Oxford shoes

University town


Oxford is a much older street than its modern apartment buildings would indicate. It was first laid out in 1853-55 by John Arnold and James Lukin Robinson, Toronto land developers who came to Stratford in anticipation of the railway boom.


The Grand Trunk Railway arrived in Stratford in 1856, and Oxford Street was only a few blocks north of the main GTR line to Toronto. Some of the other Arnold and Robinson streets were Front, Bay, Well, Queen, Trinity, College, King, High, Regent and Frederick, all of which were close to the railway lines and yards.


The name Oxford is taken from the Town of Oxford, where England‘s oldest university is located. Situated in the heart of southern England, Oxford was said to be a favorite place for William Shakespeare during his travels to London.

Around the world, there are some 32 cities, towns and counties named after Oxford, as well as hundreds of streets.

And let's not forget forget Oxford shoes, and the Oxford English Dictionary which sets the world standard for English language. There are nearly half a million words recorded in 13 volumes. By Stanford Dingman

Phyllis Hinz and Lamont Mackay

The Cooking Ladies


Phyllis Hinz and Lamont Mackay...how did these two  university friends with no experience in the food business become successful restaurant owners and cookbook publishers?


They quit their teaching and banking jobs to travel the world, but ran out of money before  leaving North America. They operated a hotel kitchen and saved just enough for a nine-month, 25,000-kilometre adventure in a Volkswagen van, to sample the cuisine and culture of Europe. By the time they returned, they were hooked on food and travel. They borrowed money to buy a restaurant and they were having so much fun that one restaurant led to another, and another, and a catering company. When a young business partner unexpectedly  died, they sold everything and bought a motorhome and travelled for nine years on the highways and back roads of North America to see where life would take them. This led them to spin-off careers as food columnists, cookbook authors, travel writers, TV personalities, event speakers, and restaurant consultants. 


Phyllis Hinz and Lamont Mackay are known across North America as “The Cooking Ladies” .

They have sold over 70,000 copies of their ten cookbooks, written a regular travel and culinary column for 23 years for RV Lifestyle Magazine and written three books about Stratford.  * For more of their facinating stories and  accomplishments see www.thecookingladies.com 

Phyllis Hinz was born in Stratford, Ontario, and grew up on a farm in Perth County. She attended Mitchell District High School, Wilfrid Laurier University, and has a Fine Arts degree in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia. One of her fondest memories is when she travelled and lived full-time in a motorhome with her best friend, Lamont Mackay. 


Lamont Mackay was born in Vancouver, British Columbia. She graduated from the University of British Columbia and taught high school English. She met Phyllis Hinz, her business partner,  when they both took the same poetry course at university. Lamont and Phyllis operated food service establishments in Ontario for many years, before selling everything to travel and write. In 2018, they settled in Stratford.  Lamont died in 2021. 

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The Oxford Shakespeare

The Oxford Shakespeare offers authoritative texts from leading scholars in editions designed to interpret and illuminate the plays for modern readers. The plays have been published individually as plays and in a complete works edition.

Oxford University Press first published a complete works of Shakespeare in 1891. Entitled The Complete Works, it was a single-volume modern-spelling edition edited by William James Craig. That 1891 text is not directly related to the series known as the Oxford Shakespeare today, which is freshly re-edited.

The complete works

The Oxford Shakespeare, which includes a Complete Works edited by John Jowett, William Montgomery, Gary Taylor and Stanley Wells, appeared in 1986. It includes all of Shakespeare's plays and poems, as well as a biographical introduction and a single-page introduction for each work. There are no explanatory notes, but there is a glossary.

Two related books accompany the main volume: William Shakespeare: A Textual Companion provides comprehensive data on editorial choices for scholars of the plays, and William Shakespeare: An old-spelling edition presents the plays in their original spelling. The Oxford Complete Works differs from other Shakespeare editions in attempting to present the text as it was first performed, rather than as it was first printed. 

This resulted in many controversial choices: for example, presenting Hamlet with several famous speeches relegated to appendices on the grounds that Shakespeare added them after the original performances; presenting two separate texts of King Lear due to the drastic differences between the two extant texts; and changing the name of Falstaff in Henry IV Part One to 'Oldcastle' due to historical evidence that this name was used in the first performances even though it never survived to print.

The Oxford Complete Works was also the first to emphasize Shakespeare's collaborative work. It also broke with tradition in presenting Shakespeare's works in chronological order, rather than dividing them by genre.

In 2005, a second edition of the Complete Works was produced. It adds a full text of Sir Thomas More (edited by John Jowett), which may contain passages by Shakespeare, and Edward III (edited by William Montgomery), another play believed to be created partly by Shakespeare.

Somewhat controversially, the 2016 edition credits Christopher Marlowe as an equal co-author of Shakespeare for the three Henry VI plays, though some scholars doubt any actual collaboration.  The first two editions of the Norton Shakespeare, published by W. W. Norton, were largely based on the Oxford text, but departed from some of its decisions.  Source: The Oxford Shakespeare