THANKS for stopping by, I do my best to acknowledge when someone leaves a comment,you do not have to be a member here & everyone is welcome. Ps: This site is monitored but not actively posting on a regular basis. Mostly these are stories & some photos saved from a defunct site known as Verdun Connections which was on MSN Groups initially then on a social network called Multiply.
tonguelashes50, cordage2, snerdley, wendie64, younglovers7, 
Santa Claus ruled the downtown streets of Montreal yesterday as the annual holiday parade shut Ste. Catherine St. for several hours.
There were marching bands, clowns, Shriners in funny little cars, floats depicting elves making Christmas lists, a Christmas fairy and rapturous children clamouring for views of all of the above.
The crowd brought camp chairs, all manner of strollers, blankets to sit on and wagons to pull the overwrought children after the big event.
Entrepreneurs selling felt-covered and bell-bedecked reindeer antler headbands were doing a brisk business: $3 apiece, two for $5.
An a capella quartet in 1940s clothing serenaded the crowd behind the barricades on Drummond St. and some teenagers played street hockey on the deserted thoroughfare before the first marching band arrived.
Spectator Ashley Charette, who will be 2 on Dec. 19, was cozy warm in a fluffy leopard-print snowsuit as she sat on the sidewalk with her brother Kyle and her mother, Cynthia.
"She's having fun, although I don't know how much she understands," Charette said as stiff-legged toy soldiers marched by.
Ioan Bojdanas, 31/2, was a perpetual motion machine, waving his bare hands, both of them, at every float and cartoon character that passed.
Dancing snowmen with brooms, perambulating Christmas trees and a penguin lip-synching the Bing Crosby version of Let it Snow wowed the crowd, which in some places was six deep from the curb. Whoever did the facial make-up on the various elves, soldiers and fairies is to be commended; it was worthy of the Cirque du Soleil.
Elizabeth Garcia, age 3, and her mother, Stephanie, arrived 30 minutes before the parade began at 11 a.m. and got choice seats at the edge of the sidewalk near Bishop St.
"She understands the getting part (of Christmas) but I don't know if she gets the giving part," Garcia said of her daughter's comprehension of what was going on.
Alessandro Nielsen, 10, was at his second Santa Claus parade with his father, Bentley. They arrived on the commuter train from Kirkland to spend the day downtown, taking in the parade and just walking around.
"I used to write to Santa when I was younger," Alessandro said. "Now I just like the parade." With a mixture of sun and cloud and a temperature of zero degrees Celsius, the only snow at this parade was the artificial stuff the Fì±—te des Neiges characters were pitching into the crowd.
Crowd-pleasing stilt-walkers preceded the youngsters dressed up in pajamas, who urged the the spectators to chant ''P챔re No챘l, P챔re No챘l'' as if they weren't excited enough already.
And there he was, bringing up the rear, Santa himself, ringing a hand-bell, blowing kisses and ho-ho-ho-ing his way down Ste. Catherine from Fort St. to St. Urbain St.
An army of street-cleaning machines and their crew followed Santa at a respectful distance, vacuuming up the discarded cups, streamers and wrappers.
Ten minutes after Santa passed by, there was no evidence at all of a parade on the now-pristine street.
Except in the hearts of the youngsters who were there.
asutherland@ thegazette.canwest.com On the Web:
See the Santa Claus parade slideshow, only at montrealgazette.com
............................................Christmas not far off now............YIKES !!!
HF&RV
Good morning !
Photo by Stellapurple of Verdun Connections (Nov. 2007)
How many different tartans do you see on these kilts ?
Are they Irish or Scottish ?
To what clans or families they belong to ?
JM
It was on this day in 1918 that the First World War came to an end. It's now considered one of the most wasteful and meaningless wars in human history, fought mainly because Austria, Serbia, Germany, Russia, France, and Great Britain got caught up in a tangle of alliances and none of them wanted to back down from a fight.
But nobody realized how the brutal the war would be, especially with the introduction of modern weapons like the machine gun, which could fire 600 bullets per minute. The machine gun turned the war into a long and intensely bloody stalemate. Most of the fighting took place along the Western front, stretching for 475 miles through Belgium and France, with about 10,000 soldiers per mile. Each side dug trenches for cover and then each tried to charge the other side, only to be mowed down by machine gun fire. There were numerous battles in which entire squadrons were wiped out in minutes. Some 260,000 French soldiers were killed in just the first month of fighting. On just one day in 1916, more than 50,000 British troops were killed without advancing a single foot. By the end of the war, on this day in 1918, 9 million soldiers had died and 21 million were wounded.
It has long been thought that the United States helped end the war by getting involved in 1917, but most historians believe that all the armies involved were ready to collapse — especially after the flu epidemic hit in 1918 — and the Germans just happened to collapse first. Rudyard Kipling was one of the millions of parents to lose a son in the war, and he wrote a poem about it that consisted of two lines: "If any question why we died, / Tell them because our fathers lied."
| From: MaggieMcK | Sent: 30/03/2007 5:03 PM |
| EXCERPT FROM ROOTS BENEATH THE PAVEMENT, a Tribute to Verdun by one of her reluctant children, 1930s-1940s In retrospect, there was a strong attitude of live and let live in Verdun. I recall that when we children became old enough to go to school, eventually we would hear, of course, two different perspectives on what happened in the eighteenth century battle of the Plains of Abraham. Then we would call each other les maudis Anglais and French pea-soupers. Why? I didn't really know because my mother frequently made pea-soup which I greatly enjoyed. Were we Verdunites of those days, generally, the consummate example of the two solitudes? Perhaps, but each solitude was buttressed by institutions that created community that fostered culture as communities do. The German poet, M. Rainier Rilke, first coined the phrase, two solitudes, in reference, as I understand, to the need of respect for one another's individual identity within a relationship. I believe, therefore, the meaning of two solitudes was not to convey the inevitability of sharp division, but the challenge for a balance in relationship; it seems to me that the Canadian novelist, Hugh MacLennan meant to convey nothing less than this in his novel, Two Solitudes, set in Montreal. I remember the crest of Verdun, a fortress supported by two towers; beneath, are the words, E Viribus Duorum, [built on the strength] of two peoples. My perspective today, therefore, is that the Verdun of my childhood and youth, with few exceptions, was marked by tolerance, which, in spite of change in the makeup of the people, continues as an important part of Verdun's legacy. provided by M. Laurel Buck: |
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