Sami Koljonen, Reporter at The Toronto Observer

Articles by Sami Koljonen

Toronto Arts & Life, Features December 8, 2016

Insects might be sushi of the future

At her street food outlet near Kensington Market, Cookie Martinez prepares empanadas each work day. There is chicken and beef for the empanadas.

But sometimes, in the bread part of the empanadas, she adds mealworm powder in the dough, cricket salt, and whole crickets in the filling.

Her customers can plainly see the torsos and heads of the crickets.

At Martinez’s outlet, Gustavo Holloway, 26, from Chile, held a whole cricket between his fingers. Holloway ordered “cricket snax,” a little box filled with insects.

“This is like the movie Lion King. Hakuna matata,” Holloway said.

East York Toronto Features, News November 8, 2016

Veteran recounts family tradition of service in the military

The man after whom James LeRoy is named, was wounded in the last month of the Great War.

“He was in a lot of pain,” LeRoy said of his grandfather.

James A. LeRoy, an 18-year-old from a farm near Belleville, Ont., served and was wounded in the second battle of Cambrai, in France, in October 1918.

“He had never experienced … combat and the life in a trench wasn’t easy,” his grandson added.

James LeRoy Jr. serves as chaplain with the Royal Canadian Legion, Branch 11, in East York, where members staged a parade and remembrance service on Nov. 6.