Monday, May 31, 2010

Gulf Oil Spill Catastrophe may not stop until August

These people are choked,........this Mistake makes the Exon Valdez spill,look miniscule

Gulf Oil Spill Catastrophe may not stop until August

These people are choked,........this Mistake makes the Exon Valdez spill,look miniscule

Sunday, May 30, 2010

All Montreal Museums are Free today

For some of our Montreal members, you may want to check out soem of the museums as today they are Free...... it's the 24th annual Free Museum entry in Montreal.

 It would be a great day to checkout some of the old archives.

 

Admission to Montreal's museums will be free Sunday from 9 a.m to 6 p.m. as part of the 24th annual Montreal Museums Day open house, the only such event in Canada.

Under the theme of City of Glass - several of Montreal's museums and art galleries are featuring displays of glass art - the event will also serve as the kick-off to a city-wide, summer-long collection of used eyeglasses frames from the public, which will then be donated to Optométristes sans frontières in the fall. People are also being invited to participate in the creation of an art installation using donated glasses Sunday at the Montreal Museum of Contemporary Art, located at the corner of Ste. Catherine St. W. and Jeanne-Mance Sts.

The Société de Transport de Montréal will also be providing free shuttle-bus service between museums Sunday.

And for the first time this year, several non-museum sites will be joining in the open house, including the Notre-Dame Basilica, Espace Verre, the Canadian Guild of Crafts, the Maison de la culture de Pierrefonds and many more.

An average of 130,000 museum visits are made each year on Museums Day, according to the Société de directeurs des musées montréalais, the organizer of the event.

For the complete program, and details on transportation and parking, visit www.museesmontreal.org

Saturday, May 29, 2010

Dennis Hopper rides into the sunset (what's the Canadian Connection ?)

 Dennis Hopper's Canadian connection is this , the idea & screenplay were thought up & written in a Toronto Motel Room.... for the movie "Easy Rider"
May 29, 2010, 2:56 pm

Dennis Hopper, Actor and Iconoclast, Dies

Dennis HopperEverett Collection Dennis Hopper, in the film “Easy Rider,” which he directed, edited and starred in.

3:19 p.m. | Updated Dennis Hopper, whose portrayals of drug-addled, often deranged misfits in the landmark films “Easy Rider,” “Apocalypse Now” and “Blue Velvet” drew on his early out-of-control experiences as part of a new generation of Hollywood rebel, died at his home in Venice, Calif., on Saturday. He was 74.

According to the Times obituary written by Edward Wyatt, Mr. Hopper died from complications of prostate cancer. His death was first reported by Reuters.

Mr. Hopper, who said he stopped drinking and using drugs in the mid-1980s, followed that change with a tireless phase of his career in which he claimed to have turned down no parts. His credits include at least  six films released in 2008 and at least 25 over the past 10 years.

Most recently, Mr. Hopper starred in the television series “Crash,” an adaptation of the Oscar-winning film of the same title. Produced for the Starz cable channel, the show had Mr. Hopper portraying a music producer unhinged by years of drug use. During a promotional tour last fall for that series, he fell ill; shortly thereafter, he began a new round of treatments for prostate cancer, which he said was first diagnosed a decade ago.

Inverting a famous line of dialogue spoken by Peter Fonda in “Easy Rider,” Manohla Dargis wrote of Mr. Hopper in The New York Times:

Dennis Hopper — actor, filmmaker, photographer, art collector, world-class burnout, first-rate survivor — never blew it. Unlike the villains and freaks he has played over the decades — the psycho with the mommy complex in “Blue Velvet,” the mad bomber with the grudge in “Speed” — he has made it through the good, the bad and some spectacularly terrible times. He rode out the golden age of Hollywood by roaring into a new movie era with “Easy Rider.” He hung out with James Dean, played Elizabeth Taylor’s son, acted for Quentin Tarantino. He has been rich and infamous, lost and found, the next big thing, the last man standing.

                                  ----------------------------HF&RV--------------------Cheers !!

Thursday, May 27, 2010

The Memories of Angels-Luc Bourdon film


This is a great film by Luc Bourdon,who uses all NFB clips in a well put together film aboput Montreal. If you grew up in Montreal you will appreciate this film....Well done (IMHO)

Also here is the direct link to te NFB site that contains this film, you can also search through te NFB site ,it's a treasure chest of many good films,...Have a look.
Cheers ! , HF&RV

The Memories of Angels -Luc Bourdon film

We posted the trailers for this film a long time back,but I am going to try & post the full film ,at the very least I will post the link to the NFB page where you can,if you like watch the film. It is an 80 minute film,but it does have a lot of great shots of the Montreal most of us remember..........  

                     Cheers ! HF&RV

 

Dead @ 97 ,Art Linkletter (a well known & liked man) & a Canadian too.

Well old Art Linkletter passed away yesterday,& I would imagine you would be hard pressed to find anyone (around our age groups) that doesn't Remember him....he was quite good with kids,on his show"Kids say the darndest things" .he also had invested in the Hoola Hoop ,as well as many other inovative deals.....he was a smart guy & likeable.

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Lake of Two-Mountains ,part of our Around Labelle Province

About 2 Mo
In case you are visiting from somewhere else on planet earth

2 mo is short for Two-Mountains. Two Mountains which officially called Deux-Montagnes because of the language issues around Quebec is located about 24 km (16 miles) northwest of downtown Montreal, Quebec Canada at the point where the Lake of Two Mountains turns into the Mille-Iles (Thousand Island) river. For those of you with GPS units, it is at N45 32.153 W73 54.033. These particular co-ordinates will lead you to the steps of the Tartan Pub which is considered by many as the center of Two Mountains the universe. For people that are into geocaching you will find a cold beer at this place and you may leave your cache (cash) there in return. Tell 'em Paul sent you.

The train is the most direct link to Montreal as it is only a 24km ride while the drive can be anywhere from 30 to 45 km depending on the roads you choose. Its population is around 17,000 with about 20% Anglophone. Until 1963 it was called St-Eustache-sur-le-lac (on the lake) and it was mainly comprised of cottages for people of Montreal. Since then, cottage country has migrated north quite a bit.

For more information go to the official Deux-Montagnes city site.
There is also another site containing a lot of Two Mountains Info: go to  communityconnections-dm.org

In case you are from real far away in space here's a better map. Point your spaceship to the middle of the star.

 

 

Check this out: If you want to know what Two Mountains looks like from a satellite click here. You can then zoom in or out on any part. Click and hold on the map to pan around. The Google maps feature will leave every other map web site in the dust when it reaches its final release. Try the directions tab.

For a complete history of Two-Mountains from the real beginning check out this part of the Deux-Montagnes web site. WARNING with the new design of the website (June 2007) the History pages seemed to have disappeared.

Small Plane Crashes into Building in the GTA

.bad luck for this small plane.....reported only 26 minutes ago....

 

TORONTO — A small plane has crashed into a two-storey warehouse in Markham, Ont., according to York Regional Police.

The four-seat Cessna hit the building, just north of Toronto, at 8889 Woodbine Ave. just before 12:30 p.m., said Sgt. Gary Phillips.

Police know it was a small plane that crashed, Phillips said, but are still trying to determine how many people were inside. "We're still trying to confirm what the cause of the crash was," he said.

Television coverage show the remnants of the plane in flames on what appears to be the roof of the building. Fire trucks and emergency vehicles are on scene.

People are being evacuated from the warehouse because there is a concern about a fuel spill and a possible explosion, particularly given the hot temperatures Tuesday in southern Ontario, he said. "When you're dealing with aviation fuel, it's very volatile."

The warehouse is close to the Buttonville Airport, which operates one of the largest flight schools in Canada.

Toronto Buttonville Municipal Airport is a multi-service general aviation airport. It is operated by Toronto Airways Limited.

It sounded "like a bomb had dropped" when the plane crashed said Carmelina Competiello, who works close to the building on Woodbine Ave.

"I screamed," Competiello said, who works at the Chapel Ridge Funeral Home and Cremation Centre. "There is smoke everywhere."

Smoke is billowing out of the hotel and several fire trucks are on scene, she said.

"I'm shaking. It's so close by," she said. "It could have been us."

Monday, May 24, 2010

Yikes !! How's this for a Nutcase

Sadly this creep has serioulsy hurt a few other families....I have no problem with these type of Nuts popping themselves ,but why hurt others.....

Saturday, May 22, 2010

Can Mayor Tremblay clean things up? Don't bet on it

Point Saint Charles

                  Some of you had beginnings in the Point as well as Verdun, and here is another Point St Charles site I just came across this morning ( at least I can't recall seeing it before) it is not the same as George McCraes great Pont site wjich can be found in our links section,but it is worth having alook at .IMHO

http://point-st-charles.ca/

Old Stone House

Here is an article written by Rohinton Ghandi on the Old Stone House for the Local newspaper The Suburban wich I think VC members will enjoy reading. Of course he is referring to the Maison Nivard de Saint Dizier of wich I have spoken about many times and wich was built in 1710 and is one of the oldest houses in Montreal and wich was completely renovated at a cost of one and a quarter million dollars and will be open as a museum possibly this fall:

CLICK ON TEXT TO ENLARGE

Guy

Friday, May 21, 2010

Goodbye Broadway, Hello Montreal

Art Deco Decoration Art Deco Decoration

Music

Music will play an important role in the Congress as it did in the Art Deco era. Montreal was a mecca for jazz musicians who played in the many night clubs, now only a memory. Andrew Homzy, Professor of Music at Concordia University, has put together a selection of music, some with his original arrangements that will attempt to re-create the ambiance of the era. Here are some of the songs including the theme song, Hello Montreal,

——————————————————-

Credits for these performances:

Patti Payne and The Boys From Murray’s.
Researched, arranged and produced by Andrew Homzy
Patti Payne - vocals
Peter Purich - violin
Denis Chang - guitar
Dominic Desjardins - banjo
Paul Van Dyk - contrebasse
Recorded at Boutique de son, Pointe Claire
George Doxas - recording engineer

——————————————————-

One of the things that gave Montreal its old sparkle was the fact that you could get a drink there when the States was dry. Montreal was the largest wet city on the East Coast during Prohibition (1920 to 1933). In 1928, the Irving Berlin Co. published a song that summed up the feelings of parched Americanos in search of a good time.

Ingersoll was the name of a line of inexpensive pocket watches which were known as highly reliable, even though they only cost a dollar.

Phosphate drinks were sort of like the French “diabolo”, i.e. a flavoured syrup mixed with fizzy water, what today we would call a soft drink.

 

hellomont9.JPG

(sh) Speak easy, (sh) Speak easy,
Said Johnny Brown; I’m gonna leave this town, Ev’rything is closing down.
(sh) Speak easy, (sh) Speak easy,
And tell the bunch: I won’t go East, won’t go West, Got a diff’rent hunch:
I’ll be leaving in the summer, And I won’t come back till fall,
Goodbye Broadway, hello Montreal.
With a stein upon the table, I’ll be laughing at you all,
Goodbye Broadway, hello Montreal. I’m on my way, I’m on my way,
And I’ll make whoop-whoop whoopee night and day.
Anytime my wifey wants me,
You can tell her where to call,
Goodbye Broadway, hello Montreal.
Yamo, yamo, I think I want a drink; Yamo, yamo, there’s water in the sink.
The sink, the sink, the sink, the sink, the sink;
The good old rusty sink;
But who the heck wants water when you’re dying for a drink?
Oh, “We Won’t Get Home Till Morning” Is the best song after all,
Goodbye Broadway, hello Montreal.
There’ll be no more Orange Phosphates,
You can bet your Ingersoll,
Goodbye Broadway, hello Montreal.
That old tin pail, that old tin pail,
Was never meant to carry ginger ale.
There’ll be photographs of brew’ries
All around my bedroom wall,
Goodbye Broadway, hello Montreal.
(sh) Speak easy, (sh) Speak easy,
Asked Tommy Gray; I must know right away,
Are the gals up there okay?
(sh) Speak easy, (sh) Speak easy,
Said Johnny Brown;
You ain’t been hugged, ain’t been kissed,
Till you’ve hit that town:

Goodbye Broadway, Hello Montreal

Art Deco Decoration Art Deco Decoration

Music

Music will play an important role in the Congress as it did in the Art Deco era. Montreal was a mecca for jazz musicians who played in the many night clubs, now only a memory. Andrew Homzy, Professor of Music at Concordia University, has put together a selection of music, some with his original arrangements that will attempt to re-create the ambiance of the era. Here are some of the songs including the theme song, Hello Montreal,

——————————————————-

Credits for these performances:

Patti Payne and The Boys From Murray’s.
Researched, arranged and produced by Andrew Homzy
Patti Payne - vocals
Peter Purich - violin
Denis Chang - guitar
Dominic Desjardins - banjo
Paul Van Dyk - contrebasse
Recorded at Boutique de son, Pointe Claire
George Doxas - recording engineer

——————————————————-

One of the things that gave Montreal its old sparkle was the fact that you could get a drink there when the States was dry. Montreal was the largest wet city on the East Coast during Prohibition (1920 to 1933). In 1928, the Irving Berlin Co. published a song that summed up the feelings of parched Americanos in search of a good time.

Ingersoll was the name of a line of inexpensive pocket watches which were known as highly reliable, even though they only cost a dollar.

Phosphate drinks were sort of like the French “diabolo”, i.e. a flavoured syrup mixed with fizzy water, what today we would call a soft drink.

 

hellomont9.JPG

(sh) Speak easy, (sh) Speak easy,
Said Johnny Brown; I’m gonna leave this town, Ev’rything is closing down.
(sh) Speak easy, (sh) Speak easy,
And tell the bunch: I won’t go East, won’t go West, Got a diff’rent hunch:
I’ll be leaving in the summer, And I won’t come back till fall,
Goodbye Broadway, hello Montreal.
With a stein upon the table, I’ll be laughing at you all,
Goodbye Broadway, hello Montreal. I’m on my way, I’m on my way,
And I’ll make whoop-whoop whoopee night and day.
Anytime my wifey wants me,
You can tell her where to call,
Goodbye Broadway, hello Montreal.
Yamo, yamo, I think I want a drink; Yamo, yamo, there’s water in the sink.
The sink, the sink, the sink, the sink, the sink;
The good old rusty sink;
But who the heck wants water when you’re dying for a drink?
Oh, “We Won’t Get Home Till Morning” Is the best song after all,
Goodbye Broadway, hello Montreal.
There’ll be no more Orange Phosphates,
You can bet your Ingersoll,
Goodbye Broadway, hello Montreal.
That old tin pail, that old tin pail,
Was never meant to carry ginger ale.
There’ll be photographs of brew’ries
All around my bedroom wall,
Goodbye Broadway, hello Montreal.
(sh) Speak easy, (sh) Speak easy,
Asked Tommy Gray; I must know right away,
Are the gals up there okay?
(sh) Speak easy, (sh) Speak easy,
Said Johnny Brown;
You ain’t been hugged, ain’t been kissed,
Till you’ve hit that town:

Colourful Montreal

Montreal always had colour both in it's people & surroundings...the blue-est skies , the real lush green lawns & trees ,this painting of fall in Montreal is an example:

 

 

 

 

 

 

--painting by Carole Spandau

Check the Trunk of Your Cars Please (MUC Police) need help

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Well I think We always knew that.

                 However it would be nice to finally rid the clownish caricatures ala P.Marois & her clan

LaBelle Province could make great strides in recovery from it's darker days of the 70's.but if it wasn't for overactive real-estate markets,the long slow decline in the provinces fortunes would still be happenning. Let's hope it makes a complete recovery & goes on to treat all it's residents equally,as the article says,it's separatist thoughts are archaic & only serves to hurt ,rather than grow,with the rest of a great country.

heres' todays Gazette story

A new poll shows that 30 years after the first Quebec sovereignty referendum, and 15 years after the second, most Quebecers consider the debate over whether the province should separate from Canada no longer relevant.

The survey conducted last month found that 58 per cent of a representative sample of Quebecers think the issue is as good as settled with only 26 per cent saying it is now more relevant. Only 14 per cent said they believe that Quebec will become an independent country within 30 years.

However, that doesn’t mean that Quebecers have come to embrace Canadian federalism. A majority of 56 per cent believe that Quebec typically comes up short in federal-provincial disagreements, and while 47 per cent agreed there are fewer reasons for Quebec to separate than there were 30 years ago, 41 per cent said there are as many if not more.

As well, support for sovereignty among Quebecers continues to hover around 40 per cent, the same level of support registered in the referendum held on May 20, 1980. The second referendum, in October, 1995, was more of a squeaker with 49.4 per cent voting yet and 50.6 per cent no to the sovereignty proposal put by the Parti Québécois government of the day.

The survey was conducted by the Montreal-based CROP polling firm for The Federal Idea, a new Quebec think tank founded last year to advance the study of federalism in Canada and other parts of the world.

“It doesn’t translate into greater enthusiasm for federalism,” said the group’s spokesperson, André Pratte, chief editorialist for La Presse. “It shows that even if they might think that the debate is old hat, people are still critical of the federal system.”

He said that while most people have given up on sovereignty, most still hold to sovereignist attitudes. “They may not be ready to vote for independence, but their view of the country largely corresponds to the sovereignist view. If there was a new federal-provincial crisis the debate would come back very readily.”

A majority of respondents, 57 per cent, were also of the opinion that French in Quebec is less secure than it was 30 years ago with only 15 per cent saying it is more secure. Another 21 per cent who ventured an opinion said its status is much the same as it was.

Pollster Alain Giguère said the perceived threat to French today is not from English Canadians, but rather the growing predominance of English the world over. “It’s not the English of the Plains of Abraham any more. It’s the English that’s become the Esperanto of the 21st century.”

Giguère said the most telling finding as far as he is concerned is that Quebecers increasingly don’t identify with constitutional options as much as they did. Asked if they were federalist or sovereignist, 22 per cent said federalist and 24 per cent sovereignist. However, 22 per cent said they were partly both and 25 per cent declared themselves to be neither.

He said it indicates that Quebecers in general have become less interested in politics, a finding that jibes with other recent polls that suggest Quebecers have grown cynical towards politics and politicians.

“This is quite new from a socio-political point of view. The political scene doesn’t rouse the level of passion we’ve seen in the past. People are more focused on careers, families and their personal lives.

Real Estate in Verdun/Point St. Charles/N.D.G

If you were sending a friend to live on "the Island", where would you suggest they buy a place to live? It needs to have easy access to McGill, yet be affordable for middle to low income families. An english population would be desirable as well.

30 Years ago today

Mount St. Helens
The president and congress made the 110,000 acre monument for research, recreation, and education after it erupted. The mountain was 9,677 feet before the eruption and 8,364 feet afterward. The base of the volcano is six miles. Mount St. Helens is forty thousand years old, which is young for a volcano. Now days, the volcano just has a huge amount of steam coming out.

   
The volcano erupted on May 18, 1980 on a Sunday morning. The eruption lasted about nine hours. It was caused by a 5.1 earthquake underneath the mountain. Ash fell over eastern Washington and areas up to three hundred miles away from the mountain. Some ash became an ash cloud, circled the earth for 15 days, and might stay in the atmosphere for many years. Fifty-seven people were killed by the monstrous volcano.
 
The volcano was named after the British diplomat, Alleyne Fitzerbert. Her title was Baron St. Helens. She lived from 1753 to 1839.
To the Pacific Northwest Native Americans the mountain is know as Louwala-Clough or Loo-Wit Lat-kla which means smoking mountain and fire mountain. The Indian legend for Mount St. Helens is that a female spirit called St. Helens tried to make peace between two sons of the great spirit that fought over her. Mount Adam and Mount Hood were the two sons. They through fiery rocks at each other, which made earthquakes. The fight destroyed the Bridge of the gods that crossed the Columbia River.

Sunday, May 16, 2010

Australian Teenager Completes Solo Trip

                   Wow what a courageous kid,& obviously skilled too,.Congrats to Jessica Watson ,imagine travelling in such a small craft,around the world by yourself.....

LaRonde Season Starts,.....Summer.Fun

                           All the kids in Montreal would be happy,I guess LaRonde season started Saturday.......it's their Belmont Park so memories will be made for a new generation of kids,..

Friday, May 14, 2010

Mount Royal Roads will soon be the Road Less Traveled ( & Les Traveled)

After reading this Gazette story & hearing that old Lunatic Drapeau had envisioned criss crossing the Mountain with highways,then I have to think that aside from Expo67 being a rousing success by all accounts ,then everything else he touched was moronic and came from a power hungry nutbar, He eradicated many areas of Montreal both French community's & English (Goose Village) all due to him not wanting to show the world that we too have lower income & industrial areas......Thank G ,he didn't get to ruin the Mountain too, Every other project he touched had huge cost overuns,like the Big O(we)

......Anyway on to the story:

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Hmmmmmmm Could this work ?





Hi All,

Here's a solution to all the controversy over full-body scanners at the airports.

Have a booth that passengers must step into that will not X-ray you, but will simply detonate any explosive device you may have on you!

It would be a win-win for everyone and there would be none of this nonsense about racial profiling. This method would also eliminate a long and expensive trial. Justice would be immediate and final.

Case closed! This is so simple, it's brilliant.

I can see it now. You're in the airport terminal and you hear a muffled explosion. Shortly thereafter, an announcement comes over the PA system. "Attention standby passengers, we now have a seat available on flight number. . . . .. "

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Check Point Explosion Great Idea

  Now this is a Great IDEA for sure,a pinpoint dedicated explosion. You want to be a Terrorist,then start buying your tickets,cause we couldn't have enough flights......hahahahah  One of  Our Old  Members Emailed me this ,& it's hilarious & Would work too.                                What a great idea !!


Hi All,

Here's a solution to all the controversy over full-body scanners at the airports.

Have a booth that passengers must step into that will not X-ray you, but will simply detonate any explosive device you may have on you!

It would be a win-win for everyone and there would be none of this nonsense about racial profiling. This method would also eliminate a long and expensive trial.  Justice would be immediate and final.

Case closed! This is so simple, it's brilliant.

I can see it now. You're in the airport terminal and you hear a muffled explosion. Shortly thereafter, an announcement comes over the PA system. "Attention standby passengers, we now have a seat available on flight number. . . . .. "