Transcendence (2)

This scultpure, "Transcendence," by Jack Harman is located on the campus of 

the University of British Columbia, outside of what used to be the faculty club.

Transcendence (1)

Located on the Loyola campus of Concordia University, outside of the Hingston Hall residence, is Walter Fuhrer's sculpture, "Transcendence."

Winter at Cote des Neiges

All's Good

Painted on the side of a former IGA grocery store next to the Montreal West train station and just a block from where Artie Gold used to live; this building was demolished last summer and condos are being built at this location. 

January 15th, 2011: This is the birthday of two dear old friends: Veeto, my friend from Oxford Avenue days and Hoolahan's flats, from the early 1950s, who lives in Australia, and my old friend Artie Gold who I met in the early 1970s. God bless both of them. How dull and boring life would be without people like Veeto and Artie, they bring life and enthusiasm and spirit to everyone they meet. It was Veeto who told me that "LG" means "Life is good," so when I saw this painted sign I thought of her. Artie would have been 64 years old today; he is still missed by all of us who knew him. Coincidentally, Veeto (who never met Artie) knew Mary Brown, Artie's companion on Lorne Crescent, when Mary worked at a summer camp years before Mary and Artie met. Veeto and Artie are the kind of people I love, people who embrace life and who are bigger than life, people who take chances and sing, loudly, as they walk along the street, or who just have to stop at every second store to buy something to eat. These are people who remind us that life is meant for living, for creating, for loving, that life is not to be lived in fear, or for money, or for what we can get. These are people who changed my life for the better!

Archetypal Patterns in Poetry

October 2012

In an article, “On the relation of analytical psychology to poetic art,” Dr. C.G. Jung has set forth an hypothesis in regard to the psychological significance of poetry. The special emotional significance possessed by certain poems—a significance going beyond any definite meaning conveyed—he attributes to the stirring in the reader’s mind, within or beneath his conscious response, of unconscious forces which he terms “primordial images,” or archetypes. These archetypes he describes as “psychic residua of numberless experiences of the same type,” experiences which have happened not to the individual but to his ancestors, and of which the results are inherited in the structure of the brain, a priori determinants of individual experience.

From Archetypal Patterns in Poetry: Psychological studies in imagination, by Maud Bodkin, Vintage Books, New York, 1958; first published in 1934

Magnan's Tavern, Point St. Charles, Montreal

This is a popular restaurant just off St. Patrick in Pointe St. Charles.

Holy Wells, Montreal (late August, 2010)

Last summer, I wrote here about holy wells in Ireland and in Montreal. Here is the effort of the City of Montreal to deal with a natural occurring well in Loyola Park, in western N.D.G. The bottom photograph shows the site of the well, it's on the far left towards the top. Yearly run-off from the well, or underground stream, has caused the asphalt to lift on the footpath to Fielding Avenue (not shown, but visible in a Google street view of "Fielding and Doherty, Montreal"). This neighbourhood, Notre Dame de Grace, has many underground streams, as do other areas of Montreal. It's not so long ago that this was country...

Update on 10 September 2018: The St-Pierre River, which has been covered with asphalt and buildings, runs under different parts of NDG; it originates in Old Montreal and ends at the Meadowbrook Golf Course in Cote St-Luc. Wouldn't it be great if we could see parts of this river restored aboveground? Re. this experiment in Loyola Park, it failed because some people were afraid it would cause disease as they believed mosquitoes would breed in the water; however, it also dried up and I suspect the amount of water in this experimental area was a lot less than originally estimated... SM