Stairs in Old Montreal

More family history photographs

My maternal grandfather, John Richards Parker, came to Montreal with his wife around 1912. Here is a photograph of him, at the Central Fire Station in Old Montreal, where he worked. He is first on the far right.


Here is my maternal grandmother, Bertha Chew Parker, taken when she still lived in Blackburn, Lancashire, England.



Here is my grandfather's mother.


Here is my grandfather at the fire station on Somerled near Cavendish, in the Notre Dame de Grace neighbourhood of Montreal. He is second from the left. Photograph dated July 1940.

At the horse races in Vancouver

Stag

This image of a stag, a totem animal, is located at Mount Royal Cemetery.

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!

Restaurant Emile Bertrand

My photo of Restaurant Bertrand

I visited Restaurant Emile Bertrand once with my father when I was a child (around 1955). It wasn't until around 1994 that I returned there, more by chance than anything else. That first visit, over fifty years ago, he and I may have come down from Windsor Station, where he worked. Why else would we have been in the neighbourhood? But why would I have been at Windsor Station? I remember that visit, the stainless steel counter tops, and that Emile Bertrand's specialty was spruce beer (a soda pop, or "soft drink" as we say in Canada) that has limited appeal and has a sprucey sweet taste, like the smell of spruce tree resin. It's an acquired taste but when I start drinking the stuff I can't get enough! They used to make this drink on the premises, as well as serving the obligatory French fries and hot dogs "fully dressed" (meaning garnished with chopped cabbage and onion)... I like a toasted bun and grilled or steamed hot dog. Premier Bourassa got himself into trouble years ago by referring to certain lower class people as "eaters of hot dogs", but I have a craving for hot dogs every now or then. I rediscovered Restaurant Emile Bertrand fifteen years ago and enjoyed going there again a few times, for sentimental reasons, and I wrote a poem referring to that day I went there with my father. The restaurant was eventually closed, due to a family dispute it seems, about two years ago, and although it was announced they would reopen, they never did (as far as I know). The new ,almost upscale, restaurant now located on the premises is for a new demographic, a younger educated clientele, who want whole grain bread, etc., not fully dressed hot dogs and French fries. Restaurant Emile Bertrand was located on rue Notre Dame West just down from Guy Street, or Peel Street.

Montreal Skyline

Taken one fall day at the Chateau look-out on Mount Royal.

Photographs

Where The Bonsai Are

Bonsai at the Montreal Botanical Gardens.

Where The Carp Swim

Carp at the Japanese exhibit, the Montreal Botanical Gardens.

Montreal Botanical Gardens, Native Circle

Montreal Botanical Gardens, Chinese Exhibit

Dear Sonja

Sonja Skarstedt

Sonja Skarstedt

1986

Sonja Skarstedt, after a long battle with cancer, died on Friday, July 31, 2009. Sonja was a dear friend to many of us, with a terrific sense of humour and a great spirit to live and create. Geof Isherwood, her husband and life partner--they were always together--informs me there will be a memorial gathering on Sonja's birthday, next October 2. We have lost someone who contributed so much to poetry in Montreal, with her magazine Zymergy, published between 1987-1990, and later with Empyreal Press, she was a tireless and generous worker for many of us whom she published and many more that she supported in other ways. She was also a great support and friend of Louis Dudek in his final years and published his last books for him. What a loss we have all suffered, especially Geof and his family. Sonja was only 48 years old and had such a youthful spirit. I remember Geof and Sonja driving out to Huntingdon to visit back in 1989 or 1990, a time when I especially appreciated their visit, and the years during the 1990s when we worked on books she published for us. Two years ago I published her chapbook, Abundances, online with Coracle Press. She was a terrifically creative person, a poet, a visual artist, a playwright, and most recently she had branched out to making films. You can find out more about Sonja at www.skarwood.com.

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?

Le Grand Seminaire (two)

A photograph (above) of Le Grand Seminaire from Sherbrooke Street West and then some photographs (below) taken on the grounds. 

Beginning with towers (one is seen above), I think of the Tarot cards, and then the Twin Towers in New York City. There is Joyce's tower in Dublin but, also, Yeats's famous tower; there is Robinson Jeffers' tower and C.G. Jung's tower. There is the poet's tower which is an archetype that exists inside the psyche of every poet. 

There is also a long pool of water on the grounds of the Grand Seminaire, overgrown and intimate, with its invitation to dream, to the unconscious, to other pools of water and to water itself, the unconscious mind, a timelessness and place existing beyond space, beyond the here and now but thoroughly involved in the here and now. Water to enter and find, at the ocean's bottom, strange fish from the water's cold depths and perhaps sunken ships and lost treasure. 

Doors are entrances, but they are also exits, and they are firmly closed (possibly not opened for many years and next to impossible to open), or left open and busy, part of the mercantile class, or ominous and forbidding, but always archetypal and evoking the unconscious. 

Always the invitation to the unconscious is there, that place of poetry and creativity, presented in archetypes, in that which is timeless and gives us hope against the soul deadening efforts of everyday life at the material level. What is life denial? It is existing in the here and now, with no God, no prayer, no meditation, no art, no poetry, no dreams, forsaken of the spiritual... and there are those people in our society with their efforts to eradicate the spiritual by condescension and ridicule and life denial. And then, the presence of archetypes, the unconscious, the mythic dimension. There are the life deniers among us, but no one can ever fully succeed in denying life because, always waiting, like water in a spring (so important to the Celts), are the archetypes, the spiritual, the divine presence, which is always there, always waiting to appear, as natural as fresh water bubbling up from a spring on the side of a road. And what is as natural as water from a spring? It is that the unconscious mind is seemingly hidden but always present, always showing itself in dreams and archetypal dream imagery or strange complex behaviour only explainable by psychology. 

The unconscious is present, it is always "behind the scenes" so that life is not as we might rationally want, but as the unconscious decides in its own way, almost a separate entity with its own rules and, importantly, always moving towards psychic wholeness, psychic healing. 

You ignore the unconscious at your own peril. The archetypes are portals into the unconscious, into poetry.

Revised: 31 March 2020; this is substantially the same commentary as when it was originally published; I have edited a few sentences, included paragraph breaks, and so on; some of this is no longer what I would write today. 

In the name of making money and nothing else, what you see in these photographs no longer exists.  

At Le Grand Seminaire, corner Atwater and Sherbrooke (one)

These are photographs (above) of the twin towers at the Grand Seminaire, which is located on Sherbrooke Street West near Atwater Street; the Grand Seminaire is a teaching institute run by the Sulpician Order in Montreal. I took these photographs a few years ago, and other photographs I have taken of the Grand Seminaire are on this site. The towers, built in the early 1600s, are at the top of Fort Street and Tower Street in Montreal, and were used for protection when French settlers were attacked by Amerindians. There is a narrow slit in the stone walls from which a rifle could be placed. I am interested in the Sulpicians because three of my great great uncles were students here and in France, and then, later, became priests serving parishes in Montreal. They were among the very few English-speaking students at the Grand Seminaire, and Father Martin Callaghan and his brother Father James Callaghan are both buried in the crypt in the basement of the Seminary. Only last week we attended a "light show" presented at the Basilique Notre Dame, in Old Montreal, and saw a history of the Sulpicians in Montreal. The Sulpicians once owned the entire Island of Montreal, from when the tiny settlement was called Ville Marie (City of Mary), through the time of the English Conquest, to modern times and the radical decline of the influence of the Roman Catholic church in all of Quebec. I recommend this presentation at Notre Dame to anyone who is interested in these things and who is visiting Montreal. It can be seen in only a half hour or so, and it is incredibly well done. The other Callaghan brother, Father Luke Callaghan, is buried at Cote des Neiges Cemetery, a cemetery that is owned by the Sulpicians. A few years ago, I went on a tour of the other Seminary, next door to the Basilique Notre Dame in Old Montreal (not the buildings shown here) and I'll post these photographs one day. This tour was organized by my cousin Sharon Callaghan. I remember thinking, at both locations, that I could easily stay living there the rest of my life, I felt so much at home in either location. And since I am both English-speaking and not a Catholic this is quite something! I think the Sulpicians made a very nice life for themselves, not one of struggling and penance, but one of teaching, apparent affluence (but not ostentation), and a life of devotion to the beliefs of the Church. Below are some photographs of the entrance to the Grand Seminaire and the grounds of the property. Adjacent to the Grand Seminaire, on east side, is the College de Montreal, where the poet Emile Nelligan was a student. Nelligan's father was Irish and Emile was baptised at St. Patrick's Church; he wrote all of his poems in French, by the time he was twenty years old, and spent most of his life institutionalized due to mental illness. He is one of Canada's best poets.

Central Fire Station, Old Montreal

My grandfather, John Parker, worked here as a fireman after he emigrated to Canada around 1914 from Blackburn, Lancashire, England. My mother would bring his lunch to him at the fire station. It is now the location of the Centre d'Histoire de Montreal in Old Montreal.

The Trout River in late winter, early spring