a mix of folk and bluegrass music and a BBQ.

On Canada Day, there is a ton of things happening as well:

• Port Dover Celebrations: Go and see a soap box derby, a parade of boats, a parade, live music, food, and of course, fireworks!
• Canada Day Car Show: Start your morning right with a Pre-50s-themed classic car show being held at the Ramblin Road Brewery Farm.
• Open House Farm Party: Visit Wholesome Pickins in Delhi for a day filled with food tasting, bouncy castles, face painting, and more.
• Otterville Canada 150 Celebrations: This is a 3 day celebration that includes BBQ’s, farmers market, bubble soccer, baseball, a chicken wing ding, canoe races, a rubber ducky race, and of course, fireworks!
• Port Rowan: In Port Rowan you can enjoy hot dogs and cake as well as a melody of live music. Then venture down to Backus Heritage Conservation and take a tour of the Backhouse Grist Mill for free!

Tillsonburg

In Tillsonburg you can never miss that Canada Day pancake breakfast and farmer’s market in the morning and the model ship regatta afterward. From there you can enjoy the Annandale NHS fun fair, the classic car show, the parade, the “Back to the 50’s” concert. Then to end the night, you guessed it, FIREWORKS!

Woodstock

Last but not least, we have Woodstock’s Canada Day Celebrations. Enjoy the crafters alley, exhibitions and demonstrations, the Lion’s Club beverage garden, and Canada Day CUPCAKES. Oh and end the night with a spectacular fireworks display!

Phew, now that those are all listed out… I have to decide what to do with myself this Canada Day! There are so many amazing activities and events going on to celebrate Canada’s 150^th birthday that it will be difficult to choose what to do. Either way, I know I am going to enjoy some birthday cake, fireworks, and all of the Canadian pride and joy!

Sources:

http://www.lambtonshores.ca/en/Calendar/events/Details.aspx?Id=84be8cd1-347e-4b49-b40f-61b4094573e6
http://www.todocanada.ca/canada-day-fireworks-festivals/
https://www.norfolktourism.ca/events/
http://www.tillsonburg.ca/Modules/News/index.aspx?newsId=92e9cd20-3a90-4f82-913b-f5f15d3a4152
https://www.cityofwoodstock.ca/en/visiting-woodstock/canada-150---july.asp

I guess the best place to start would be what is eSports? This term, although I have a gamer brother, was a fairly unknown term to me until recently. I knew my brother often watched gamers that live streamed themselves playing on platforms like YouTube and Twitch, but I was extremely unaware of how popular it has become to watch people compete in video games.

So what is it exactly?

ESports are organized, multiplayer video games. Over the past few years, or decade, this concept has blown up, so much so that being a professional gamer is a viable option as a career. The interest in eSports has drastically changed, to a point where watching eSports is just as popular for millennials as watching traditional sports like hockey. With the growth and interest of watching different players or teams compete, you are starting to see arenas fill for these tournaments, and I don’t mean your small town arena. Just last summer, an LoL (league of Legends) tournament was held in Toronto… at the ACC. This tournament brought in just as many people as a Raptors game would. In other words, more than 15 000 diehard fans attend the tournament and even more watched the live stream.

So where did it all begin?

The earliest documented video game competition occurred in 1972 at Stanford, playing the game Spacewar.  From there you saw more and more video game competitions starting. Notably, in the 90’s you saw many Nintendo game- based competitions.

This idea of turning video games into a live multiplayer competition exploded in the 00’s. Now you see the phenomenon of eSports in sold out arenas. Instead of having local competitions, you see global tournaments that are broadcasted out to millions.  Being a professional gamer has become a viable, well-paying career that leads to sponsorships, ownerships of teams and winning prize money at tournaments. And who doesn’t want to do what they love and enjoy!!

What’s next in the world of eSports?

 With game streaming sites like Twitch raking in close to 10 million daily active users, we knew it wouldn’t be long before network television wanted a piece of that pie. NBC just announced that they will be working with the FACEIT online gaming platform to host a 2v2 Rocket League tournament, with a winning prize of $100,000. For those of you that don’t know, Rocket League is a game that was developed by Psyonix, and is basically a soccer game played in cars! Although it might sound dumb, it’s extremely addictive and its ever-growing popularity proves that fact. NBC will be hosting regional tournaments in America and European regions and will end with the 2-day grand finals. You will be able to watch this tournament in late August on a variety of NBC Universal and Comcast networks and internet platforms. The tournament will also be presented across live streaming, video on demand, and linear platforms.

It’s interesting to think of where the world of eSports will go in the future, and how it could one day overtake traditional sports in popularity. A word of advice: if you don’t have what it takes to be the next Gretsky or Bautista, try picking up a controller instead!

Yesterday we were proud to attend the London Technology Showcase in London, Ontario. The event brought together over 25 IT vendors including D-Link, Barracuda, Cisco, Nutanix, Dell, Lenovo, Fortinet, Jolera and other big names of the tech world. The goal of the showcase was to educate clients on available technologies and discuss how the partner organizations can deploy technology within their businesses.

The event included 36 featured seminars that focused on IT-based solutions, such as WIFI and surveillance measures, security appliances, uninterrupted power solutions and more. We were excited to lead two informative seminars: “Building Redundancy and Reliability using Execulink’s Hybrid Bonded Internet”, and “Tools and Tricks for Managing a Secure WAN.”

Alex Beilby, Senior Sales Engineer @ Execulink

We discussed how our unique Hybrid Bonded Internet solution could deliver a faster, stronger, more flexible internet solution to businesses by fusing the benefits of multiple Internet links and carriers into one. Our second seminar reviewed the importance of having network security, and the necessary tools that help you optimize your connections and keep your business’ data safe.

We wanted to take this opportunity to thank everyone who attended the event and our seminars in particular. We always enjoy having the chance to educate and inform our local businesses and partners about how our services might be able to help them make a safer, more connected business. Until next time, London!

For more information on our Hybrid Bonded solution, click here.

You may have heard of something called phishing, but don’t confuse this with your dad’s cottage hobby; what you catch from phishing is not near as exciting. Phishing is a type of scam that criminals are using to steal money from you. They accomplish this by installing malicious software on your computer and by stealing your personal data.

So what does a phishing email look like? Here are some common things that you can spot in these fraudulent emails:

The “From” field might come from an email address you don’t normally communication with. The email can be from someone outside of your work organization and not related to your job responsibilities. The sender’s email can look like it’s from a suspicious domain. It could be an unexpected or unusual email with an embedded hyperlink or an attachment from someone you haven’t communicated with recently.

The “To” field might include a mix of seemingly random people from your organization or a list of unrelated addresses. You might have been cc’d on an email to one or more people and you don’t personally know any of the other people.

The “Subject” field could be a subject line that is irrelevant or does not match the message content. The email message is in reply to something you never requested or sent.

There could be an attachment that was not expected or makes no sense to the email message.  A big red flag is the hyperlink that is attached. To test the legitimacy of a link, hover over the hyperlink. If the address looks strange or is for a different website, that’s a bad sign.

The hyperlink or content may also be a misspelled version of a known website—for example, using facebonk.com instead of facebook.com.

If the hyperlink seems illogical, forward, or asks you to look at embarrassing or compromising pictures of someone you know, these are all red flags.

If the hyperlink is threatening in nature and asks you to click on a link or attachment to avoid a negative consequence, that’s also a red flag. However, it could sound very beneficial as well: “Click here to get a free TV”. Basically, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. .

The email could be full of grammatical or spelling errors.

These emails can look like they are from a legitimate company or website or they could look like they came from your CEO.  They might use logos, names of companies, names of departments or job titles that appear to be real. Check if the company name is spelled correctly. Also check if the email is coming from a name you personally know, whether the email address is actually their correct email.

Do Not:

• Open any email attachments that end with: exe, .scr, .bat, .com, or other executable files you do not recognize.
• Click an embedded link in a message without hovering your mouse over it first to check the URL.
• Respond or reply. It’s better to just delete the email.
• “Unsubscribe” – it’s better to delete the email then to deal with the security risk.

Do:

• Check the email “From” field to validate the sender is actually someone you know or from a correct email address.
• Check for a “double-extended’ scam attachment. A text file named “safe.txt” is safe but a file called “safe.txt.exe” is not.
• Report any suspicious emails to your IT department.
• Report any suspicious emails to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre.

Trust your gut if the email seems odd; question it. If it looks like it came from someone you know, speak to the person in a different form of communication, maybe face to face or by phone to confirm the legitimacy of the email. Speak to your IT department before you click on the link or attachment. When in doubt, just delete the email.

It’s awful when it happens, but with these tips and tricks, you can stay safe from the nasty phishers out there. It’s more important than ever to say vigilant about your online security and stay skeptical whenever confronted with suspicious emails. We hope these tips help keep you and your family safe online!

Reference: KnowBe4, Inc.