Sadly, this post is late. The experiences in question happened during the Olympics, and would have been so much more appropriate to post then. But such is life.
I’d gone many times to Île Sainte Hélène, but I’d never been to the other island that includes portions of Parc Jean-Drapeau: Île Notre-Dame.… [Read More]
(If you didn’t see them, here are part 1, part 2, and part 3)
Since last working on this reading list, I’ve read an additional Heather O’Neill’s book and a handful more of Louise Penny’s Inspector Gamache series.… [Read More]
Sylvain and I went to the MTL Pride parade yesterday; it was a homegrown affair but with abundant color and music and smiles.
Here are a few photos and three short videos of an Irish-dancing rainbow, two-stepping white hats, and a good ol’ cheer squad going to town.… [Read More]
(If you didn’t see them, here are part 1 and part 2)
Jumping back to Mona Awad’s reading list, we’ll start with The Geography of Pluto, Christopher DiRaddo. You might think the story of a gay man breaking up with his ideal boyfriend and losing his mother to cancer would be awfully bleak, but this book manages to make the protagonist’s struggles with loss and grief into something oddly optimistic.… [Read More]
(This is a continuation of the Montreal Reading List, part 1).
In the last installment, I was using Mona Awad’s Reading List as a starting point for my own. So far, most of the authors and books mentioned were from the 1940s-1960s, and described the Montreal of those periods and earlier.… [Read More]
TW: racism and sexual predators (prison sentencing link)
Last month, the CBC ran this story about a Canadian woman sentenced to three years in prison for committing a unique kind of fraud: by falsifying birth information for her two daughters and claiming they had Indigenous heritage, she was able to access government funds earmarked for Indigenous people.… [Read More]
I’ve been meaning to write on the subject of fiction set in Montreal for quite a while. I’ve been trying to read as many books as I can that are set here.… [Read More]
A subtle cultural layer you discover in a new city is the locally-sourced humor, i.e. the local problems that are joked about by the people who live there. Per my post yesterday about the Grand Prix, Dan Ramos Comedy posted the above graphic on Reddit with the headline, “I Fixed the F1 Poster.”… [Read More]
(R.O.C. = Rest of Canada, whose federal holidays Québec likes to rename and rebrand as Québec-centric celebrations.)
Victoria Day, which celebrates the birthday of Queen Vicky, isn’t so popular here in Québec due to the many years of oppression of the Québec French by the English ruling class.… [Read More]
“Try not to let moose lick your car.”
–Parks Canada
(…or anyone really, regardless of the season, but that’s just my non-delicious-vehicle-owner opinion).
Happy New Year. We’ll be back in Montréal in May, if all goes according to plan.… [Read More]
