PSA too
Thanks to Frink for covering my absence – I was staying with relatives for a few days in Montreal, and they didn’t have net access – or rather they did, but not in a way I could easily hook up my laptop.
Back in hotels now, so I should be good for at least the next few days.
Backlogged posts will be coming through soon.
Montreal day 2
2011/09/06
Today was another day of driving around with Gaëtan and Claudette to see the sights. We got his repaired van back, and dropped my vehicle off for an oil change with his favorite mechanic.
I got to walk by the old Olympic swimming pool, which is not far from my grandparents’ old place. My mother and I went swimming there once or twice when we were living here. It was a huge pool. Not a good memory though because we’re pretty sure it was a result of going there that I got contagious warts on the soles of my feet. Not the normal shapeless brown bumps you normally think of as warts – they were rather fascinating and complex structures that looked like little craters with four-globed lanterns in the middle. It took almost two months of annoying skin-freezing treatment that required me to remain lying face-down for a couple of hours per day to get rid of the damned things. Thankfully that was a skin-only infection and they never returned.
We went downtown again for a somewhat rushed tour of the Montreal underground shopping mall, a couple of train stations, a ride on the Metro and three more churches and cathedrals.
Nice places, but I still like Notre-Dame (yesterday) the best.
Sir John, eh?
The Metro is nice, but not as nice as I remember. Some of the stations are more nicely decorated than the ones in Toronto, but not all of them. The trains look nicer and are quieter because they run on rubber wheels, but they are also smaller inside and jostle around more while in motion. I think I like the Toronto subway better.
We also went to St. Joseph’s Oratory, a place I’m told my father likes though he never mentioned it to me. It’s friggin enormous – this may be the most cavernous indoor space I’ve ever been in, short of an indoor sports stadium (yes, I admit, I was once roped into attending a hockey game – I was young and foolish!). It’s very nice and would make a great living room for my house, but it’s still not as pretty as Notre-Dame.
The main event today was a trip on Mount Royal, the big hill in the middle of the city, to get some photos of the city from above.
In the evening they took me to a church that had been sold and converted into a sort-of soup kitchen, sort-of restaurant by a nonprofit organization. Basically you get a full meal (soup, salad, main dish, veggies, drink and dessert) for $3. It was not bad for the price, though not my first choice cuisine either.
Gaëtan is very much a jokester and not above the occasional small prank. Today he overheard me mentioning that living in Vancouver I miss the snow, since we don’t get much there – later on he demanded I close my eyes and hold out my hands, and put a large snowball in them – shaved ice from an indoor hockey rink. That was a surprise. Naturally I threw the snowball at him.
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Montreal day 1
2011/09/05
Today Gaëtan and Claudette gave me a driving and walking tour of some of the scenic parts of Montreal. We started out with a drive-by of my grandparents’ old house on Rue Sicard, which is where my mother and I lived with them for a month or two one winter.
The place has been partially renovated at the front but is much the same as then. When we were there, we stayed in the room at the back behind all the stairs. Aunt Winnie and cousins Tanya and Angela Rose lived upstairs, their place reached by the (treacherous in winter) outside front steps or a very tiny, cramped spiral staircase at the back – typical for old Montreal houses.
Next we headed over to Ile Sainte-Helene to look at the giant Buckyball left over from Expo 67:
Lovely piece of architecture, that dome. We also were going to go to the fairground called La Ronde, which occupies half the island, but the parking, admission etc fees came to about $75 so we decided to skip that.
Next stop was the nearby casino, which it turns out is also a leftover Expo building. It’s a huge casino – mind, I’ve never been in one before so I have nothing to compare it against. I wasn’t allowed to take pictures inside, unfortunately, but it was very nicely decorated and there must have been nearly a thousand various kinds of slot machines in there. They also had poker, blackjack, baccarat and roulette areas. I saw people laying down rows of hundred-dollar bills on some of those tables. The slot machines ranged from two cents to two dollars per play.
The casino experience set my mind working in two directions.
The first is that my aunt and I observed that most of the people playing the slots didn’t seem happy. Many of them were very old and were in there blowing their pension checks; others were spending their welfare checks. They were sitting there pressing buttons and receiving bad news, but they kept pressing the buttons all afternoon. They reminded me of lab rodents pressing a bar for food pellets, except in this case they rarely received a reward for their actions. Honestly, people. Go sit in a park. Read a book, develop some artistic skills – all cheaper and more rewarding ways to spend time.
The second thought is how nice it would be if this were an arcade. The place was full of shiny machines with video screens and bright, colorful flashing lights. I’m not kidding that there were hundreds and hundreds of them. It looked very much like an upscale arcade, yet sadly there weren’t any fun games; just machines that ate cash and hope without providing any but the very rarest excitement. Ripoff and waste of space combined. But I sure would like to build an arcade that looked like this.
We then went and drove by the third remaining Expo building, Habitat 67. It’s still in pretty good shape and fully populated with tenants. It was considered ugly when it was built, but up close it’s actually not so bad – I wouldn’t mind living in it.
Then we parked downtown and walked around Old Montreal for a while, looking at the old and well-decorated stone buildings. I had my smoked meat sandwich – not from Schwartz’s as planned, but it was still pretty good.
I think this is the McDonald’s where my mother bought me my first Chicken McNuggets (just weeks after they were introduced, as I recall) with the last change in her pocket, starting a junk food craving that lasted a good twenty years:
The highlight of the downtown trip for me was visiting Notre Dame Cathedral. It’s nice on the outside, but inside it’s one of the most beautiful buildings I’ve ever seen.
There are something like seven thousand pipes in this organ, and it has four keyboards plus a zillion other controls. I’ll have to beat that when I build my science-villain pipe organ:
Check out this kinky staircase:
On returning to Gaëtan’s van, he discovered a mechanical fault and we had to drive to the garage without power steering (I had to help steer since he’s recovering from a shoulder operation) and with failing electrics – in fact the vehicle died just as we pulled into the garage lot and stopped behind their tow truck. Very elegant; any difference in traffic or signals and we would have ended up pushing it the rest of the way or getting a tow. But on top of that, there was a priest there who asked us for directions, and he ended up handing us the keys to his car so we could drive ourselves home from the garage – he rode along to get his car back afterwards. Very generous of him.
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to Montreal
2011/09/04
Continued on from Belleville to Montreal today, with a couple of stops along the way.
First stop, the SkyDeck observation tower on Hill Island, in the midst of the Thousand Islands. The Thousand Islands really strike my fancy because you get what looks like a nice upscale suburban neighborhood, only with a river instead of roads, and instead of freight trains you get cargo ships passing by your back yard. Nice neighborhood if you can afford it:
Next stop, Upper Canada Village. My parents tell me I was here once before, but I don’t remember it. We were on a trip to evaluate a nearby hippy commune (I vaguely remember that part) and also did a boat tour of the Thousand Islands, which I also don’t remember.
I spent two hours at the Village but could have spent more. It’s the biggest heritage village I’ve seen in Canada so far. Lots to see. I enjoyed it a bunch. I’ve rarely seen so much quaint packed into such a localized area. But one thing about these heritage villages that most other people can’t say: I can honestly say I’ve lived in a place that makes these farmhouses look modern and luxurious.
Assorted Village pics follow.
Concluded the day by driving into Montreal and meeting up with my aunt Claudette and her boyfriend Gaëtan. I haven’t seen Claudette since the last time I was in Montreal, in 1985. Gaëtan is a new meet.
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Leaving Niagara
2011/09/03
Heading toward Montreal now. I took a side trip to check out Niagara-On-The-Lake, which turns out to be a really nice little town. On the way this small hydro facility caught my eye:
But for some reason I like the view towards the lake more:
The rest of the day was just driving. I took the superhighways through Hamilton and Toronto. In the morning I thought to make a reservation at my intended destination, Kingston. However, everything there was full up – I guess this being a moving weekend, a long weekend, just before back-to-school AND Kingston being near the Thousand Islands made it a popular spot.
So I drove as close as I thought I could get a room and ended up staying in Belleville. It was pretty crowded there too, and I didn’t get an ideal room.
Along the way I stopped at The Big Apple, a roadside dessert shop my friend Winston had recommended:
and got an apple pie to go. It was pretty good. I’m not a pie connoisseur (more of a cake person) but it was definitely worth a bite.
I haven’t been east of Toronto since 1985. I’m moving out of familiar territory and into dimly, distantly remembered areas and new lands now.
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