Magnan's Tavern, Point St. Charles, Montreal

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

Two views of Griffintown, Montreal

Griffintown, once an Irish neighbourhood in Montreal, was rezoned for commercial and industrial use back in the early 1960s, and for the most part stopped being the close-knit ethnically Irish community that it had been for the previous hundred years or more. Now, Griffintown is the home of some of the most innovative high-tech companies in Canada. It was saved, perhaps only temporarily, from being re-developed, by the current recession. The plans that the city and private developers proposed were clearly on a scale that is not appropriate to Montreal and ignored the historical, business, and cultural development of Montreal by, in effect, moving the downtown core to this area. To some people it sounded wonderful, to me it sounded like a dog's breakfast of half-formed ideas that would not have served Griffintown or the city well. Griffintown is located between downtown Montreal and the St. Lawrence River, thus prime real estate. Some kind of development is inevitable, but it will have to be thought out much better than the proposal that was made for this area.

Keep on Killing

(Note: This stencilled message was seen on the day a group of us scattered Artie Gold's ashes; this was at the end of the walk, in Montreal's Chinatown. Was that September 2007?)

Visit to La Ronde, Montreal

It was a dark and rainy day when we visited La Ronde.

The Guaranteed Milk Bottle in Montreal

This giant milk bottle has been on the Montreal cityscape for many years. It was put up by the old Guaranteed Milk Company, which may have had its factory or delivery department on present-day Lucien L'Allier just below present-day Rene-Levesque. The street names have been changed to reflect our changing times . . .  so Dorchester Blvd. is now Blvd. de Rene-Levesque, and so on... My great uncle Victor Parker used to work at a dairy on Lucien L'Allier, I am not too sure what he did, but he lived with his mother until she died around 1949 and then he was relocated to the Douglas Hospital by his three brothers. He died in 1969.

The hotel that can be seen on the right in the photograph below is now gone, and new bigger buildings have been erected on this location. The milk bottle is always about to be demolished until someone hears about it and calls for it to receive some kind of special status as part of Montreal's history. The milk bottle is now rusting out and is covered by graffiti . . .

On Mount Royal, Montreal

Yes, we now know what it means to run around like "a chicken with its head cut off" with this collection of signs directing us to go here, no, go there. These signs were located at the bottom of a slight hill that is used for skiing in the winter, there's even a ski lift visible in the bottom photograph. Just in front of the signs is Beaver Lake, a man-made pond on Mount Royal. This place is crowded in summer!

Signs in New York City and Los Angeles

In Richmond, BC (above), or was that Steveston? CZ and I out one day with Hilde and Denis...

(my son's name is Jake, so restaurants with his name always interest me)

On Amsterdam one day in 2008, in New York City (below):

On Broadway (below), again in New York City, reminding me of Artie Gold:

Venice Beach, California, back in 1997 at Christmas. That's where I want to live, somewhere where it's July all year long... no winters. Isn't that what we all say as we get older?

At Blue Bonnets, a few years ago... (Two)

Lachine in winter, near the canal...

Lachine in late fall, near the canal...

My Drive Home From Work (four)

Heading home, west on Sherbrooke, there's the Chalet-BBQ, so many happy memories there! Riding my bike as a kid and buying french fries in a brown paper bag and eating them as we rode up and down the lanes in NDG; then, just passed Girouard, the old Empress Theatre, later Cinema Five showing "I Am Curious Yellow" and "Rocky Horror Show" and many other films, with its pseudo Egyptian facade, and the present gallant effort to preserve and make this building useable again... no neighbourhood movie theatres are left in Montreal; then a forlorn building on the corner of Belgrave and Sherbrooke; and a Petro Canada gas station on the corner of Cavendish and Cote St. Luc Road.

My Drive Home From Work (three)

It's spring 2007, or is it fall 2007? Here I am heading home again: there's the St. Lawrence River to my right as I cross the Champlain Bridge heading into Montreal; there's Montreal and the mountain, and a bus and car ahead of me; not much traffic at this time of day; passing Bell Canada's new buildings that were empty fields before the construction:

My Drive Home From Work (two)

Now it's winter and I'm heading out to the Champlain Bridge, merging in with the other traffic; there's the sun setting on the left, dismal winter sun barely making it into the afternoon sky; we've had snow, relentless winter and cold; soon, commuter bus traffic will be heading out in the far left lane, driving against the traffic; home soon:

My Drive Home From Work (one)

From the top down: passing where the toll booths used to be after you've crossed the Champlain Bridge; slowing to rubber neck an accident...looks like she rear-ended him...; then the twin spires of a church in St. Henry (just at the top of Georges Etienne Cartier park on rue Notre Dame); then approaching the exit for Sherbrooke West and hang a left at the lights at the top before passing Girouard and memories of the past... This was maybe September 2007.

At Blue Bonnets Racetrack, Montreal (One)

A Sunday at Blue Bonnets racetrack here in Montreal was always fun. Even for someone like myself, with little interest in gambling or betting on the horses, it was fun. A table at the Centaur Restaurant, the breakfast buffet, being with CZ and our friends, Patrick and Linda, watching the races and planning which horse we'd bet on next; studying the race forms, how many races won, how many lost, how much money made for the owner. Then excitement of winning $50.00 and then losing $25.00. Going home ahead. Friends winning $500.00! And just people watching--and being with people that are different from my usual life--watching through my binoculars the horses and then walking around the other areas of the track, taking photographs, more people watching, and being out on a Sunday afternoon when there was nothing else to do and the track only a few miles from where we live, the famous (for us) Blue Bonnets which the government bought and renamed Le Hippodrome de Montreal, and equivocated on its future and considered a future off-island location before closing the place down. Blue Bonnets, an enormous building and usually less than half empty, and eventually a combination of changing demographics and the government running the track has lead to its recent closing. What a piece of real estate they're sitting on! And the fact that most people aren't interested in going to the track anymore, not here in Montreal, not when you have the casino, Loto tickets, and online gambling. Remember when the only lottery was the Irish Sweepstakes? It was a simpler life then. You can't reinvent the complexity of a track culture, you can't reinvent this again when it's gone; we all lose as the diversity of life is reduced. When it's gone, it's gone for good. In just about every way, diversity and complexity make life a lot more interesting.

At the Museum of Anthropology, Vancouver (one)

A Day in Ottawa