Two very interesting things coming out of the Portuguese connection. The first is the Portuguese Sundays being held on Montreal’s St. Lawrence Main for several Sunday this summer. Music, dance,…
Just got back from delivering Jeanne and Elin home after a shower for Sophie and baby Thomas (not to mention Lukas.) It was delightful to see how Sophie’s friends wanted…
Great reportage on the life of a corner store owner in Quebec, done by the National Film Board and Le Devoir. Check it out: part in English, mostly in French,…
Somebody posted a variation of this on Facebook recently, and I’m back to musing about just how destructive this bit of “wisdom” is. I have always thought Yoda is saying…
The face of the United States is changing, no one can deny that. Recent census figures show that more than half the babies born in the US are non-Hispanic whites,…
Earlier this year I spent a slew of evenings reading entries in the Canada Writes non-fiction competition. Very interesting, with some sterling entries in the lot I was given. (There…
Like to see anybody in the US of A take on “Oh Say Can You See” in the same spirit And if you’re feeling beaten by the heat, here’s the…
Jeanne and I have checked out an urban henhouse the last couple of Saturdays, and today I went by to take a few pictures. It’s in the heart of Piccola…
In this neighborhood of tiny front gardens, people have a way of making every little bit of space count. Here one of my neighbors has a f\vine and a climbing…
There are now 10 stories more or less written for the short story collection I’ve been working on for the last year, and for which I got that nice CALQ…
It was good to learn that the US Supreme Court ruled 5-4 to uphold Obamacare this morning. That’s basically good news, even though the plan has great problems. Chief among…
Everyone seems to think that he or she can use just anything that’s out there for private use. A case in point is a video made during a demonstration during…
The photo (from the CBC) shows the latest in a series of holes that have developed in Montreal streets over the past few weeks. One opened up on Sherbrooke St.…
No post to day because I spent most of it running around preparing for NPD Outremont’s barbecue. Great fun, good crowd (we went through 200 paper plates, which gives an…
June 24 is the feast day of St. John the Baptiste. It also has the same relation to a solstice that Christmas does. In other words, Christians appropriated pagan holidays…
South-eastern Quebec punches above its weight when it come to market-gardening. This year, given an early spring, crops are already coming in ebundantly. Quebec strawberries–always very tasty–are better than I…
The criticism of Canada’s position on environmental issues has been growing at the international confernce on the environment Rio+20. Le Devoir’s story this morning is just one of many that…
The Beach Boys are on tour–in Toronto Tuesday and Montreal last night with many, many more dates to come. I caught a rather sappy interview with them on Jian Gomeshi…
The review of four books on motherhood in the latest New York Review of Books by Diane Johnson, are worth reading even if you aren’t a mother, and never expect…
There has been such bad news about bees for the last several years that this morning’s New York Time story about swarming bees has to be rated as good news.…
