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.
At approximately 3 pm today Canada’s population reached 40 million people (according to Canada’s population clock, which really looks more like test tubes….disturbingly).
By comparison, California has a population of about 39 million packed into a lot less geographical space–lookee here**:
This is one of the many reasons we’re in Canada.… [Read More]
Maple Report #11
Bibitte à Sucre
Montréal’s Jardin botanique is a beautiful place to stroll. It has lush greenhouses, winding outdoor paths, and a gourmet cafe, but the admission is pricey if you have to pay the rack rate.… [Read More]
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]
You’ve certainly heard about the massive wildfires in Canada–there have been over 160 in Québec alone. The drifting smoke is choking East Coast cities and causing airlines, baseball games, and Broadway shows to cancel.… [Read More]
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?
Click to viewSolve the puzzles and (maybe) win a precious jewel, but good luck–no one has succeeded for 40+ years
In 1982, just a few years after the children’s book “Masquerade” kicked off the first “armchair treasure hunt,” Byron Preiss released his own challenge to the treasurially-inclined: find twelve buried “casques” following the clues in his puzzle book “The Secret.”… [Read More]
Summer Snow
It has been blazingly hot this week, and yet there’s snow:
No, Hell hasn’t frozen over. These floaty bits are part of the seed release strategy for the eastern cottonwood.
Each tree can release 40 million seeds per season, so even a few cottonwoods can create quite a show.… [Read More]
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.






