The demise of Zellers Department Store

I used to go to stores to buy things, it was really easy and we had many different stores, for instance Zellers in the Alexis Nihon Plaza. Then Target bought Zellers and spent a year remodeling the place and when they reopened they had everything they were selling in the same place as the former Zellers, except they didn't carry as much stock. Zellers had been a great store, they had everything you needed, people were happy shopping at Zellers and it was all at discount prices. We all hated Target, they destroyed Zellers, a local company, and then they closed operations in Canada. Target in Canada was just a scam.

Here is my last visit to Zellers in November 2012 when they were going out of business.

Return to the Village Shopping Plaza

I often walk by the Village Shopping Plaza on Cote St-Luc Road, it has grown more and more derelict; next door is the now closed Robert Burns Pub. Here are photos taken about a week ago.

 

Farewell Vincelli's Garden Centre

Farewell Vincelli's Garden Centre, they're gonna build a 250 unit condo complex on this land. It's Vincelli's land so they can do what they want with it, but that doesn't mean I like it. In fact, we are inundated with condo development, every spare lot is getting its own condo... and, of course, municipal government likes condos, it's much needed tax revenue. I was at Vincelli's Garden Centre an hour ago and there isn't much left of the place. Farewell Vincelli's, an institution in this area for the last 75 or 100 years...

Flowering Trees in May 2021

Perhaps it has something to do with a fairly mild winter, but this is one of the best years for flowering trees.

 

Crows Return to the Bird Bath

Not much gives me as much happiness as seeing these birds, whether crows, grackles, sparrows, robins, cardinals, or others. They are all a delight and source of happiness. The curious thing is that they seem to know this is for them, a bird bath, and they come and have a splashy bath or a drink of water; they even line up and wait their turn to use the bird bath. The crows are large majestic birds but never cross a crow, they'll remember what you've done and make your life difficult. Here is a crow visitor from last April. 

On the Solitary Life

I wanted to be a part of something and I thought I was. I thought I was on the great journey of individuation, that I was a part of something connecting me with the great ideas and experiences shared by other people. But, in truth, I wasn't a part of anything. If you believe nothing then all of the old constructs of life, the scaffolding that supported your existence, have collapsed. Belief is, in retrospect, nothing real or lasting, it is a pretence or an illusion of belief—mostly it is a pretence. The doctors are wrong in their diagnoses, the Ivy League educated poets and intellectuals have fooled even themselves with their self-importance, the imams, priests, and gurus are deluded, politicians are obviously liars, social workers want to break up families,  teachers are selling preconceptions based on their idea of what they stand for, intellectuals are filled with book learning but no wisdom or practical knowledge; even shamans are fakes and out for money and fame. I hear Buddhists chanting in their temple and it seems delusionary, what fools! I want to tell them that their hypocrisy appals me. There is no satori, no heaven, no hell, no enlightenment, no god, no prophet, there is nothing and on this basis we begin again, we look for something that transcends the everyday; this is found in poetry, in the fine arts. I asked myself, what if nothing I believe is true? What if all of my beliefs and assumptions about life are wrong? The Emperor has no clothes! He's naked and everything he stood for is a lie and a cheat of belief. I did not decide to believe nothing, I accepted it with difficulty; it was a huge disappointment in life. But then, one day, the scaffolding of belief collapses, there is no free will, there is no certainty about anything except that the Emperor has no clothes. Believe what you want after this, but for now, believe nothing.

Driving by St. Joseph's Oratory

My friend, Audrey Keyes (Veeto), used to say that wherever her mother lived in Montreal she could see the Oratory. She could walk out of her home on Oxford Avenue, or her apartment on Sherbrooke Street West, or the Manoir Westmount where she lived her final years, or even her childhood home just half a block from the Manoir Westmount, on Landsdowne Avenue in Westmount, and in the distance was the looming presence of St. Joseph's Oratory. Or even from, and maybe especially from, her window on Five South of St. Mary's Hospital where Mrs. Keyes died, and see the huge dome of the Oratory. 

On Queen Mary Road at Cote de Neiges Road

The Oratory is closed due to pandemic restrictions; meanwhile, renovations are taking place 

St. Joseph's Oratory in the distance, taken on Terrebonne just outside the rear gates into Loyola College