I have been fascinated by Percy Leggett since I read his obituary in 1965 (see other posts on Leggett on this blog). He was a genuine eccentric and odd ball, the kind of person I like but not necessarily the kind of person I want to know. Here is his grave, at St. Andrews and St. James Cemetery, at 320 Goldwater Road East in Orillia, Ontario.
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| Image from www.findagrave.com |
Here are photos of a Canada Post delivery truck advertising new postage stamps in memory of Leonard Cohen. I have never really been a fan of Leonard Cohen's poetry but I do like some of his songs; Leonard Cohen has written some of the best popular music since 1970. But for a great poem made into a song listen to Patrick Kavanaugh's "Raglan Road", sung by Van Morrison, The Chieftains, The Dubliners, and a few others; what a great lyrical, emotionally moving, and loving poem. It takes a great poet to write about love, unrequited love, romantic love, or sexual love. Cohen is a great song writer, along with Paul Simon, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, and, best of all, Van Morrison. But Cohen is not a great poet, Kavanaugh is a great poet. "Suzanne" is a great song, one of Cohen's better songs, but placed beside Kavanaugh's "Raglan Road", Cohen's "Suzanne is only a good song; it's Patrick Kavanaugh's poem that I keep returning to. Poetry trumps song writing.
Some things stick in one's memory. One event I remember is hearing, when I was a child, my Uncle Alex (Morrissey) saying that someone was as "big as a Beaubien bus". Not until many years later did I discover the origin of this phrase. There were buses on Beaubien Street that were different than other Montreal buses; they were very large trolley buses. I also learned that my Uncle Alex and my Auntie Ivy lived near Beaubien where these buses ran; in the 1930s they lived at 6825 Christopher Columbus (Christophe-Colomb) and in 1938-39 they were living at 1293a Belanger, both are only a few blocks from Beaubien.
Something else of interest is that my aunt and uncle were living in the French-speaking east-end of Montreal, this contradicts the popular idea that English-speaking people didn't venture east passed St. Lawrence Main and French-speaking people didn't venture west passed Blvd St-Laurent, this street was a kind of border between the English and French speaking communities. The fact is, there were a lot of English-speakers in the east end of Montreal, I had other relatives who lived in that part of the city. The east end still has a non-French community. Pierre Elliott Trudeau School is located on Cartier Street, also near Beaubien; it is an English-speaking school but has an excellent English-French bilingual programme and is a part of the English-Montreal School Board (the EMSB).
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| Trolley bus, 1937 |
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| Looking east on Beaubien, Trolly bus 4005 |
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| Trolley bus on Beaubien Street, 1937 |
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| Beaubien Street bus on north-east corner of Christophe Columb and Belanger, 1960s |
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| Trolley bus, 1946-1947 |
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| Trolley buses article, March 23, 1937 |
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| 1950s |
It's about a week before Christmas. Returning from buying groceries I walked to the backyard to check out the garden. I remember a few years ago, in early spring, pushing aside some mulch, that's just fall's leaves raked onto the flower beds, and seeing a plant coming back to life, it already had some new green leaves. Since I know where most of my plants are in the garden it was like seeing an old friend, it was actually a happy occasion and similar to how I feel when seeing honey bees in the garden, I don't generally like insects but I have a love and fondness for honey bees because I was once an amateur beekeeper. Mulch is the way to go if you garden, don't rake and bag and discard those leaves, rake them onto your flower beds. Mulch protects the plants during our very cold winters, just a layer of leaves will save some of your plants from dying; it doesn't cost anything and most gardeners will recommend doing this. Then, as I was taking some photographs of the mulched flower beds (as seen below) I saw a hawk in the cedar hedge at the very rear of the garden. At first I wondered if he was injured, sitting right in the cedar hedge. But he wasn't injured at all, he jumped out, walked a few feet across our neighbour's backyard and then took off into the sky. What a great sight that was. Nature restores the soul, nature returns us to the essentials of life. And that is why we need to protect every vestige of nature we have left.
There is a nobility to these trees, standing solitary on this golf course; their presence is as though guarding this land. Where is the nobility of man? It is not often visible these days. Only a few hundred feet away the last above ground section of the St. Pierre River is being buried.
Yesterday morning I walked to Meadowbrook Golf Course; it was a beautiful sunny day, not a single cloud in the sky. Court ordered work to bury the last section of the St. Pierre River has begun. On the far right of the above satellite image you can the St. Pierre River, it's just below Toe Blake Park; the river runs in a fairly straight line until it meanders and then, finally, empties into a culvert at the train tracks. I learned a few things in high school Geography and one of them is that a meandering river is very old, that it was once a more powerful river but is not as powerful as it once was, when meeting obstacles it meanders around them rather than over them. However, this river may have never been anything but a creek; it begins as a stream on Mount Royal and then runs across the city to empty out at the St. Lawrence River. Of course, even Mount Royal was once a much larger mountain but has been worn down by erosion and time.
It must seem a big issue is being made of something fairly insignificant. What the river represents is the last vestige of a historical river, it represents the presence of nature in the built city environment that can be relentlessly soulless. All people need the presence of nature as a place to enjoy the outdoors and we know that the outdoors--a forest, a river, a field--gives meaning to life, it restores one spiritually, it recharges one's batteries. This is what the river and the golf course represent, even though most people will never walk here or see the river. That it exists and its possible future use as a nature reserve, a park, or still a golf course is what is important. It is important not to lose this land to more condo construction.
Here are some photographs of the burying of the river. I see that the plan is to dig a straight trench between where the river enters the golf course below Toe Blake Park and where it leaves at the culvert. This water will be diverted into culvert pipes.
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| This part of the river, that meanders, is cut off |
Located at Rosedale Avenue and Somerled Avenue, St. Thomas Anglican Church has a long history in Montreal; the community garden is behind the church. I took these photographs on the last day of November, it was about -3 C and cold, some snow had fallen a few days before and was still on the ground. You can't see what they grow here but it seems to be more vegetables than flowers. The caretaker came out as I was standing looking at the garden, I mentioned that for some reason Covid had been good for gardens, they've flourished last year and this, but he said it was sad that so many people had died. Let's hope this snow melts before our long winter sets in.
Here are historical photographs taken on 31 October 1933 showing the burying of the St. Pierre River. The only section of the St. Pierre River still above ground is in Meadowbrook Golf Course and it is slated to be buried. The question is, why? Because it is polluted with fecal matter from incorrectly connected sewer pipes near the golf course? Isn't the common sense thing to do is to stop the pollution, not bury the river? I suppose the cheaper thing to do is to bury the remaining exposed section of the river. But government has a lot of our money they can spend any way they want and common sense isn't something government is known to have.
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| This is a section of the St. Pierre River before it was covered but not necessarily the same section as in the photographs below ... |
