You Are What You Read Department: Time Makes It Easy for Americans
An interesting comparison between the front pages of this week’s Time, for the US, Europe, Asia and South Pacific. The Americans get the cover story “Why Anxiety Is Good for…
Mary Soderstrom
Flash Mob Monday: Too Busy for a Real Post
It’s one of the days when I keep running around. Here’s music and dance to go with that frenzy: Ravel’s “Bolero” in Copenhagen, “This Time for Africa” in Rome, and…
Holland in Montreal: A Woofnerf in St. Henri
Elin spent three years at The Hague, living just off a canal on a street that ended with -laan: neither she nor I can remember the complete name but the…
Turkeys and Chickens and Pork Roast: the Best Ever
Since it’s Thanksgiving south of the border, and other holidays are coming up, here’s a recipe that I found a couple of years ago on Global Gourmet and adapted a…
QWF Update
Neither David or Merrily won in their categories. In fiction Dimitri Nazralla won for Niko (Véhicule Press) while Joel Yanofsky won in non-fiction for Bad Animals: A Father’s Accidental Education…
QWF Awards Tonight: Michel Freitag’s Book to Be Launched
Tonight is a big literary night. It’s the Quebec Writers’ Federation annual awards gala, and my good friends David Homel and Merrily Weisbord are up for prizes. Thank goodness they’re…
Getting the User to Pay: Toll Roads Aren’t That Awful, Poll Says
A Canada-wide poll commissioned by the CBC shows that Canadians are not averse to letting the user pay when it comes to roads and bridges. More than three-quarters of those…
Saturday Photo: Denser Development, Less Reliance on Cars
This is a good traffic day in Montreal, where the problems of urban sprawl are considerablly less than in many other North American cities and where public transit ridership is…
Didn’t See Any Snow Before My Birthday, But There Were Flurries Before the Party
Last week I posted about how for the first time since we came to Montreal there were no snow flakes before my birthday, November 8. A couple of people reported…
Attention Must Be Paid to Writers–on Front Pages, if Not Ground Floors
There are times when a writer feels absolutely second rate, completely forgotten, totally unnecessary in the scheme of most of society. But then something comes along that amazing evidence that…
Writing the Back Story: Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea
Last month we talked about Jane Eyre at the Atwater Library, and tonight it will Jean Rhys’s idea of why the first Mrs. Rochester went mad, Wide Sargasso Sea. Both…
We Walked and Walked…Montreal in the 1950s
Open File has a lovely story about a young immigrant from Germany, Alfred Bohn. who took many pictures of Montreal after he and his wife immigrated in the 1950s. Check…
Book Groups This Week: The Way to Paradise by Mario Vargas Llosa
I'm expecting fascinating discussions this weeks as two of the book groups I lead will be talking about Mario Vargas Llosa's historical novel about Paul Gauguin and his grand mother,…
Saturday Photo: Thinking of Henri Cartier-Bresson and Geometry
Perhaps my favourite photographer is Henri Cartier-Bresson. On a trip to France a few years ago we spent two afternoons in a restrospective exhibition of his work at the Biblithèque…
Deep Integration Is Not the Way to Go: The Economic Pitfalls of Common Currencies (to Say Nothing about the Cultural Fallout)
Memo to Stephen Harper and others who'd like to integrate the US and Canada: it's not the welfare state that causes problems, it's the inability to manage your economy independently.Today…
Music for a Rainy Day: Debussy’s Jardins sous la pluie
It is a wet day with rain soaking the fallen leaves. Perfect for listening to Debussy's Estampes, a charming piece of music.The heroine of my novel River Music, I'm discovering,…
Too Much Success? Nope, Just a Reason to Put More Money in Transit
More and more people in the Montreal region are using public transit, a report by the group Transit says. In 2006, Quebec set out to increase use of public transit…
Climate Change: a Personal View
Today is my birthday and for the first time since we came to Montreal decades ago, no snow has fallen so far this season. Every other year there have been…
Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about the NDP: a Forum
Here's an invitation that may be just what you wanted!You would like to know more about the history of the NDP and its record as a force for change in…