A fall day in the West End of Montreal

 . . . and out for a morning walk. 18 October 2024.

Visiting Montreal`s Old Port on 17 August 2011

Where Molson's Brewery was once located

 

June 2024 visit to Urgel Bourgie Cemetery, Montreal

This cemetery used to be called the Montreal Memorial Gardens, now it is owned and run by Urgel Bourgie Cimetiere Jardin & Complexe Funeraire and is located adjacent to Montreal in Ville St-Laurent. It is not hard to find but there is a lot of traffic, especially just before entering the cemetery. Planes landing at Trudeau International Airport can be seen overhead. All of the headstones lie flat on the ground; for assistance enter the main complexe building and the workers there are very hospitable and helpful. 

The grave of my great grandmother, my mother's grandmother, Bessie Richards Parker; 
born in the UK she died in Montreal in 1948

The grave of my mother's father, John Parker, born in Blackburn, England, died in Montreal; and his wife, Bessie Chew Parker, also born in Blackburn and died in Montreal

I think some people have their ashes left around or under a large rock, as this person has done;
a bit of humour, he writes "I crawled back under the rock I came from from"

“Unison” by F.R. Scott

 

Signature by F.R. Scott, Klanak Press, Vancouver, 1964

What is it makes a church so like a poem?

The inner silence -- space between words?

The ancient pews set out in rhyming rows

Where old men sit and lovers are so still?

Or something just beyond that can't be seen,

Yet seems to move if we should look away?

It is not in the choir and the priest.

It is the empty church has most to say.

It cannot be the structure of the stone.

Sometimes mute buildings rise above a church.

Nor is it just the reason it was built.

Often it does not not speak at all.

Men have done murders here as in a street,

And blinded men have smashed a holy place.

Men will walk by a church and never know

What lies within, as men will scorn a book.

Then surely it is not the church itself

That makes a church so very like a poem,

But only that unfolding of the heart

That lifts us upward in a blaze of light

And turns a nave of stone or page of words

To Holy, Holy, Holy without end.

The view from the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts

The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 21 April 2024.