Tag Archives: Subway

Friday 18th August 2017 – SO HERE I AM …

… sitting on the coach station in Montreal waiting for my bus to Florenceville, totally exhausted. Luckily there’s a seat right by the gate that I need because I won’t be able to crawl much farther – I’ve had a hectic day!

I had another good sleep last night – which is hardly a surprise after all of the walking that I did yesterday, and then spent half an hour trying various key combinations of the laptop to see if I could fire up the keyboard, because you’ve no idea how inconvenient this external keyboard really is.

But all to no avail.

I nipped out to Tim Horton’s for breakfast and, much to my dismay, we were having a torrential rainstorm. What a way to finish my last day in Montreal.

Back here I started to pack and despite having emptied some stuff out of the suitcase, it seems to be even more full than it was before and it’s becoming something of a struggle to close it up. Either I shall have to dump some stuff or Strawberry Moose will have to go on a diet.

First stop was round at Josée’s. She works as a co-ordinator of some kind of project for reinsertion of people into the mainstream and part of their work includes running a series of craft workshops. It’s Zoe’s birthday tomorrow and I wanted to buy her a present, and I’d seen some stuff there that looked really nice.

So braving the rainstorm off I set, and I did have quite a lucky find. I stumbled across a second-hand computer shop where they had 50 laptops for sale, all of which seemed to be at bargain prices. Far from being the latest spec of course but if this one is about to give up the ghost I can organise a quick replacement.

Taking my leave of Josée I wandered up the hill to see what was going on. I noticed that a corner of the park had been closed off.

It seems that there’s an open-air music concert this weekend and they were all there setting up the stage.

Well, I wish them all the best of luck and I hope that the weather improves because it will be rather miserable if it doesn’t.

These people can give you much more idea of what the weather is doing right now.

I bet that you wondered what happened to all of the Routemasters that were phased out of London. The Londonders might not appreciate them but the rest of the world does and they are scattered all across the globe.

This is JJD274D with its top cut off being used as a sightseeing bus and the passengers are clearly enjoying it despite the rain.

You’ll notice that the rear platform has been “turned” for “driving on the left” operation

The weather slowly started to clear itself up so I headed back into town.

I’d heard about “Chinatown” and on my walk with Josée the other day I’d actually gone past it, so it seemed like a good idea to go into town that way.

But I do have to say that despite the banners and artificial arches it’s something of a disappointment. I’m not sure what I was expecting but I was expecting more than this

By now it was approaching lunchtime so I made my way into the big Complexe Desjardins.

There’s a huge food court in the basement and also this magnificent fountain that’s really well-worth admiring – a performing art in its own right.

I had a good prowl around the different food outlets but ended up as usual at the Subway for my 12-inch vegetarian without cheese, and mustard sauce.

And here’s a thing!

Do you know what the must surprising thing in the world is?

It’s to discover that you are sitting on one of these toilets that has an automatic flush that sets itself off into motion about 30 seconds after you’ve closed your eyes for a little doze.

You may remember from yesterday that there were some ships in port but I was unable to read their names.

The weather wasn’t right for sunbathing so I reckoned that I’d go for a walk along the docks to see what they were.

That was however not counting on some kind of invasion by some kind of colonial troops. Not British “redcoats” quite clearly, but there was obviously something going on somewhere.

But I wasn’t in the mood to go and check it out – despite the depressing weather there’s an ice-cream van selling vegan ice-cream down at the Old Port and I reckoned that I deserved a treat.

We’ve seen the clock tower – the war memorial to the Canadian merchant marine victims of World War I – on several occasions, but never from this angle.

I’ve taken a little detour round to the offices of the Montreal Yacht Club to make “certain enquiries”.

One idea that has gone through my mind on several occasions is the idea about hiring a cabin cruiser for a week or two to have a cruise down the St Lawrence, and the Yacht Club seemed like the best place to make enquiries.

But apparently that possibility doesn’t exist on the St Lawrence, which is very depressing.

There are however plenty of “organised” river cruises something similar to this one, but that idea doesn’t appeal to me too much.

And Josée told me about the cruise liner that sails from Montreal to the Iles de la Madeleine, but regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we saw that ship in dry dock downriver a couple of years ago and we had a good look over it.

We were at the Gare Viger yesterday and although the building is still there, it’s difficult to see where the railway lines ran, due to modern construction that seems to have wiped out part of the track bed.

But not far away is this road viaduct that doesn’t seem to be serving much or a purpose these days.

It made me wonder if the railway lines passed underneath here at one time as they curved round to join up with the lines that run through the port.

There were steps up to the roadway so I climbed up. This was the road out of the city to the east and so I followed it.

Underneath in the shadow of the Pont Jacques Cartier is this weird building that looks like some old steam pumping house.

The slogan carved on the walls is “Concordia Salus” which is the official slogan of the City of Montreal, so it was formerly a municipal building of some description.

This on the other hand is a building belonging to the Quebec Provincial Government as you can tell by the Quebec flag that’s flying from the roof.

If you are thinking to yourself that this has something of the air of being the local nick, you are quite right – it’s the “Prison des Patriotes” – the old “Pied au Courant” gaol where the perpetrators of the 1837-1838 rebellion were incarcerated.

It’s now a museum.

but let us turn our attention to the Pont Jacques Cartier for a brief moment, seeing as we are passing underneath it.

That bit that we see here isn’t even half of it. That’s the Ile Sainte Helene over there – not the south bank of the river, and there’s just as much, if not more bridge on the other side of the island leading over to Longueil

While I was wandering around the docks earlier I fell in with a couple of Port security guards, so I asked them about the Manitoba.

They hadn’t even noticed that it had been there moored up for over a year so they couldn’t tell me what was going on with it.

But they did say that it was attended and that there was the occasional maintenance crew aboard, so it wasn’t abandoned or laid up.

Nevertheless, according to my own research, she’s been in port now for 486 days – since April 17 2016/

The next ship in at the docks is the Damia Desgagnes.

She’s a gas tanker of about 15;000 tonnes and has arrived in port from a voyage around the Great Lakes via the Welland Canal.

You’ll remember that we stuck our noses into the Welland Canal on our trip in 2010

Way over there in the distance we have the huge Algoma Guardian.

Not as huge as all that though – a mere 23;000 tonnes and built in 1987.She’s come in from Quebec, having been on a voyage down through the Great Lakes.

And even as I speak she’s back on her way up the lakes again.

Final ship – at least – that I could see, is the Ferbec, a bulk carrier of just over 27;000 tonnes.

Owned by the Canadian Shipping Lines, as you can tell, she arrived in port almost 3 weeks ago on a marathon journey that started on Christmas Eve in Shanghai.

Yes, I’ve been having my money’s worth here in the Port of Montreal, haven’t I?

It’s a long walk back into the centre of town and so, dodging the hordes of beggars that seem to be on every street corner here in ?ontreal; I headed back down the rue Ste Catherine Est.

And no surprises for guessing what I have stumbled upon here. I’ve heard about the installation of speed cameras here in Quebec and this is what one of them looks like.

But judging by the state of the roads around here, I wouldn’t want to be doing any more than 50kph. I’ve seen parts of the Trans-Labrador Highway that are in better condition than this.

I don’t know where the City is spending all of its money, but it’s certainly not on the public highway.

For those of you with a musical bent, you’ll enjoy Montreal right now.

I talked earlier today about the open-air concert and we’ve mentioned the public pianos when we’ve been here in earlier years.

They are still here – at least, this one in the rue Ste Catherine est is – and the guy who was tinkling away at the ivories wasn’t all that bad at all.

Not only that, while I was having a coffee outside the Tim Horton’s; some giutarist came and set himself up to busk in the street.

“I’ll take a photo of him in a minute when I’ve finished my coffee” I mused to myself” but by that time he had packed up and cleared off. It had been a long day and I was pretty exhausted.

But my luck was in – if that’s the correct phrase – higher up the street.

I happened to catch a performance by the worst bagpiper in the world – and I’ve heard some bad pipers, I’ll tell you that.

Everyone has to learn and that everyone has to start somewhere, that’s for sure, and I’m all in favour of live music, but there ARE limits all the same.

I’d be embarrassed to be out on the streets playing like that for money.

While I’d been on my travels I’d been looking out for a likely place to eat, and I’d noticed another falafel place. That was my next stop as by now it was after 19:00.

But to say that I was disappointed was an understatement. The food was reasonable but the price ended up being utterly extortionate so I’ve crossed that place off my list for next time.

A stagger back to the hotel for my suitcase which I had left in the cupboard, and then off round the corner to the bus station.

The bus was in early so I could grab a comfy seat, which is always nice and useful. Internet and electricity too so that I could listen to some good music.

And the irony of having spent a good hour or so crawling underneath the Pont Jacques Cartier is that we actually drove over it on our way out of town.

Didn’t stop at Longueuil though – no-one wants to board there apparently, so next stop is the Sainte-Foy interchange on the outskirts of the city of Quebec.

Thursday 17th August 2017 – JUST FOR A CHANGE …

… the disasters were quite limited today and I had something of an interesting day.

One of the things that I’ve been doing each time that I come here is to go to the end of the line of a different metro line to see what goes on there, and I’ve exhausted them all. But I’ve been a regular traveller on Bus 202 when I was out in the sticks and never seen what’s at the end of that. And so that was today’s plan.

I’d had a reasonable sleep, which always seems to put me in a better humour. And I’d been on my travels too. I was teaching an “English as a foreign language” course and at the interval I had some goodies to share out. But for that I needed some spoons and the ones in my drawer were so dirty – so I went off to wash them. It took ages too and in the end the person who was supervising me suggested that I abandon the treat that I had lined up, went back to my classroom and re-started the lesson a little early so that we could finish early and go home.

Breakfast was at Tim Horton’s as usual and I made full use of their internet. I noticed on one of these mapping sites that it’s possible to download maps for off-line use, so I downloaded a map of Canada just to be on the safe side. I’ll download a few others too while I’m at it.

After spending a few hours back here doing some work I went out to hit the Metro. And here I had quite a major surprise too.

Regular readers of this rubbish will remember that the metro trains here were old, filthy things from when the lines were built 50 years ago and had received nothing in the way of upgrade ever since then.

Well, all of this has changed.

There are still plenty of the old trains knocking about on the system but there are also some shiny new ones and I was lucky that the one that I wanted was one of those.

They are clean, nicely illuminated with “traffic lights” on the doors and you can walk the whole length of the car.

With them being open like that you can see some interesting views as the trains snake their way around the system and it occurs to me that at some point I might do a video of it.

I found a nice length of track that would be suitable.

Regular readers of this rubbish will also recall that last year on my travels I saw a really nice church and took a photo – but forgot to note the name.

That was on my list of things to do and so I went off for a little perambulation; seeing as I was in the vicinity.

And my luck was in too, and doesn’t that make a change?

Some guy was loitering outside doing stuff and seeing me admire the building he came over for a chat

He told me that it’s the Eglise Ste Croix and its claim to fame, because it certainly has one, is that it was moved here stone-by-stone 80 years ago (1931 as I was to find out later) during some redevelopment work.

Today it’s a museum and as there was some kind of event going on there, I was allowed to enter it for a look around.

I couldn’t take my bag (or my camera unfortunately) in there with me but I managed to smuggle in the telephone, and the results aren’t too bad, I suppose.

Although I wish that the stained glass windows had come out better.

There were all kinds of exhibits in there, mostly relating to works by local craftsmen through the ages.

Lots of carpentry – 18th and 19th-Century furniture and the like but it wasn’t possible to photograph them.

Here in a quiet, discrete corner there was the possibility to photograph this group of religious statues which I found quite impressive.

And so back to the DuCollege metro station down the road and the Bus 202. And off we set down to the end of the line, with me making careful note of where all of the bus stops for the interesting places like IKEA were.

You can do that now because with the modernisation of the Montreal Public Transport system that seems to be taking place, they have a stop-announcement system as the bus is driving – “prochain arrêt Cotes de Liesse Cavendish” which is where you alight for IKEA.

There are roadworks going on all over the motorway network here in Montreal right now, and when we were here last year I showed you why.

This year, our bus stops at the traffic lights right by another fine example of Quebecois motorway engineering.

The whole system is like that.

Our bus stops at the Dorval railway station – which I’m determined to try out one of these days – and then turns off into “Dawson”, which is the street where it is supposed to finish. And I prepare to alight.

But instead, the driver changes the headboard sign and we continue on. I wasn’t expecting this.

We skirt the huge Lac St Louis which is absolutely beautiful and where I was expecting to go for a walk, but we still carried on driving. For hours, it seemed.

But all good things come to an end and we fetch up at a huge shopping centre on the edge of the city.

And I’ve been here before because there’s so much that I recognise. And the funny thing is that we aren’t all that far from the airport. but what a road we took to get here.

I go off to organise lunch and then for a good prowl around the Walmart and the Home Depot down the road. Couldn’t find a Canadian Tire but there must be one somewhere in the vicinity.

I have two choices of going back to the city – one is to retrace my steps on the 202 and the second is to find the express bus 485 that operates in the vicinity.

I eventually track that down and leap aboard. A few stops around the immediate area and then onto the motorway into town, with a stop at Dorval railway station and the persistent queues in the roadworks and rush-hour.

I’m dumped at the Lionel Groulx Metro Station and take the metro to the Place d’Armes.

It’s a different way to the Old Port from the one that I usually take and I’m glad that I came this way.

There’s not much left of the original dockside buildings of the mid-19th Century when the port was in its heyday but I manage to stumble on one of the very few surviving areas.

This is just how the place – or any Victorian city in the British Empire – would have looked 150 years ago abd I bet that it won’t be here much longer.

And bingo! I strike it luck down on the Vieux Port.

We passed the ice-cream van yesterday and I hadn’t paid much attention to it. But today, in the heat, I give it a close examination and there we are! Vegan ice-cream!

Of course I cannot let an opportunity like this pass me by, can I?

Several ships in the harbour too; including our old friend Manitoba who still seems to be there from last year

I couldn’t read the names of most of the ships but this one seems to be the Federal Spey.

Although she’s in the colours of the Canadian Shipping Lines she’s another one of these that’s registered in the Marshall Islands, something possibly not unconnected with the fact that Corporation Tax for maritime activities in the Marshall Islands is just 3%

And people are so upset about refugees receiving a couple of hundred dollars!

And we had a miracle in Montreal too.

As I was walking by St Pauls … errr … I mean – the docks; the sun suddenly appeared through the clouds right between the arms of Jesus outstretched on top of his church or whatever it is.

Nothing wrong with a bit of divine intervention every now and again.

I carried on to my usual spec at the clock tower to sit on the steps, watched a young girl of about 3 playing with her parents, and admired the Manitoba and the Pont Jacaues Cartier.

They say that a good many historical places in the New World are named for the Europeans who discovered them.

And I’ve often wondered what Jacques Cartier must have said when he arrived here on 2nd October 1535 and discovered this bridge.

My road back into town took me past the Marché Bonsecours.

This is one of the most spectacular buildings still remaining in the old city and we’ve visited it a few times.

In fact on one occasion last year I crashed out in the coffee bar when I had a funny turn when I was out a-walking.

Luckily I’m feeling a little better this year than I did back then.

This group of people caught my eye, all dressed in white.

And if you want to know what they are doing, you have to ask them. And so I did.

It’s one of these crowding things, apparently. They all assemble at a certain spot and these are off to eat a sandwich somewhere in the city -in the street.

They’ve even brought their chairs with them

It’s not possible for me to come here without going to see the most beautiful building in the whole of Montreal.

This is the Gare Viger – the old Canadian Pacific railway station that was abandoned when they CPR pulled out of the east of Canada and is a sad reminder of the collapse of the Canadian railway system.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that it was in a very sorry state and threatened with demolition at one time – which would have been a tragedy.

It has however been undergoing a programme of renovation and as luck would have it, a workman had nipped outside leaving the door open.

It goes without saying that as he nipped outside, I nipped in behind him and took a few photos before I was thrown out.

I have to say that I don’t think all that much of the renovations, but at least it’s been saved for the future – something that 5 years ago was looking very unlikely.

Now I’m sure that I can’t be the only one who sees the total irony in these two signs next to each other at the Chapelle de Notre Dame de Lourdes/

One of them reads “this church was erected in the Glory of Mary thanks to the generosity of her Friends” and the second one reads “it is strictly forbidden to loiter or to seek alms whether inside or outside the Chapel”

It’s this kind of thing that gives the Catholic Church the kind of bad reputation that it has today.

On this point I went off to a Lebanese restaurant that I’d noticed the other day and they served an excellent assiette falafel with diced potatoes. And didn’t that go down a treat?

Now it’s off to bed for an early night. My last day in Montreal tomorrow and I need to be on form because I’m on the overnight bus tomorrow night.

No sleep for me!

Wednesday 16th August 2017 – WE HAVEN’T FINISHED …

… with our series of calamities yet.

First thing is that the keyboard on the laptop has now seized. I’m not sure how that has happened – it must have been when I closed the lid in a hurry and trapped a pen in between the keys, and this has somehow triggered off the key-lock combination.

Having tried all kinds of combinations that I (and several gallant friends) could remember, it’s still stuck firmly solid.

I discovered this this morning when I went to type of the results of my travels during the night. I was in charge of two young girls – aged about 9 and 5 – and I had to make a sandwich for them. The 9 year-old was straightforward enough but for the younger one it was the tiniest lump of baguette with next-to-nothing on it. It was clear that this wasn’t going to do her much good but I told her to eat it and if it wasn’t enough she could have a bit more. She was quite clear that she needed more than this. Nevertheless, I told her to eat it “and then we’ll see”.

I was awake at 02:30 this morning but no chance of me staying awake, even had I wanted to. I went back to bed and to sleep. 05:00 was much more like it.

I’d put the Canadian mobile phone on charge in something of a forlorn hope last night. USB data cables clearly don’t work so I’d tried the mains charger and it seemed to have done the business.

But here’s the next problem – in that there’s no credit on it apparently even though I had put $100 on it just before leaving. And so that’s never right. Just one more thing sent to try me, I suppose.

And yet another calamity surrounds the hotel. I’ve stayed here before but that was due to having to leave here at about 05:00 long before breakfast would be ready. This time though, there’s no issues about breakfast so I was quite looking forward to it – only to find that the place doesn’t serve breakfast.

The nearest Tim Horton’s is a fair walk away but nevertheless off I trotted for bagels, coffee and orange juice.

While I was there, and having a think – which I occasionally do – WhatsApp came to mind. using the Tim Horton’s wi-fi service, I downloaded it and configured it on my Europe phone.

My European service provider supplies a service for North America at €29 per fortnight and this doesn’t work out to be much more expensive while I’m here than my Canadian phone supplier would be, and the interesting thing is that I can use that in the USA.

All I need now is for Rhys to tell me the final two digits of the phone number that he’s using so that I can check that I have it and add it in.

Off I trotted down the street to reserve my bus for New Brunswick, and much to my surprise and delight, there are evening buses at the times and on the days that I want them. So I’m off on Friday evening at 21:30 to arrive Saturday morning at 09:00. But there’s a wait at Ste-Foy and … err … 2 hours wait at Riviere-du-Loup.

Next stop was the Dollar Store to organise a North American USB transformer for the phone. It takes about a week to fully-charge off the laptop. And it came up trumps with that and some other stuff too.

And outside, we had a strange sight. Loads of nursery-age kids wandering around the streets with guardians and the like. A couple of groups were in multi-pushchairs like the old “knife box” stage buses of the 1870s and I wasn’t quick enough with the camera, but I was for this arrangement that I thought extremely interesting.

At Bell Telephones I found the reason for my difficulties. The contract that I have has been abolished and, not only that, an upgrade to the system has rendered my phone obsolete.

And when I told the people that I wasn’t interested in buying a new phone, they lost interest in me completely. So that’s the end of Bell Telephones, then. I can’t say that I’m sorry.

It did occur to me afterwards that this was the same Bell shop that threw me out a few years ago. Perhaps it’s just an issue with this place and its manager, but I couldn’t care less now.

Not too far away is a computer shop, so I popped in. And popped out again with the cheapest USB keyboard in the place. If this doesn’t work then I’m stuffed (and it clearly does, because that’s how I’m managing to type this).

I’d arranged to see Josée so off I went to her place of work. The street where she works is a strange one – there’s a southern half and a northern half, with a bit missing in the middle.

And so, of course, Brain of Britain walked along a street that passed through the gap in the street so I had gone miles beyond it before I realised. And so I had to retrace my steps.

That had given me an opportunity to see a part of the rue Sherbrooke that I had never seen before. You might all recognise what that it up there, because we’ve stood on that point a few times before.

That’s the belvedere up on Mount Royal where there is that stunning view over the city that we’ve photographed on a few occasions. We’ve not seen it from this angle before though.

And what we have here is the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. We’ve not seen this building before either.

The First Nation totem pole – yes, I can go along with that, but the purpose of the pile of used vehicle tyres totally defeats me. It’s nothing that I would call Fine Art, but then regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I do have issues with this kind of thing.

Here’s a view that we all might recognise, because we’ve seen this before too. And had I known that Josée worked right here I would have been here in a flash without all of this messing about.

This is the park in the rue du Parc with Mount Royal park on the left and the Parc Jeanne Mance on the right; and Josée’s office backs onto the big skyscraper where I came in 2011 to talk to those guys about wind turbines and the like. It’s an uncomfortably small world these days.

And who was Jeanne Mance when she’s at home – if she ever is? She was the first lay (non-religious) nurse of the infant Montreal community and is the symbol of nursing here in the same way that Florence Nightingale is in the UK.

What with all of my prevarications, Josée had gone to lunch when I arrived and remembering that there was a “Subway” around the corner, I went and grabbed myself a butty too.

After lunch I finally met up with Josée. And being aware of my plight, she had brought in a spare mobile phone that she had lying around. Not only that, she knew a place where they would do a decent contract for a couple of months at a price far less than Bell could offer and with far more functions too.

That was well-worth a coffee so off we went for a drink and a chat and to catch up on everything that had happened since we had last seen each other.

With it being such a nice afternoon we set off to walk down to the river.

I was distracted on the way by this notice carved onto the wall of this building just here. Near this spot was where Marguerite Bourgeoys had her school for girls.

We remember her – she was the woman who came out with one of the very earliest groups of colonists to Montreal to look after the welfare of the women and children of the colony.

When we were at Troyes we went to see her birthplace, if you remember.

We didn’t actually make it as far as the river. It was a beautiful, warm afternoon and the pedaloes on the little lake looked so inviting. And besides, I don’t have enough exercise as everyone keeps on telling me.

And so we took to the water and had a really good pedal around the lake for half an hour.

There’s quite a strong current in there too so heading upstream was quite a fight. And we ended up being quite out of breath by the time that we finished.

And do I remember this from last year? Or is it new?

Whatever it is, it’s a Big Wheel of course and part of the entertainment that’s provided along the old port of Montreal, although right now it’s not doing very much entertaining because there’s no-one about.

I don’t imagine that the view of the city is up to much though, because we are quite low down here and we are surrounded by tall buildings.

Seeing as by now Josée was exhausted and that I’d paid for the pedalo, she summoned up a taxi to take us to our final port of call – the jazz club in Montreal. There was a live act on and she had booked a table for us.

It has to be said that the live act was, well, not up to the standard that I might have expected given the nature of the venue. Even worse was that despite having ordered a vegan meal, they could offer me … errr … nothing.

I ended up with a salad and that was my lot. And with a bottle of water and the cover charge for the entertainment my bill came to $37!00. I shan’t be going there again, that’s for sure.

We put the world to rights on the way back and I ended up having an early night. My first day in Canada and it was a long one too. I was ready for a good sleep.

Sunday 9th October 2016 – AND SO THIS IS IT!

My last day in Canada on this trip. And for all I know, my last day ever in Canada. The way my health is going, I shall be hard-pushed to make it back.

But just for a change just recently, I had a good night’s sleep! In bed reasonably early, and out like a light. One trip down the corridor but apart from that it was totally painless until the alarm went off at 06:00. Didn’t feel a thing! My efforts of the last few days have worn me out as you know, and so a good sleep was an essential.

I was rather late for breakfast though and there was quite a crowd. But coffee, orange juice and bagels soon had me up and about.

It was a nicer day today too – some blue sky was out there for a change. With it being my last day, and with my flight not leaving until 22:00 I decided to take advantage of the weather to out and about, to say goodbye to the St Lawrence River. Accordingly, I had a little doze for a while, stuck my suitcase in the “left luggage” and then hit the road at 11:00, just in time to leap on board the bus 202 that was going past.

At the Ducollege Metro Station, I made a decision. I’ve been going one at a time to the different Metro Stations at the end of each line to see what was going on, but I’ve never actually been to the end of the line down from past DuCollege.

That Metro Station is the Cote-Vertu and so I headed off there. And this is a photo of the interior of the station, just to prove that I made it here. And you can even see a train down there at the bottom.

Here’s a photo of the exterior too. It’s situated on the corner of the Boulevard de la Cote Vertu and the Boulevard Decarie. The building is the one over there at mid-height on the left margin of the image.

And really, I should have come here ages and ages ago. It semms to be occupied by the Indian community and there’s a couple of very democratic Indian restaurants there, as well as a pizzeria and a falafel place too. I can quite easily find a place to eat here.

There are lots of other shops too, including a wholesale fruit and veg place that sold me a pound of delicious grapes at just $0:99.

Yes, I missed out here at the Cote Vertu.

Down one of the streets off the Boulevard Decarie I noticed a church, and so I went off down there to look at it.

It’s actually the Church of St Laurent, which shouldn’t be too much of a surprise seeing as we are actually in the Borough of St Laurent. The church was built in the 1830s, although the facade was not added unti 50 years later.

It’s not the first church on the site. There was one dating from the 1730s and which was significant in being the first church on the island to be built outside the traditional city limits.

The buildings next door to it were even more impressive than the church. This is the Vanier College and is significant in that it’s one of the very few English-language colleges in Quebec, having opened its doors in 1970.

As for the name, that relates to Georges-Phinéas Vanier, who was one of the very few Canadian-born Governor-Generals, and served from 1959 until 1967, much to the chagrin of the Quebecois extremists.

Prior to the college being here, this was the site of the Couvent Notre-Dame-des-Anges – the Convent of Our Lady of the Angels, run by the Soeurs de Sainte-Croix – the Sisters of the Holy Cross – from whom the land was bought.

There was also a women’s college, the Collège Basile-Moreau, on the site. He was, by the way, the founder of the Order of the Holy Cross.

On the way back to the Boulevard Decarie, I stumbled upon a Charity Shop that was actually open. And here I had an enormous stroke of luck.

I’ve written loads of stuff about abandoned railways and the like, mostly from analysis because there seems to be nothing at all in the way of historical research into Canadian railways. It’s not like the UK, where every inch of old railway is faithfully reported and its history thoroughly researched.

But here sitting on the shelves of the Charity Shop was a book entitled Canadian National Railways – Towards the Invitable Volume 2 1896-1922. It’s long out of print but it covers almost all of the lines in which I have an interest, including the ephemeral railway line to Centreville about which I’ve been barking completely up the wrong tree.

And $3:50? You must be joking!

My perambulations brought me all of a sudden to the DuCollege Metro Station. I realised that despite all of the trips that I have made from here, I’ve never actually taken a photo of the exterior of the building.

This is the time to put this right, even though it’s the other entrance that I habitually use. And while I was taking this photo from the park across the road, I was being smiled at by a couple of these religious people with their portable news stand handing out the literature.

I’d never actually looked down the end of the side-street in daylight either, and I’d been wondering why the street was called “DuCollege”. And I dealt with both of those issues while I was here.

There was this beautiful stone building right down the end of the street so I strolled off down there to inspect it. It’s the CEGEP ST Laurent. The Collège d’Enseignement Général et Professionnel is, I suppose, one level below the University system in the same sense that the old Polytechnics were in the UK – that kind of thing

Although some of the education services here date back almost 175 years, the college came into being in 1967 when the CEGEP system was founded. It goes without saying that it is French-speaking.

As for the church next to the CEGEP St Laurent, well, shame as it is to say it, there I was busy taking a photograph of it – after all, it really is beautiful – and then off I wandered back down the street towards the DuCollege Metro Station having forgotten to make a note of its name.

Anyway, it’s actually situated in the Avenue Sainte Croix, although I do realise that this piece of information isn’t going to help anyone very much.

Back at the Metro station, I hopped on board a train and headed into town. Just as far as the Victoria-OACI station, and then walked up the hill towards the Place d’Armes.

As I walked into the Place d’Armes through the crowds, this interesting vehicle pulled up across the square so that the passengers on board could look at the Cathedral and the statue of Paul Cholmedy, the Sieur de Maisonneuve.

It seems to be another one of these amphibious vehicles of the same type that we saw years ago in Halifax and probably does the same job. I can imagine that there’s some kind of factory somewhere in Canada churning out these machines for the tourism industry.

There’s a “Subway” further on down the street and that’s where I was heading. I’ve been wandering around for quite some time and it’s way past lunchtime. My stomach thinks that my throat has been cut.

Down at the docks, we’re in luck. Last day of our journey and we are able to conjure up a “Ship of the Day”.

She’s the Venture, a self-discharging bulk carrier of 30,000 tonnes and built in 2002. She arrived here after some considerable perambulation in the Mediterranean.

The flag that she is flying, and which I didn’t recognise at first, is the flag of the Marshall Islands, a group of islands (one of which is the legendary “Bikini Atoll” of nuclear-testing fame) in the Pacific and said by the United States Atomic Energy Commission to be “by far the most contaminated place in the world”.

Another claim to fame of the islands is that it probably has more ships than it has inhabitants – a fact probably not unconnected with the islands’ rate of corporation tax of just 3%.

By now the clouds were starting to close in from the south, but the rain was holding off and so I went for a walk along one of the quays.

There must be something up somewhere concerning maritime traffic on the St Lawrence because there was this tug steaming … "dieseling" – ed … up the river. I hadn’t noticed any ship in the vicinity other than the Venture and she didn’t look as if she was preparing for sea, so I wondered where the tug might be going.

Over there on the other side of the dock is the quay where we saw that goelette when I was here in early September. It’s not there now (the ground’s all flat, and beneath it lies the bloke …) though.

In the background over there is the Ile Sainte Hélène and the Biosphere, which was the pavilion of the United States during Expo ’67. It was originally covered by an acrylic sheath but it will come as no surprise to any regular reader of this rubbish to learn that this sheath was destroyed in a fire in May 1976.

From my spec on the dock I walked around the quay onto the waterfront. There were hordes of people here, all taking advantage of the afternoon and what sun was still loitering about.

But never mind the people for the moment. What was interesting me was the autumn colours on the trees here in the Vieux Port. They are magnificent. You can see why I love being here in Canada in the autumn – I wouldn’t be anywhere else.

A little further on along, there was a good view down towards the east past the clock tower. This is a war memorial to the sailors of the Merchant Marine who were lost during World War I and was designed as a replica of Big Ben in London.

Further down is the Pont Jacques Cartier – the Jacques Cartier Bridge that spans the river between Montreal and Longueuil, with the modern port area further along behind.

The weather was now deteriorating rapidly as you can tell from the clouds. Scattering a cloud of pigeons, I walked around the docks to the old commercial port.

We’ve talked about the goelettes – the ships that used to run the boat services from Montreal to all of the small towns and villages along the shores of the St Lawrence in the days before the road network.

This was the dock from which they sailed and to which they returned. And all around here back in those days was a kind of market where the people from along the shore who had brought their produce down in the goelettes would set up their stalls to sell their produce.

Feeling the strain again by now I repaired to the old Marché Bonaventure. This has now been restored and occupied by all of these trendy boutiques. But down at the far end is a café where there are some comfy chairs and, surprisingly, coffee on sale at a very democratic price.

A comfy sofa was free so I installed myself there, drank my coffee and read my new book for a while. When I find my strength again, I can move on.
About half an hour or so later I hit the road again, retracing my steps to the Place Victoria and the Metro Station.

Right outside, but across the road from the entrance, I stumbled across a television crew filming someone talking into the microphone about something or other. I’ve no idea who he was and I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but I took the opportunity to take a photo of him.

I always seem to find a camera crew when I’m on my travels in North America, don’t I?

The metro took me back to DuCollege and there I had to wait ages for the bus 202 to take me back to the Comfort Inn. We had the usual unavoidable performance of persuading the driver to drop me off by the bridge at the end of the Cote de Liesse where I could cross the motorway (otherwise I have to walk for miles and miles because there’s no official bus stop anywhere near there).

There was an airport shuttle already on the road so I grabbed my suitcase, nipped into the Gentlemen’s rest room, and then back outside for the shuttle and on the way to the airport.

In the shuttle were a couple of people and we ended up discussing the Brexit. Even though many Quebecois have been fighting tooth-and-nail for 50 years for independence, the unanimous opinion of my fellow-travellers was that the British vote for the Brexit was the most stupid thing that they have ever heard.

Quebec has an almost-inexhaustible supply of raw materials and an almost-inexhaustible supply of energy. The UK has no raw materials and all of its energy resources are owned by foreigners (even the new nuclear power station at Hinkley Point is to be operated by EDF of France).

It has nothing that anyone would ever want and nothing that would be any use in launching a manufacturing industry.

There was quite a queue at the baggage check-in and I had to wait for about half an hour to hand in my suitcase. And this time, they managed not to drop my passport into the conveyor belt.

The food on Air Transat is total rubbish as I have already told you, and there is a “Subway” downstairs. Consequently, I went off and ordered a 12-inch vegetarian without cheese. Just for once, I asked for the bread to be toasted, and I’m wishing now that I hadn’t, for reasons that I will explain in due course.

The final thing that needed to be done concerned my bus ticket. I had bought a three-day one, as you might remember, and there was over 28 hours remaining on it. I intended to give it to anyone who was about to buy one but although I was there for 10 minutes there was no-one approaching the ticket machine.

What I did therefore was to write on it “valable jusqu’a mardi minuit” – “doesn’t expire until Tuesday at midnight” and left it on the machine. Whoever might need it can just help themselves.

The queue through the security was quite small – about 10 minutes to go through. And much to my surprise, not only was it painless but the staff weren’t the usual arrogant unpleasant staff that you normally find at the airport at Montreal.

I hiked off down to the gate, which was right down at the end of the terminal, and installed myself on a seat where there was a power point (and that took some finding too). Feeling hungry, I attacked my Subway sandwich but half of the filling fell out. Having the bread toasted meant that it wasn’t as pliable and so I won’t be doing that again.

At 21:15 we were called onto the aeroplane. it was an Airbus 330, quite new by the looks of things, and I was lucky in having one of the twin seats near the rear.

Once we had all settled in, we hurtled down the runway and launched ourselves off into the air, heading back to Europe. My stay in Canada was over.

I was desolate – this may well have been my last trip across the Atlantic because I won’t ever be in any better health than I am right now. Who knows where I’ll be in 12 months time? “Pushing up the daisies” I mused to myself.

And here you are – 2658 words of my last day in North America. A world-record number of words.

I hope that you all appreciate it. Don’t forget to “like” it

Saturday 8th October 2016 – AND SO AFTER ALL …

… of the shenanigans of last night, the Orleans Express bus from the Gaspé Peninsula turned up bang on time and we were all ready and waiting. It set off on time too, which was nice to know, and I settled down for the long drive to Montreal. Those hot cross buns that I had bought in Woodstock were really nice – I’ll tell you that.

For the first part of the journey I didn’t drop off to sleep at all. Probably far too wound up after the drive up from Florenceville. Instead, I curled up on my seat and carried on reading my book. At Sainte-Foy there were no toilets opened and the one on the bus was occupied so I curled up on my seat again and this time I managed to drift in and out of sleep all the way into Montreal.

At the bus station I had a really good half-hour power nap in the usual little hidey-hole. And then I was ready for anything. Unless you’ve tried it, you’ve no idea just how comfortable you can become when you ride astride the porcelain horse.

“Anything” was the bus station café. A huge cup of coffee and a couple of bagels were just the job for breakfast but I didn’t stay there for long. The internet connection was rubbish and I was keen to see how Rachel was doing (she finally arrived home at 04:30). And so I went to track down the 747 bus to the airport.

It doesn’t stop in the coach station any more. According to my friendly neighbourhood bus driver, they’ve upped the standing fees in the bus station and the STM – Societe de Transports de Montreal – is refusing to pay them. Instead, the bus leaves from down the road outside the Berri-UQAM metro station. There’s no ticket machine in the bus station either now, so you have to go to the machine at the metro station. I bought a 3-day ticket ($18:00) because it’s cheaper than two one-day passed (2x$10:00).And it was pouring down with rain outside. Whatever happened to the Indian Summer we had been having.

I found a comfy bench at the airport, with yet another flaky internet connection. Nevertheless, I was able to catch up with a few things there, despite being interrupted by a vocal local yokel who wanted to discuss Facebook with me. There’s a “Subway” in the airport too and so seeing as I was thirsty I went and had a giant sized root beer and I ordered a sandwich to take away. The Comfort Inn is rather out on a limb and there isn’t anything available to eat in the vicinity.

Having organised all of that, I phoned for my shuttle, and that brought me here to the hotel. It’s fully-booked and so there wasn’t a room available at that moment. Still, there’s a comfy chair, a good internet connection, a power point and a free coffee pot in the foyer. What else do you need when you are waiting for your room?

I didn’t have to wait long for my room, and the first thing that I did was to have a stinking hot shower and to wash my clothes – I’m running out. But it must have been Eskimos … "Inuit" – ed … who had this room before me. The heat was off but the fan was on blowing cold air around and it was about 10°C in here.I whacked the heating up and resolved not to move until the temperature reached 25°C.

I had my butty, chatted to Liz and one or two other people for a while, and spent the rest of the afternoon dozing in and out of sleep. it’s been a hard day so far.

Nevertheless, I made it out for the bus 202. I missed the first one so went back in. But I was out for the next – in fact just in time to step straight onto the bus as it was going past. As you might expect, I ended up at the Cote des Neiges, and here I had a terrible shock. It’s all been gentrified and many of the smaller businesses have been cleared away and replaced with trendy boutiques. It took me a while to track down an assiete falafel, but when I did, it was well worth it because it was one of the best that I have had in North America.

So that was me fixed.

On the way back, Rhys ‘phoned me up and we had a really good chat until the battery on my phone went dead. I spent the next hour or two having a huge melancholy nostalgia fit listening to music. Leaving Canada always makes me feel maudlin.

So now I’m off to bed. My last night in Canada and I’m inconsolable. If my health continues to deteriorate at the rate it seems to be deteriorating, I shan’t ever be back again.

That’s enough to make anyone feel maudlin, never mind me.

Monday 5th September 2016 – THEY SAY THAT A YEAR …

… is a period of 365 disappointments, and I’ve been having my fair share just recently. And another one ha reared its ugly head today. The night bus that I was planning to take tomorrow night – well, I can’t. Apparently there’s no room on it, and that’s that.

There is however another bus, but that leaves at 06:00 on Wednesday morning and so faute de mieux, I’m on that. But 06:00 in the morning – does that exist? We shall have to find out.

It also means that I shall have to stay another night in a hotel here, and for no good purpose too which is unfortunate. And “here”, as in the Comfort Inn on the Cote de Liesse, is clearly impossible as there is no way that I could be in the city centre in time for the bus.

However, wandering around in the vicinity of the coach station, I came across a street full of about 20 disreputable cat-houses, a mere 5 minutes stagger away from where I want to be and so tomorrow night I shall be installing myself in one of those.

God help the bed-bugs with me on the way!

Now I can’t remember how many times I left my bed last night. It might have been one, but on the other hand it might have been none. One thing that I do know was that we had the Sleep of the Dead.

I was in bed, as I said last night, by 21:15 and I remember nothing whatever until about 04:40. Totally painless it was.

And I didn’t feel up to doing much for the first hour and a half. I stretched out here on the sofa and took it easy with a glass of cold spruce beer and a coffee. No point in having a decent, comfy sofa if you don’t make full use of it.

Breakfast was from 06:30 and I was there very shortly afterwards (something like 06:31 actually) and here we had a minor panic. Bagels (and a toaster, coffee and orange juice) there were a-plenty. But where was the maple syrup? You can’t come to Canada and not have toasted bagels and maple syrup for breakfast. Anyway, eventually some was found and that was me all set up for the morning.

I had a companion too – a North African who told me that he was from Belgium. He was here on a tourist visa, so he said, but he was looking for work and asked me if I could help him. i gave him a few pointers, such as I know them, which isn’t very much, and then came back up here to attack some paperwork, of which there was more than enough. It didn’t help with me … err … closing my eyes for a little relaxation at some point during the proceedings.

But I can’t stay here for ever. Despite the fact that it’s Labour Day, there are things to do, places to go, people to see and all of that and so I need to sort myself out for the bus.

And I didn’t have long to wait either which was just as well because even though it was only 10:00 it was stifling hot already. The bus to the metro and the metro to the Berri-UQAM station and the coach station round the back. And this is where I had my disappointment.

But of course you know that we don’t have problems, we have solutions and so we set off to put our principles into practice.

This isn’t a photograph of of my selected cat-house by the way. This is a photo of a very tranquil little alleyway at the back of what used to be a boot and shoe factory, and it’s right in the centre of Montreal. It wasn’t what I was expecting to find in a place like this.

This isn’t a photo of my selected cat-house either.

If you are a regular reader of this rubbish you will recall that I’ve been posting the odd photo every now and again of houses in Montreal and the surroundings because some of the inner-city housing has a very special charm or beauty.

And these here in the rue Timothée just go to show what can be done with a little imagination – something that seems to be sadly lacking in Europe these days.

Having resolved the issues of the next stage of my journey, the next plan was to resolve the issues of my stomach. It was lunchtime.

The rue St Catherine is what is described as the city’s “Latin Quarter” – something that took me by surprise seeing as how all of the signs were written in French.

It was also Gay Pride day or something in the street apparently. There were loads of same-sex couples strolling hand-in-hand or arm-in-arm. I took my time over eating my Subway sandwich (without spilling it all over the floor this year) – I didn’t want to bugger off yet.

Last year, you may remember, they had street pianos dotted around all over the city so that anyone who fancied a quick tinkle on the ivories could go and have a play around.

They are doing the same thing this year too, and here is a pianist having a right old go on the joanna and he’s recruited a couple of vocalists to give him some accompaniment. I suppose that it’s all part of life’s rich pageant

There’s all kinds of stuff going on in the rue St Catherine and at a certain point there are four or five giant chessboards. People give their names to the organisers and they are called up to play when a previous game is finished.

Here in this game we had a dispute over the rules of “castling” and I learned something that I didn’t know before. And that’s always good news.

We had a few moment of excitement in the rue Sainte Catherine too. A woman, coming out of a building, saw another man, went over to him to say ‘Happy Birthday!” and grabbed him in the most enormous bear-hug that went on for hours.

I was so impressed that I went over to her and told her that if that was the reaction, then I would like to say that it was my birthday too. However, I didn’t have the same treatment – not at all!

I told you that it was not my lucky day, didn’t I?

But by mid-afternoon the heat was thoroughly overwhelming and the only protection is flight. I flew to the Metro and took the train out to Verdun and the La Salle metro station.

Just down the road is the Parc Arthur Therrien, whoever he is when he’s at home, if he ever is, and that was my destination. It was great to see the centre of Montreal from this kind of distance rather than being stuck in the middle of it in this heat.

Over there in the distance at the back of Mount Royal is the Oratory of Saint Joseph which is on the Cote-des-Neiges. You may remember that we visited the Oratory in … errr … 2013 wasn’t it?

But not today, I’m going to enjoy the sun and have a good time, watching all of the people enjoying themselves – and I say “all of the people” because there are hordes here and everyone is having fun – even all of the kids who are splashing around in the swimming pool and the ponds.

As for me though, I headed off into the shade and found myself the first real view of the St Lawrence river for this year. The motorway bridge away in the distance (downstream, fortunately) rather detracts from the scenery, but never mind.

And so, having found a nice shady spot out of the 32°C temperature, I closed my eyes for … errr … 45 minutes and it was totally painless, I’ll tell you that! It did me the world of good too!

Having hunted down the gentleman’s rest room (and had I not needed it I would probably still be asleep there now) I went for a walk along the edge of the river, watching the fishermen, the canoeists and the jet-skiers.

And also admiring the properties on the river front and how I would love to live in an apartment in a building like one of those.

And you can tell by the sky ust what kind of weather we are having today. It’s magnificent.

And so I headed back into the city and changed trains for the Jean Drapeau station on the Ile Sainte Helene in the middle of the river at the other end of the city. That ought to be nice and cool with the breeze coming in off the river as the evening draws on.

But that wasn’t to be either. The island was closed off as there was an “event” taking place there – some kind of music concert that was clearly not my type, so I headed back to town. Just round the corner from the Sherbrooke metro station, seeing as I was in that end of the city, is a little Lebanese restaurant that does an assiette falafel at a very democratic price. That was tea organised.

I headed back here afterwards, part of the way in company with a woman from the North East of England who had lived here for 8 years and couldn’t stand the heat.

And forget your white-knuckle rides in amusement parks. Take the 202 bus from DuCollege Metro Station back to here with the lady driver that I had, and you’ll have the time of your life. I ended up back here, shaken but not stirred, at 20:45 and by 21:15 I was showered and in bed, well on my way to the Land of Nod.

Thursday 15th October 2015 – NOT A SINGLE PHOTO …

… for the return journey today, and I’ll tell you why in a moment.

But I left you last night with me dozing off in the middle of a film. And I awoke to find that not only were we starting our descent to Frankfurt Airport, I’d actually missed my breakfast seeing as how I’d been asleep. And that’s not something that happens every day – missing out on a free meal. Mind you, I made sure that they knew that I was awake and so they quickly brought me my breakfast and coffee before we landed.

And I’m not quite sure if we landed or if we were shot down over the airport. It was a really rough arrival and when I looked out of the window I could see why. It was blowing a howling gale and teeming down with rain.

I had to travel right across to the other side of the airport for my connecting flight to Lyon. That took a good few minutes and a tram ride, I can tell you, as well as another passage through “security”. And I’ll tell you this – if the passage through “security” at Frankfurt could be completed in the same friendly, relaxed and informal manner in every airport throughout the world, then flying would be a pleasure. I spent more time discussing cameras with the guy at the gate than I did discussing security issues.

Our plane was parked up on the concrete pan right back across to where I had originally arrived, and so we were bussed right back over there. And as we turned around a corner of the building, a huge Airbus 380 took off right alongside us. It was absolutely immense and dwarfed the A340 upon which I’d arrived and which we drove past a minute or so later.

There was no chance of my taking a photo of my aeroplane in this wind and rain. I was drenched just crossing the pan from the bus to the ‘plane and it was freezing too – much colder than it was in Montreal and that’s a change. Anyway, it was a Boeing 737-300 that we had and it’s been years since I’ve flown on one of those.

And here’s a thing. Why is it that when the chief steward of the plane announces on the PA system announces that “you should not be sitting next to an emergency door if you are unable to open it”, they become quite upset and all peevish when you try to open it just to make sure?

And there was no snack for me on this plane either. But the stewardess found me a banana, which was very nice of her and I much appreciated it.

At Lyon, the wind and rain continued and it was even colder than at Frankfurt. We had a little drama on the tram at the airport as a foreign lady had boarded without having a valid ticket. She was waving around the receipt, claiming that that was all that she had received. However, when I had bought mine, two tickets had fallen out of the machine. I’d taken both with me onto the tram intending to give the spare one to the conductor, but here was the reason right before me.

At Lyon Part-Dieu, there was no train for 2 hours and so, now that there’s free public access internet at the station, thanks to the SNCF, I caught up with some stuff on the laptop and then went to the Subway around the corner for lunch. Handy places, these Subways, even though the price in Europe is twice what it is in Canada which is totally ironic seeing that food is twice as dear in North America as it is in Europe.

I had a good deal on the train – €33 and a bit – for my journey to Montlucon. And I had to run between trains at Riom as ours was 5 minutes late arriving from Lyon, so no time to photograph either train (no chance of doing the Lyon one at Lyon with the rain) and I arrived at Montlucon bang on time, with Liz waiting in the booking hall to take me home.

But I didn’t go home. Instead, she took me home for a nice meal and shower, and a nice warm bed. 2°C it was as we passed over the Font Nanaud and I can see me lighting the fire as soon as I return home. Have I ever lit a fire so early in all the time that I’ve been living here?

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Wednesday 14th October 2015 – SO HERE I AM THEN …

… in the coach station at Montreal, having alighted from my bus.

We reached Riviere du Loup in the small hours and had just a half-hour wait until the bus from the Gaspé arrived. But waiting isn’t so bad. It’s in the back room of a big Irvings petrol station and so it’s warm, there are seats, there are toilets and there are food and coffee available for anyone who feels the need. It’s not unpleasant at all.

The bus was quite full but the seats are quite comfortable so it wasn’t too much of an issue, and I missed most of the journey because I’d dozed off before we’d even left the premises.

I was awake though for when we stopped at Ste-Foy on the outskirts of Quebec, and I woke up again for when we stopped at Longueuil. And wide-awake for when we pulled into the coach station. 20 minutes late, it has to be said, but that’s more to do with the amount of traffic on the road at that time of morning.

The 747 bus for the airport leaves from right down at the far end of the coach station and opposite the booking desks there’s an STM (Société des Transports de Montreal or whatever) where you buy your bus tickets. As the airport is outside the limits of the Montreal urban area, you need to buy a $10:00 day ticket (or an $18:00 3-day ticket) to travel on the bus to the airport.

No point in going to the airport yet though, because I’m hours too early. But round the corner from the bus stand is a café that does a very democratic breakfast and coffee, with free wi-fi and power connections available, and so I dug myself in there for a while.

The bus ride was totally painless. 30 minutes is the advertised time but I had no idea of how long it took because I had a comfortable seat and I was reading a book. It seemed like just a couple of minutes and I was taken by surprise when we arrived.

Upstairs to the baggage check-in and I deposited my baggage. And wimp that I am, my luggage weighed just 20.3 kg, hand luggage included. That’s astonishing because I’m always usually pushing it to the max when I come back.

Downstairs again now. First call was to the Immigration Service to enquire about the procedure for obtaining this mythical form IMM 1442 next time that I come back. Apparently, when I present myself to the immigration desk, I mustn’t let him stamp my passport. I have to be sent to the offices behind the check-in desk and ask there for the form. I’ll probably be interviewed and I have to explain things to them and I should be given the form that I need. The girl that I spoke to didn’t see it as being anything more complicated than that.

Second port of call was to the Subway. There’s one of them in the airport and it’s the cheapest, quickest place to buy lunch. And I’ve learnt now that, in order to avoid any confusion, I order a végétarien sans fromage and that is simply that. No confusion at all.

It’s a very good job I came back early from my lunch because you can see more of the pantomime that is now taking place at the airport.

You’ll recall the 2.5-hour wait that we had to enter the country, and now we have a 40-minute wait to pass the “security” gates. On interviewing one of the people who was “controlling” the queue, we asked what would happen if the delay here meant that you were late for your flight. She just shrugged her shoulders.

Strangely enough, there was only an American woman and me who thought that this was objectionable. The other 800 or so people in the queue simply accepted it. I can’t believe just how docile and cowed the Westerners have become over these last 10 or 12 years since the Government started grinding their faces in the dirt. 800 people in uproar over this would change things in minutes but Western people these days have lost their sense of fighting spirit.

I spent most of my time in the queue chatting to a pleasant girl from Manitoba, and then we hit the “security” gates.

Pig-ignorant security guards barking out commands without a single “please” and that annoyed me intensely. I had another stand-off with another one of these very sad people and in the end I got her to say “please” when she asked me to take off my boots. I can’t believe that in modern-day Montreal it’s necessary to go to war to obtain a bit of basic and elementary human decency and politeness.

The plane was late, as you might expect, but it was well-worth waiting for. An almost-new, magnificent Airbus A340-300. Packed out to the gunwhales it was too, with just two free seats – one of which was next to me and so I was able to spread myself out.

The food, as you might expect with Lufthansa, was excellent indeed and the cabin staff was very helpful. Not much on the entertainment system, though, but I was able to see a couple of old Bundeslegia matches – Borussia Dortmund v Schalke 04 and then Bayern Munich v Borussia Dortmund, and then I dozed off while watching the new Asterix the Gaul film.

-2

Tuesday 18th August 2015 – LAST DAY IN MONTREAL

Last night’s sleep wasn’t anything like as good as the previous night’s, but that can be explained by the fact that as soon as I came in last night, I drank about a litre of spruce beer.

Being on my travels didn’t help matters either. I’d spent much of the night in the company of a young person who was having gender issues. He or she had half-undergone the hormone therapy necessary to change sex, but then had had a change of mind and not only stopped the treatment but was changing back. This led on from here to me taking a taxi – one of mine as it happens – to go to a white house somewhere. The driver was completely new – I was his first customer – and the journey was interesting to say the least, including undertaking another driver at a road junction and overshooting the destination. The driver said “well that was a bit of a disaster, wasn’t it?” to which I replied “don’t worry. We all have to start somewhere”.

So after breakfast I cracked on with some more work on the computer and this took me right up until 11:00. I had my airport shuttle booked for 11:15 and didn’t want to miss it, so I made sure that it arrived on time by pouring myself a full cup of coffee at 11:14 precisely. Works every time!

It took 5 minutes to get to the airport from where this hotel is, and I spent the time helping out a couple of people who needed to travel into the city. There was a 747 bus already in at the stop and the driver took 10 minutes to sort himself out, during which time a woman with three kids came onto the bus. She told them to sit down “as it’s going to be a long ride”
“And if I know anything about Montreal bus drivers, a wild ride too” I added.

And sure enough, off we shot and arrived at the coach station at the rue de Berri just 35 minutes later, shaken but not stirred.

Ten dollars it cost to leave my bag in the consigne, which is quite expensive, but then imagine what it would have cost in time and so on to go all the way back to the hotel to pick it up and then lug it all the way back here through the city later this evening. This had to be the sensible option – the hotel shuttle to the airport and then the 747 bus directly to the coach terminal.

And I can’t believe this but in a Dollar Store just round the corner from the bus station as I continue my stroll down rue St Catherine Est I find exactly the right adapter for the Swiss electrical plugs. That’s an amazing find, and something else to add to the travel bag

This is a beautiful little street isn’t it – a pile of beautiful little houses down there and some typical Quebec maisonettes of the type that you see in all of the urban areas.

Balconies and open staircases – must be beautiful to sit outside on them on a lovely summer’s evening but it must be hell, absolute hell in the middle of a Quebec winter trying to get to your front door.

But why I stopped was to look at the corner of the street at this new building is that it’s the site of the Ouimetoscope.

That was the very first cinema to be opened in Montreal – in January 1906 in fact, and the following year was rebuilt to be come the largest cinema in North America at the time.

There’s some kind of scheme going on here in Montreal at the moment – what they call the Piano Publique. They have dumped a load of pianos about in different parts of the city and are encouraging people to sit down and play them.

This guy isn’t too bad at all as it happens. I could sit and listen to him for quite a while, but I just don’t have the time.

Look at this gorgeous art-deco building here on the corner of St Catherine and Alexandre Deseve, at 1560 rue St Catherine Est. There’s been a “Club Sandwich” here in the past as well as an Irish bar and the Hotel Bourbon.

It’s the Complexe Bourbon, quite a favourite spot in the city in the past, and at one time was up for sale for $8,500,000, but that was several years ago. It looks as if it will be pulled down before its much older and what a shame because it’s beautiful.

This church was formerly the Sacre Coeur de Jesus down at the end of the rue Alexandre Deseve.

The church doesn’t function as a church any more and the big house at the side, the ancienne Presbytere, is now a centre d’accueil pour les jeunes en difficulte – possibly the Association les Chemins du Soleil which is situated, according to a poster that I saw plastered about the church, at 1155 rue Alexandre Deseve.

At the parc Charles Campbell, a lawyer and philanthropist of the 19th Century who left all of his money to create parks for children to amuse themselves in the open air, they are having a Neighbourhood Fair tonight, with entertainment, food and all kinds of stuff going on.

And you might not be able to see him but there’s a guy sitting in that tree just there pulling that banner up at the far end of that rope.

I had lunch at the Subway down here, asked once again if i wanted cheese with my “nothing but crudites”, and ended up by dropping half of it on the floor and making a huge mess everywhere.

But after lunch I strolled down to the metro station to tale the train all the way down to Honore Beauregard, the end of the line

That’s the view down rue Sherbrooke est down towards the famous Olympic Stadium and its leaning tower. Anyway, I’ll walk down here for a little while, the old Chemin du Roy, and see what I can find, if anything.

Right by the Langelier metro station is a Motel le marquis. Cheapest room is about $80 – not too bad, I suppose. I’ll have to remember that.

And from here I caught a bus that took me all the way down the Boulevard Langelier towards the Galeries d’Anjou.

That’s all of the big buildings near the end of the autoroute at the junction between Highway 40 and Highway 25 there and the Galeries d’Anjou are somewhere to the right of that.

And I’ve found the Value Village! Furthermore, it’s 30% off on Tuesdays for senior citizens! Spend! Spend! Spend! But I could only find one book and one CD that interested me. Rather a waste of a senior citizen’s discount if you ask me.

Canadian Tire have tents at $29:99 and $34:99- that’s the three-seater one which is 7 feet wide so my bed will fit in there quite comfortably whereas the cheaper one is only 6 feet at its widest and that might be a struggle. Then we start to get into the realm of big tents after that. I mean, why would you have a tent to sleep 14 people? I don’t even know 14 people, let alone 14 people with whom I’d like to go away on holiday, but then they do go in for big families in Quebec.

In rue Jean Talon I’ve just seen the rustiest cars that I’ve ever seen, any of mine and the Cortina parked down my field since 1997 included. I didn’t take a photo of it because it isn’t the polite thing to do but it’s so rotten that the windscreen is about to drop out – the whole windscreen surround including the roof corners have just gone. Makes that grey Cortina look good and that’s stood in a field for 18 years.

And it’s suddenly occurred to me what I haven’t seen at all ever since I’ve been in Canada on Saturday, and I haven’t seen a cat.

This is the sports ground at the rue Jean Talon and way over there behind the floodlights in the distance and across the motorway behind it is the motel where I stayed the very first night that I was ever in Canada.

But what had caught my eye was the drinking fountain so I had a good wash to cool me down, filled my cap with water and stuck it on my head. All of the cold water ran off down the back of my neck and believe me, it was the best feeling that I had ever had.

I got to see one of the new Transits from close up and I reckon that there are differences to the European ones inside. In fact there seem to be quite a few differences so I wonder what has happened here that the differences haven’t been carried forward, because it is reasonabily impressive.

There’s no model designation on it either, which surprises me – just a ” Ford”, and made in Kansas City judging by a sticker on the windscreen. Body number begins 1FT(or 2)NR1CM

There’s a little process of gentrification going on in the rue Jean Talon – it’s been a bit down-at-heel in places but in other places there are bits of building going on and it’s all starting to look quite nice

These new bank buildings are on the corner of the Boulevard Viau and rue Jean Talon and are typical of what is going on all around here

I walked on quite a way past Viau, past Pius IX and past a couple of metro stations and by this time I was starting to lose interest. Time was slowly passing on, the only pizza places that I has passed (I really fancied a pizza tonight and I had my cheese all at the ready) were these ethic places full of grease, and I was hot, sticky, exhausted and footsore.

So I hopped onto the metro all the way to Snowdon where I still didn’t find the pizza that I wanted (and I had my vegan cheese all ready too) and eneded up back at the falafel place at the Cote-des-Neiges, for want of anything better.

It was just outside here that I met my first traditional bus driver. There was a bus stop just outside the restaurant and there was a bus just pulling up. I asked him if he was going to the Snowdon metro station down at the bottom of the hill, to which he replied that I was facing the wrong way – the station was just “back there”. And then he drove off.

The station “back there” was in fact the “Cote des Neiges” so I don’t know whether he was having a mental blank or whether he was just being difficult. Anyway, I trudged back up to the Cote des Neiges metro station and went round to the coach station.

Having rescued my suitcase I ended up chatting with two women, one aged 84 and the other aged 91, who were regular bus travellers, even at their age. They were off to visit their third sister somewhere in the USA. This passed the time quite nicely until my bus pulled in, and then I was off.

We went over the Cartier Bridge and then into Longueuil for more passengers, and then we were off. I curled up on my seat and dozed off to sleep.

-2

Monday 17th August 2015 – LAST NIGHT …

… could have been a night just as good as the previous one, and that’s exactly how it was heading. And then it all came to a sudden halt at 01:30, for Bane of Britain here had forgotten to switch off his European alarms.

If I had had a quid for every time that I’ve done that while I’ve been in North America I would be dictating this to half a dozen secretaries draped all over my knee and thereabouts. You would think that I would have learnt by now, wouldn’t you?

To make matters worse, I was away with the fairies somewhere at the time, and by the time I’d composed myself afterwards, it had all gone.

I was still up before the alarm at 06:00 (I’m doing my best to keep to some kind of semblance of time) and after breakfast cracked on with a few things.

And here I am, on the bus heading towards the railway station. First stop is Namur and the Walmart, which comes up with a cap at $5:00, a big bottle of water, and 150 sheets of A4 paper at just $0:10 in the back to school bargain sale and you can’t say fairer than that. A useful thing to have around seeing as how I’ve forgotten my graph paper.

Back on the metro to Berri-UQAM and the long long walk to the coach station to buy my ticket for Florenceville tomorrow. $114 – arrgghh – and that’s with the senior citizens discount too. Heaven alone knows what it might have been at full price. But with 10.5 hours on the bus (changing at Riviere du Loup) it’s not really all that bad, I suppose. But 22:30 I leave, 09:00 on Wednesday I arrive – I am not looking forward to this, but since they ripped up all of the trains there isn’t much of an alternative.

So I had a really good chat to Rachel on the phone, giving her enough advance warning so that she can flee the country, and then a wander through all of the galleries – or, at least, as many as I could find. It’s cooler in there than outside.

That cheap technology shop near the railway station had nothing of interest although I did start to notice in one or two places that Government energy stickers are slowly starting to appear in the shops. A sign of the times, hey?

And look at this! This is not a new Ford Transit but a replacement for the Ford F-series panel vans. And if you are wondering why many of the very useful white-van-man features of the previous Ford Transit have mysteriously (and surprisingly) disappeared from the new version on sale in Europe, then look no further.

They don’t have white-van-man in North America. His equivalent over here drives a 4×4 pick-up and that’s where you will find the interesting bits and pieces. White vans here are just used for furniture removals and parcel deliveries and a little bit of urban maintenance and so are a completely different breed.

So if any North American has had a hand in designing the new Transit, that will explain why, as far as facilities go, the new Transit is essentially a backward step. I’m convinced that Transits of the model such as Caliburn
actually had a white-van-man on the design committee and it’s sad that Ford Europe doesn’t have the muscle to have pushed forward their observations to whoever was on this global design panel.

Abandoning another good rant for now I head off down the rue St Catherine where there’s a big new shopping mall type of place on the right as you go down the hill. All clean and bright, with a Subway sandwich place down in the basement. Ahh! Lunch!

And for the first time ever, since I’ve been visiting a Subway, when I asked the Serving Wench for my 12-inch with just crudites (yes, if it’s crudities you want, then I’m your man) she did not ask me if I wanted cheese with it. I made a comment about it, to which the aforementioned replied "well, I’ve been working here for quite a few years now so I’m used to it"

They had a fountain here too so I took a photo of it seeing as how pretty it looked, and as soon as I had started to leave, it erupted, so I came back for another photo.

Back outside and down the street they had the giant chessboards out again and so I watched 3 or 4 games in the company of a woman, and we were exchanging comments about the games. One game was ultra-defensive and everyone lost interest after a while, including the two players who abandoned the match.

Another one was however quite exciting. It was a younger girl against an older man and was played in what you might call something of an aggressive spirit, swinging like a pendulum from one way to the next as they traded piece for piece. She made a couple of moves that had mystified me, but then suddenly she caught his king in a trap against her pawns. By this time he just had his king and a knight and she a bishop (or fou as they are called in French, so I discovered) and a king, and they both had four pawns each.

What helped my concentration was that there was an ice-cream parlour right next door, and I can thoroughly recommend the coconut milk sorbet.

Further down the road in St Catherine Est I came across a bookshop selling second-hand books and CDs and so that’s me spent up yet again for another year.

The Chapel of Notre dame de Lourdes was erected to the glory of Mary so we are told (but just WHAT is the Glory of Mary?) thanks to the generposity of the local people.

However that generosity does not extend to giving out help to those who ask for it. There’s a big sign outside saying that it is forbidden to solicit alms either outside or inside the Chapel.

Just what kind of Christians are these?

My reverie was interrupted by the rather bizarre noise of something different coming down the street. Luckily I had my camera to hand to photograph it.

I couldn’t get close enough to this to see what it was, which was a shame, but it looked very much like a three-wheeled batmobile to me. It bore something of a close resemblance to The White Swan that we saw on the Saguenay Ferry in 2011.

I had my falafel for tea as well. I walked right up the bank to the rue Sherbrooke and then rue St Denis to where I had had my tea one night in 2014.

Just up the road from here is this magnificent building, the address of which is 3725 rue St Denis, and one day I’ll find out much more about it. It has to be something quite important or have an interesting history.

The metro from Sherbrooke brings me all the way round to the metro DuCollege, and then back on the bus. And I ended up being guide to a couple of French tourists from Picardy on the same bus who were trying to find their hotel.

I had a shower, for by this time I was steaming and then to bed for my last night for a while in Montreal.

Thursday 13 August 2015 – FOR THE FIRST TIME IN MY LIFE …

…I’m ready well in advance of time to go.

Well, I’m not. I have been looking for three days for the $200 that I drew out of my Canadian Bank before leaving last October, so I’m having to go without it. And now I know why I drew it all out too. My Canadian bank card expired back in May!

So I hope that my European cards work, otherwise I’m going to have a couple of problems.

Mind you, it was touch and go that I got here in time this morning. I’d been out in Eastern Europe in a city that straddled the border between the East and the West. I was in the east with a party of people (as it happened, people with whom I worked in Stoke on Trent) and we were in a coach or a train that wasn’t moving but the seats were comfortable. Anyway, who should turn up but Nerina, with her Afro haircut of the early 90s. She sat next to me and ended up sharing my bunk, and I could see all of the people looking around and quizzing each other as to who she was.

I asked her how she had made it over to here – did she come by rail through the East, because I was interested in the trains that she might have seen, but she had come to the railway station in the West and walked across the border, which disappointed me.

So first job was the washing up. And that was when I made a startling discovery – that I had brought some water up last night to do the washing-up, and then left it on the side and went to bed. I’m definitely getting old, aren’t I?

And then there was the beichstuhl that needed emptying, cleaning and refilling, such delightful jobs that I have.

I’ve also cleaned the waste bins and isn’t that a first?

Liz came for me and we went to the mairie to pick up a Certificat de Domicile but as I expected, it’s closed for the holidays. I must remember to ring up on Tuesday! I did meet Valentin there though, loading up the Commune’s little van. We had a good chat and it seems that he’s re-signed for Pionsat this year, and that’s good news! I’ve no idea why he went to play at Terjat.

Liz and I went for coffee in the brasserie opposite the station.And while we were there, this interesting Piaggio APE pulled up just opposite.

I had a brief chat with the owner but he didn’t say very much. But he didn’t mind me taking a few photos of it (it’s always polite to ask).

It brought back a few memories of the Piaggio APE50 that we discovered on waste land in Brussels and which now resides – or it did, the last time that I heard anything about it – in Stoke on Trent

Here’s my train – a little single-unit diesel. I’ve not been on one of these before. But it’s nice, clean and comfortable – a far cry from anything that you find on the rails in the UK.

And we set off bang on time too, which is another far cry from life on the rails in the UK. And one thing that I like about France – “we regret that the toilet on board the train isn’t functioning. If you need this service, please make yourself known to the guard who will arrange for a longer stop at one of the stations that we visit”.

Mind you – I was half-expecting that we would be offered the possibility to pull up on the main line at a suitable hedge.

I didn’t realise that there were two railway stations in Montlucon – but I do now!

The line to Riom is what can best be described as “bucolic” – what one writer once wrote as a “merry, mazy ramble” across the Auvergnat countryside. I’ve advanced about 25 kms but it’s taken me an hour and a half and about 90kms to do it.

At Riom it’s pouring down – a real torrential downpour – and my train is bang on time. And then this is where I realise that it’s lunchtime and for once in my life I’m caught without a supply of food about my person.

By the time I reached Vichy it had stopped raining, but it had started again at Tarare.

First stop at Lyon was at the Subway for a very late lunch. And it was at here that we had the usual Subway dialogue-
Our Hero – could I have a 12-inch with nothing but crudités?
Serving Wench – do you want cheese with that?

There are trolley buses in Lyon these days – I hadn’t noticed that before. It seems that all of this “obsolete” transport of the 1950s – trams, trolley buses – was not obsolete at all. In fact, it was a hundred years ahead of its time. And it seems to be doing its work here in Lyon too because the streets are much less crowded than any other European city that I’ve visited recently.

As for my hotel, it’s 5 or 10 minutes away from the station. It’s modern and clean and tidy, with all of the services to hand. I had a lovely vegetarian pizza (I always bring my own cheese) for tea. It seems that this idea of flying out of Lyon, at least to here, is paying off in spades.

And as good an idea as it might have been, it could be even better too, believe it or not, because there’s a cheap budget hotel – the Athena – with rooms at €58:00, actually built into the station block. A walk of about 50 yards.

I shall have to look closely into this, but not tonight because although it’s only about 22:00, I’m crashing out.

-1

Thursday 9th October 2014 – WELL, I WAS RIGHT ABOUT ONE THING.

I missed the connection at Brussels.

And not by 5 or 10 minutes either, but by a whopping couple of hours too. It took all night to evacuate this ill person and her baggage and we were about a couple of hours late before we took to the sky.

The flight itself and the food were excellent but the in-flight entertainment was rather rubbish. There wasn’t a single film that I was interested in seeing. On the Sports Channel however there was the World Cup semi-final between Brazil and Germany from 2014- the match where in a devastating spell of just 6 minutes half-way through the first half the Germans totally demolished the Brazilians.

At Brussels, those of us with onward journeys to attend to had to regroup in order to see what they airline had in store for us. For me, they could move me onwards to Paris via … errrr … Frankfurt am Main. That was clearly out of the question. However, there was one person who was flying on to Lyon and so that gave me an idea. When I was at Montreal I heard them call an Air Transat flight to Lyon and while I’m not overly impressed with Air Transat, I still put into the back of my mind the idea to go around to the airport at Lyon to see what I could see and to spy out the land.

This seemed like the opportunity and so I made the appropriate noises at the airport staff. There was indeed flight to Lyon but at 17:00 in the afternoon, meaning that I had 5 hours to kill. A meal voucher for €16:00 to compensate me in part for the inconvenience meant that I could have a meal but even that voucher only made a slight hole in the price of the meal, prices in Belgium being what they are. But nevertheless, the choices of meal here seem to be better than what was on offer when I was stranded at Paris Charles de Gaulle last year.

For the rest of my stay in Brussels, I also took the opportunity to go for a wander around the airport, inside and outside. It’s been a long time, 9 years in fact, since I’ve been here and there was a time when I was here a couple of times a week, back in the good old days.

So braving the horrendous weather outside, because it really was bad outside, I went for a look around.

There have been some tremendous changes to the airport in this time. Outside, there’s an enormous amount of redevelopment and much of the old building is being swept away and replaced ith more modern stuff.

There have been even more changes inside the place. A huge programme of expansion has taken place with all kinds of new terminals and departure gates and I do have to admit that it is quite a significant leg-up from how it all used to be in the past.

The plane to Lyon was one of these small 70-seater things with about 40 passengers on it. The flight took a quite reasonable 75 minutes which wasn’t bad at all, even if there was no special meal for me. That came as no surprise seeing as how I’d chopped and changed from one flight to another – it can’t be helped. I was glad that I had had a meal at Zaventam. And descending into Lyon through a thunderstorm, we were being tossed around like a cork on the ocean. Not for the faint-hearted, this descent.

Lyon was a very nice airport, quite modern and up-to-date, and the tram connection to town, quite shockingly expensive at €15:70, was nevertheless straighforward and direct, to right opposite the main railway station in town. No issues whatever with this at all (apart from the cost of course).

The ticket for the train to Riom cost a mere €16:00 with my senior citizen’s railcard (and that puts into perspective the astonishing price of the tram ticket) but there was a wait of 100 minutes for my train. No mind – it gave me an opportunity to look around outside the station. In the square behind the railway station there were all kinds of food shops, including a Subway sandwich store so I grabbed a foot-long vegetarian and orange juice there – that was tea sorted out.

Further investigation revealed that just a 10-minute stagger away from here is one of these Premier Class tourist hotels. A modern unit-type hotel with en-suite facilities.

So the verdict on Lyon as a departure point for Montreal? Well, even if the only flight offered is an Air Transat service, then I am no longer going to struggle all of the way out to Paris Charles de Gaulle. Apart from the tram fare, everything else that I would need is right here in front of me at Lyon, much more so than at the airport hotels in Paris. There will also be a saving of over €200 on my travelling costs and that, dear reader, is all that you need to know.

The train to Riom presented no problems whatever, and Terry was there to meet me at the station. Liz and Terry offered me a bed for the night, for which I was extremely grateful, and I was out like a light. It had been a long day.

Sunday 31st August 2014 – WELL I’M GLAD …

… that I had bought a cheap lightweight tripod in a brocante in France a few years ago, and brought it over to Canada. It’s certainly earning its keep.

I ended up on the top of Mount Royal last night – at the Maison Smith, where there are some of the most spectacular views of the city. And the view at night with all of the street lights is absolutely stunning as you can see.

Here’s the view right down one of the main boulevards in the city, with all of the traffic, and you can see in the distance the reflection of the lights, shimmering off the surface of the St Lawrence River.

It really is a magnificent place to be on a late-summer evening. It’s a place not to be missed, especially if you can manage a nocturnal visit.

You can tell, can’t you, that i’ve picked up my car this evening. A Red Dodge Grand Caravan, just 4weeks old and still with the distinctive smell of “new car” about it. It has just 3200 kms on the clock, the fools. You would have thought that they would have known me better by now.

This morning I braved the gloom ond overcast fog to go down to the Lachine Canal – the canal that took the ships around the Lachine rapids prior to the building of the St Lawrence Seaway in the 1950s. It’s just used for pleasure traffic now but it is quite a historic place to be as much of Canada’s industry from the days of the Industrial Revolution was based here.

Bit I had an encounter with the forces of law and order. They drove their car up the pavement to stop me advancing and, on leaving the car, asked me all kinds of questions such as who I was, where had I been, what was I doing, and “show us your photos”.

I shall refrain from passing any kind of really acerbic comment, as anyone who has ever followed much of what I have written will know them already, but even Canada now has become a Police State like East Germany or the USSR. How must people like Krushchev and Honecke be laughing their heads off at the West as here, there are controls imposed that will mach anything that they ever imposed upon their citizens, after the West spent 50 years denouncing their system and doing all in their power to denounce it.

When is a Wzstern politician going to stand up and say “yes, the Soviets did have a point”.

So abandoning yet another good rant, I ended up in the city centre and went to see the statue of Paul Cholmedy, Sieur de Maisonneuve.

he was the person who founded Montreal in 1642 and while it is often claimed that he led the people through the bitter period of the first 20 years of its existence, fighting for its life against the Iroquois, the fact is that quite often he was back in France pleading for help in the form of colonists and soldiers while his colonists quite often bore the brunt of the Iroquois savagery all on their own.

At the start of one of his journeys, he told one of his colonists “if I’m not back with more aid, dismantle the colony and bring everyone home” – without explaining to her how she should accomplish this task without a ship and without soldiers to fight their way back to Quebec.

It was here that I had an interesting encounter in one of these sandwich places –
Sandwich Artist (huh?) – “what would you like on your sandwich?”
Our Hero – “nothing but vegetables”
Sandwich Artist – “do you want cheese with that?”
And you can’t make up story like that either.

Here’s something that filled me with dismay when I saw it.

I’d seen a few leaflets telling me that the Quebec gas Board was replacing gas mains in the city so I was expecting to see street repairs, but I wasn’t quite expecting to see this. Here, the gas main has been replaced but clearly they can’t find anyone in the whole of the country who is able to fit cobble stones. So here in Old Montreal we have a tarmac strip.

What on earth will the world be like in 50 years tile with all of these old crafts and professions disappearing?

Talking of things disappearing, I went to see my favourite building in the whole of Montreal. It’s the Gare Viger, the Viger railway station and another old Canadian Pacific relic.

It’s been abandoned for years and so no-one is allowed inside. probably so as not to notice the consition into which the Government (for it’s now a Government building) has allowed it to continue.

However a slightly open window is no barrier to the intrepid photographer, is it?

It seems that there’s a plan afoot (“what’s afoot?” … "about 12 inches" – ed) to do something with it, but the images on the plans that I saw bear no resemblance to how the building looks at the moment. I have sore misgivings … "well, put some ointment on them" – ed.

From here I braved the torrential downpour that we were having and went to catch the bus to the airport. Two sides of the road to guess from of course, and of course you know that Our Hero guessed wrong. But anyway, hemmed in like sardines we hurtled off like a rocket and were there in 30 minutes.

And then I picked up my car.

EPIC HALL

The Poisoned Pen (or Poisoned Chalice, more like) – or my relentless struggle against reality

Tag Archives: Subway

Friday 18th August 2017 – SO HERE I AM …

Thursday 17th August 2017 – JUST FOR A CHANGE …

Wednesday 16th August 2017 – WE HAVEN’T FINISHED …

Sunday 9th October 2016 – AND SO THIS IS IT!

Saturday 8th October 2016 – AND SO AFTER ALL …

Monday 5th September 2016 – THEY SAY THAT A YEAR …

Thursday 15th October 2015 – NOT A SINGLE PHOTO …

Wednesday 14th October 2015 – SO HERE I AM THEN …

Tuesday 18th August 2015 – LAST DAY IN MONTREAL

Monday 17th August 2015 – LAST NIGHT …

Thursday 13 August 2015 – FOR THE FIRST TIME IN MY LIFE …

Thursday 9th October 2014 – WELL, I WAS RIGHT ABOUT ONE THING.

Sunday 31st August 2014 – WELL I’M GLAD …

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