… 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.

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