TAG :: Toronto Area Geocachers » In The News

Dec 13 2010

Several Toronto area geocachers were interviewed for a new local magazine, Journey ON!. The magazine features articles about travel and adventure in Ontario. northernpenguin (yup, that’s me), teamvoyagr and chris-mouse were interviewed at the BFL Boot Camp event last October.

The caches I referred to in the article are the Tour de Matchedash series, and Languages.
The earthcache is Juicepig’s Sudbury Astrobleme

You can view the magazine online here, or skip right to the article text here.
The magazine is also embedded below, if you can view Adobe Flash content:

Aug 25 2010

Opencaching, which has been around in Europe for some time is an alternative to Geocaching.com. The site has launched in the United States as of August 18, 2010. The site, opencaching.us is openly promoting their availability to USA geocachers. Not sure if they are lumping Canada into their USA site, or if they plan an opencaching.ca site in the future (right now that’s domain parked).

Some of the differences on the Opencaching site include non-anonymous reviewers and the ability to post virtual caches. At the time this article was written, the site has 86 active cache listings (versus 1,167,584 on Geocaching.com). It will be interesting to see if the site grows, and how well it scales with no membership fees or other charges to use their service.

Aug 25 2010

Just a few days after a man took a pipe-bomb like geocache into a Timmins police department, Peel Regional Police were dispatched to deal with a film canister in a tree outside the Wal*Mart corporate office in Mississauga.

The geocache was placed in a small spruce tree in the employee parking lot for the office, and this is an area the general public is normally not expected to be. Since the cache was placed without the property owner’s permission, they didn’t realize it was a geocache and called in the authorities.

This is being discussed on the Groundspeak Forums, and the Central Ontario Geocachers forums

Please remember to obtain permission when hiding geocaches, particularly when private property is involved. Also, when hiding a cache in an urban area, you should use a clear container so it is obvious the cache contents are harmless.

From an internal Wal*Mart memo:

11:37 am Subject: IMPORTANT NOTICE: Please Read
Early this morning an Associate reported seeing a suspicious package attached to one of the trees in the East parking lot.. As a precautionary measure the corporate security team contacted Peel Police. The Police have quadrant off a portion of the East parking lot and are requesting that all Associates remain away from this area. If for an emergency reason you need to access your vehicle please contact corporate security or your People Manager. We will let you know when this issue is resolved.

1:35 pm Subject: FW: IMPORTANT NOTICE: Update
Please be advised that the Peel Police have dealt with the suspicious item left in the East parking lot. The item turned out to be a GPS based scavenger hunt game. The item was destroyed by the Police and minor debris may be found in the parking lot. We do not believe any cars were damaged as a result of this action. If you have any concerns relating to your vehicle please contact Corporate Security or your People Manager. We will investigate how the item got to this location. We do not know whether any of our Associates had any connection with this item however, this event is an opportunity to remind all that no one should leave any packages unattended in public areas on Wal-Mart property.

Aug 21 2010

Today the Globe and Mail is running an article in the Toronto Section about Geocaching in the City of Toronto. If you buy the paper, look on Page M5. There’s quite a bit of useful information about caching in our city in the article…. and TAG is featured as well.

Geocachers Find The City’s Hidden Charms – Globe and Mail, 21 August

Jul 20 2010

Letterboxing, the activity that started out well before geocaching (or even GPS). The activity is still going strong, and today was featured in a Toronto Star Article. Check it out, and keep that in mind next time you forget your GPS but still want the thrill of a cache hunt