The summer season is short here. You can see the changes in things from day to day. This week, it’s the butterfly’s time.
Up at the top of Mont Royal, it was a hot and very very humid day.… [Read More]
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Butterfly Week
Author: Sylvain Descartes
This past week, I attended an activity with a local intercultural group: learning to kayak. Now, this group is big into canoe camping and white-water kayaking, but they have to entice us newbies into the sport a little more gently.… [Read More]
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Something in the air…
There’s a lot in the air these days. Unfortunately, a lot of what’s in the air is smoke, pollen, and other scary things.
The wildfires in Canada are in the headlines around the world, although somewhat surprisingly, a lot of the stories seem to take a folksy “ah, whoops, it’s like bad weather” perspective.… [Read More]
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Here’s the Church, addendum
I just read today that one of the churches featured in the “Maintenance Problems” part of my post was damaged by a fire. It’s expensive keeping a building maintained, and according to the article, the timeline for permits and planning when repurposing a church takes years.
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Protecting the Language
Canada is constitutionally a bilingual nation, and there are laws to protect that status. For example, all prepackaged food products sold in Canada must be properly labeled in both official languages.… [Read More]
Montréal has many, many churches. So many that one of the city’s nicknames is “ville aux cent clochers” (city of a hundred bell towers). Images Montréal, a website dedicated to documenting architecture in the city, lists 437 buildings in the “Churches” category.… [Read More]
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A Maple Rain’s Gonna Fall
Manon has already shown you the fluffy snows of June. But that’s not the only weird weather, what with the winds and the … rains?
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Iris Season
Given that the tulips are all gone, I thought the spring flowers were pretty much over with. I was wrong! The irises are taking their turn.
The neighborhood is iris-etic.
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Jardin botanique
The Botanical Garden of Montréal is big and relatively expensive — $22.50 for adult admission, with a $5.50 discount if you live in the greater Montréal area. But if you get a $9 Accès Montréal card, you can have free access to the outdoor portions of the Botanical garden!… [Read More]
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Maple Seeds
The breeze brings down clouds of these exquisite little helicopters. The sidewalks are strewn with them.
Maple samaraFor what it’s worth, the botanical name for this kind of seed is a “samara” or a “winged achene.”