Huntsville has the recipe for G8 success: Add garlic

HUNTSVILLE, Ont. – Canada is counting on garlic, known for repelling vampires, to make this town attractive to the world's most powerful people. Hardly amused that next year's G8 meeting at nearby Deerhurst Resort has already been dubbed the Black Fly Summit, organizers are determined to ensure their international guests, including U.S. President Barack Obama, aren't meals for the tiny, ravenous insects.

"What we are doing in Muskoka these days is spreading garlic and it keeps all the bugs away. No, Edward Cullen (of Twilight tales) is nowhere near here," Industry Minister Tony Clement, MP for Parry Sound-Muskoka, told a visitor as he sipped tea in nearby Bracebridge. Clement said the trick is to spray the liquid garlic a couple of weeks before the event "so the whole place doesn't smell" when participants start arriving. "Hey, you are in Muskoka and there are going to be a few bugs, but it is going to be manageable." It's not the bugs – or even the garlic – that are troubling some local residents. Rather, it's the thought of their quaint town of about 20,000 being sealed up like a drum when some 8,000 police and members of the military converge on cottage country for the summit from June 25 to 27.