Leger Marketing-Le Devoir Gives Tom Mulcair Big Lead over Rivals
Today’s big news is a new poll by a major polling firm here which shows Tom Mulcair and the NDP consolidating their position in the hearts (and voting intentions) of…
Mary Soderstrom
Canada Is the Best Country to Be a Woman? Well, Sure a Lot Better than the US
For some time I’ve been meaning to write about what difficult choices young women and their families must make in the US. We’ve had had visitors recently who’ve told us…
Saturday Photo: Balm for Bees, and the Eyes
This was taken a few days ago, when the bee balm was just beginning to bloom. Now a wide swath of the little front garden is full of yellow flowers…
Community Garden Continues
Lovely early summer/late spring weather this week, which makes being outside a real delight. Among the places I’ve walked recently is the little community garden near the railroad tracks in…
My On-Going Adventures with Portuguese
The morning show I listen to has a segment most days between 5:30-5:45 from cities around the world in which a popular song of the moment is played for a…
Chamber Music: An Idea Whose Time Has Come…Again
Le Devoir has a story today about bringing music to private gatherings. A young musician named Brigitte Saint-Aubin has begun a web site Show de Salon with the aim of…
New Report on What We Need: Green Invest, Not Oil Sands
Very interesting report out of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives today. This is the kind of cage-rattling that the Harper government wants to stop. According to their press release:…
Desire Lines: Walking through the World, One Step at a Time
I’ve been working on the short story collection for which I’ve had a grant this year, called Desire Lines: A Geography of Love. I think I’ve got a suite of…
Save Monday June 25th for a Big Party on Mount Royal
Quebec’s biggest celebration is coming up two weeks from now, the Fête natonale. The official day is June 24, but since that’s a Sunday this year, Monday also is a…
Saturday Photo: Early Morning Reflections
Morning is a good time for reflecting on things, and for years I have used a morning walk for doing just that. But Friday I took my camera along to…
The Importance of Singing about Good Things: The Sunny Side of the Street
Been thinking about the importance of optimism in the various fights we have in front of us. Feeling somewhat inundated by bad news worldwide, I decided I’d trying singing some…
Walkability Pays
Want to make a real estate investment? Don’t build standard suburbs but invest in walkable, bikeable neighborhoods. This should not be news to anyone, but Christopher Leindorfer once again points…
What I Feel about the Jubilee: A Message from Kew
Among the most lovely gardens in the world are the Royal Gardens at Kew in London. To rsearch it for my book Recreating Eden: A Natural History of Botanical Gardens…
More Fuel for the Expanionist Movement, Another Reason to Support the Red Squares
The NewYork Times editorializes about the scary future awaiting today’s college graduates. Five classes have left the ivy-covered whatever since the beginning of the Great Recession, and their jobless rate–8.5…
Saturday Photo: Peonies Awaiting Ravishment by Rain
g Along with inundated b streets and flooded tunnels this week, heavy intense rain had its way with peonies which are just now coming into bloom. Their top-heavy flowers can’t…
Jean Charest Doesn’t Car Much about Montrea, It Seems
Just had an interesting conversation with a local muncipal politician (opposition party, natch) about the way the provincial government walked out of talks with student groups over the tuition hike…
Scapgoating 101: Ticks and Students
The New York Times today has an innteresting story by Gail Collins about the multibillion dollar loss at JP Morgan: blame it on ticks. It seems that the person in…
Everything That Goes around Comes around, So Maybe We’ll Get a Speed Bump on Our Street
More than 30 years ago when our kids were little, a couple of other mothers on the street passed a petition to get a speed bump or two in order…
The Walkable City Still Has Legs
Last weekend friends from San Francisco were in town and we spent hours walking around Montreal. It’s always a pleasure to have out of town guests because you do and…