Road Diets? Cutting Down on Traffic Speed by Reducing Lane Width
Parking on our street is a topic of hot discussion at the moment. I won’t go into the details–too boring for those of you who don’t live here–but suffice to…
Mary Soderstrom
15,000 Temperature Records Broken in March 2012, Yet Some Folks Deny Climate Warming Still
Yes, it was a hot month. I don’t remember ever wearing sandals in Montreal in March, but I did. And despite the fact that temperatures dropped after the incredible week…
Cultivate Your Garden: Inspiration from the Office de la Consultation Publique de Montréal
Consultation is extremely important in planning our future: witness the way that the Harperites have just undermined environmental reviews by changing the rules. But one thing I didn’t expect to…
Coming up: Blue Metropolis International Literary Festival
Joyce Carol Oates is the grand winnter of this year’s Blue Met prize for a lifetime of literary creation. The Blue Met festival is gearing up at the moment, with…
Quebec’s Daycare Policies Pay Their Way through Increased Tax Revenue
This is a story that I haven’t seen in the English-language press: researchers at the University of Sherbrooke report that for every $100 Quebec has invested in inexpensive childcare, it…
Saturday Photo: Paris, in Honour of Robert Doisneau
Google informs us today that it’s the 100th anniversary of photographer Robert Doisneau. His emblematic photos of France, particularly of Paris, have been favourites of mine. Not that I’d ever…
Solitude: Something for Prosperity?
This was book group week, and an engagaing tale by Quebec writer Denis Thériault was the subject in the original French (Kirkland library) and in English translation (Atwater Library. Le…
Greening of the Season, Greening of the Landscape: the Importance of Trees
We’re almost to the point when the trees will leaf out, two weeks or more ahead of usual. The importance of trees has been unlined this week in two stories…
Titanic Versus Lusitania?
What a waste of time, all this stuff about the 10th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic. Is it because it seems so gratuitous? Three years later another big…
Mulcair Positive Ad Campaign
Countering the bad news: Introducing Tom Mulcair in English and in French
Cooking Breakfast and Other Meals for the Ones You Love: Reflections on Craig Claiborne
Frank Bruni has an intersting appreciation of Craig Claiborne, his legacy and his life today. Claiborne was one of the big three inmid-20h century American cooking, the others being James…
Saturday Photo: The Results of the Natural Easter Egg Challenge
Mrs. Ikvilds’ eggs are the best. I couldn’t believe how lovely the mottled red colour was. She says she sometimes puts celery leaves on hers, so the dye doesn’t enter…
Making Easter Eggs Today with Natural Dyes
One of the pleasant memories of my childhood is dying Easter eggs. When the kids were small, we did it too, frequently with friends who’d share an Easter dinner with…
April Used to Be the Smelliest Month in Montreal…
Sometimes things improve, believe it or not. One of them is the way that people here, at least, pick up their dog poo now. It used to be that when…
Hot off the Presses: Bulletin of NPD Outremont
As some of you may know, I’ve been involved in the New Democratic Party for years. The Outremont riding association has been around for almost as long, but until the…
ERDC Maybe Settling with the Last Defendants!
Not much of a post today as I have to go to court in the Electronic Rights Defence Committee’s 15 year old (almost to the day: we filed April 7,…
Raising Eyebrows: How Much Time to Look Beautifull…
And what constitutes beauty? Maybe it’s the slightly warmer weather, which means that girls and women aren’t so muffled up, but I’ve lately been struck by the care that nearly…
Saturday Photo: More Signs of Spring
When I was in Brazil a few years ago, I was told that the bougainvillea was called “primavera”, or spring. Haven’t been able to track that down–most of the translation…
More Thoughts on the Novel Versus Cable Series: Four Writers and The Hunger Games
The Globe and Mail’s television guy John Doyle, as noted earlier, claims that cable series (he particularly mentions Mad Men, have surpassed novels in story telling excellence and in fidelity…