The Leonard Cohen memorial mail box

Walking along Westminster Avenue below Sherbrooke Street West, I found a Leonard Cohen decorated mailbox. Must mail all of my letters here. Then on to where the Motel Raphael used to be located, it was demolished years ago and now we have more beautiful condos with a terrific view of train tracks and a highway. Gentrification takes all the character out of a place and is a spreader of ugliness. 

This is the Leonard Cohen Memorial Mailbox, on Westminster near St. Jacques;
it has since been removed.

First Robin of 2021

Walking by Caserne 46 on Somerled Avenue

My grandfather, John R. Parker, was captain at Station/Caserne 46 on Somerled Avenue back in the 1940s; it was country back then, apple orchards and farmers' fields. My grandparents lived at 2217 Hampton Avenue, near the railway tracks, in a duplex they bought after many years of living in apartments, the last one on de la Montagne where my grandfather was also the janitor. Before Caserne 46 he was at the Central Fire Station, the building is now a museum, in Old Montreal. When my mother was a child she used to walk to the Central Fire Station to deliver my grandfather's lunch to him. One of my grandfather's brothers was at Station/Caserne 11 in downtown Montreal so we have two firemen in the family and we're proud of them. Whenever I walk by Caserne 46, or I see the big red fire engines moving through the streets, I think of my grandfather and I think of the brave fire fighters in the Montreal Fire Department (now the Service de sécurité incendie de Montréal). 

Reading Irving Layton on the first day of spring

On this first day of spring, 2021: enjoying re-reading Irving Layton's Waiting for the Messiah. Layton writes,

The importance of Montreal to me as a poet cannot be over stressed. The city gave me the confidence, the tools, the stimulating friendships and rivalries. It gave me a literary milieu comparable to what Paris had given the American expatriates, Hemingway and Fitzgerald. In the early forties, it was in Montreal where Canada’s first sounds of poetry were heard.

Last day of winter at Strathearn Park

19 March 2021.

 

Walking on Sherbrooke Street West

Apartment building entrances on Sherbrooke Street West between Montclair and Coronation; 

18 March 2021.. 

 

Corner of Robert Burns and Cote St-Luc Road

 

Moving towards spring 2021

Back walking to Meadowbrook Golf Course a few days ago, it is a favourite walk because for a few minutes you feel you are in the country. It's + 11 C today, overcast, and rainy; it's not spring yet but we are moving towards spring and all that means (more walks, gardening, birds in the garden and bird bath, longer days, no winter coats or boots, and so on). Two Russian girls were walking ahead of me and this reminded me that there are many Russian immigrants who live near here. I was walking through Montreal West and just as I turned the corner to walk to the golf course a man said Good Morning; this is a community where people say hello to strangers. Maybe there is some winter left but this rather mild winter will soon be over. Unlike some, I believe in the predictable life, I like where I live, I like the people who live here, I like the most conservative, quiet, inward life that is possible in today's world. 

Walking to Meadowbrook Golf Course on March 1st, 2021

 

Percy Leggett, again...

 

There seems to be a lot of interest in Percy Leggett these days, mostly by his family members. It's good to be eccentric, it will get you remembered. But I am not sure eccentricity is for all of us. It requires a large ego and a reduction or leveling out of one's interests and beliefs; health could be one of these beliefs and Percy was a health fanatic, living separate from society and wearing shorts all year. But people are attracted to folks like Percy Leggett, they might think he has found some meaning to life that they do not have or they are amused by him. Percy was also a publicity hound, not by chance was his photograph featured in newspapers but by his choice. It's good to have an eccentric in the family, it's not so good to be that eccentric; someone like Percy would dispute this because he is an eccentric and wouldn't doubt for a minute the rightness of his way of life. .

The Hermit of Spanish Banks Beach

 

My in-laws built a house in the Spanish Banks area of Vancouver in the early 1970s; back then it was all UBC professors and a few eccentrics including the Hermit who lived under a tarp across the road from the concession stand on the beach. If anyone has a satellite photo of this area you can see the tarp. I don't think anyone knew where the Hermit came from or who he was, you'd see him walking in the area, sometimes picking up litter from the streets. Eventually the old inhabitants moved out and their houses sat empty, sometimes for years, until some rich bastard built his mansion there. Anyhow, one day my father-in-law was out foraging for stuff in one of these empty houses, as collectors of junk are wont to do, and he came across the Hermit who asked him if he is needed food. This is the only time I know of the Hermit speaking to anyone. After that episode my father-in-law would say the hermit is the happiest man in the world, and thereafter he was referred to with some added respect. On some rainy days and rainy months I'd look out the window and wonder how the Hermit could stand living outside, I like my creature comforts. One day I was in line at the old Safeway on W 10th Avenue and the Hermit was ahead of me, buying oranges and pipe tobacco. We all figured that someone deposited money into the Hermit's bank account and this kept him going. I think he must have died about ten years ago.

Butters the Wild Turkey, 2019 - 2021, RIP

This is Butters outside our front door, early January, 2021

Butters, the wild turkey, has died; he never learned how to navigate traffic. A neighbour tells me he looked out of his living room window one day and saw three wild turkeys. So this isn't the end, just a chapter. In the local history of Covid there will be a chapter on Butters, he was a celebrity on social media, he brought people together; I would see crowds looking at Butters and talking, people loved that bird. He brought us together and then he was gone. He was everywhere, one day in Montreal West, the next day outside of Police Station Nine, he was famous in Loyola Park, he had a following wherever he went, and then he'd be back on our street sitting in a tree sixty feet up in a snow storm. But he wasn't too bright, the only reason he didn't walk on the road was that there was no food there. Butters had also become a peeping turkey, looking in people's windows. Butters, gone but not forgotten; he gave so much and expected so little.