A you tube video containing a lot of old shots from around Montreal & Verdun (a couple anyway of Verdun) this was put together in a video by a fellow Normand Daoust. We have all seen many of these photos before ,but there were a few that I hadn't seen, so I hope you like your Tour de Montreal from the good old days...........Cheers ! LesF
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.
Friday, October 3, 2014
Sunday, September 21, 2014
Happy 80th Birthday Mr. Cohen
and so today is Leonard Cohen's birthday , so Happy Birthday Leonard......
Saturday, September 20, 2014
More Mr Cohen on the Eve of his 80th birthday...........a Montreal Gazette Story
MONTREAL — I keep hoping I might see him, in among the dapper old Portuguese men feeding the pigeons in the little park on the corner of St-Laurent Blvd. and Marie-Anne St. It hasn’t happened yet, but that doesn’t stop me — a grown man with adult responsibilities and bills to pay — from walking a few blocks out of my way every time I’m in that part of the city and having a look. Just in case. Leonard Cohen can have that effect on people.
When Montreal’s best-loved son turns 80 this Sunday, millions of fans around the world will mark the occasion in their own ways. Irish writer Kevin Barry (his novel City of Bohane won the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in 2013) is one of them. Barry lived in Montreal with his wife over the winter of 2013-14 and hopes to come back soon; talking to him, it’s clear he knows his Cohen lore, speaking in the kind of terms a visitor to Ireland might reserve for Joyce or Yeats.
“I think what a great artist does for a city he has lived in is he leaves a kind of shimmer behind in the streets and places he has written about,” said Barry. “In Montreal we get a sense of Mr. Cohen’s shimmer, especially up around the Main and Parc du Portugal, given his long connection with the neighbourhood there. But there are whole swaths of Montreal you can’t walk around without thinking of Leonard Cohen. We all dream of being fed tea and oranges when we’re down by the river, don’t we?”
Indeed we do. I was first exposed to Cohen at the tender age of 10 when I heard three of his songs — The Stranger Song, Sisters of Mercy and Winter Lady — in Robert Altman’s McCabe and Mrs. Miller, a movie I had furtively stayed up past bedtime to see. A lifelong semi-obsession was thus sparked by hearing lyrics I was too young to understand in a movie I was too young to be watching. Somehow, those stately cadences and that dolorous tone exerted a deep pull, sending their smoke signal to a suburban prairie kid from a distant shore of glamour and adulthood.
Here, I could sense, was a state to aspire to, to grow into. A little later the bond was cemented when I purchased Cohen’s Best Of album and learned, on reading the capsule song notes provided by the artist, that Sisters of Mercy was written in a hotel room in — gasp! — Edmonton. From that moment, the shimmer was on my hometown. If only in this small way, we could stand proudly next to New York — where another song on that album, Chelsea Hotel #2, was written about an experience in another hotel room — and next to Montreal, the city to which I finally moved in my mid-30s, having internalized all things Cohen — the albums, the two Montreal-steeped novels, the poetry — in the meantime.
I’m not going to say I came here because of Leonard Cohen. But I’m not going to deny it, either.
Such is the power of the Cohen effect that it can transcend, even bypass, direct artistic influence. Guillaume Morissette, whose Main-centric New Tab is one of the best Canadian novels of 2014, can testify.
“It’s funny, as a Montreal writer, I’ve never felt particularly close or connected to Leonard Cohen’s work, but as I am aging, I am surprised by how much meaning and wisdom I am able to find in his life and career,” said the 27-year-old, a francophone who writes in English. “Just reading about his battle with depression — ‘a kind of mist, a kind of distress over everything’ — his thoughts on voluntary simplicity, his pursuit of Zen Buddhism or the lengths to which he went to write a novel like Beautiful Losers, can be, I feel, very inspiring and intellectually stimulating.”
When Montreal’s best-loved son turns 80 this Sunday, millions of fans around the world will mark the occasion in their own ways. Irish writer Kevin Barry (his novel City of Bohane won the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in 2013) is one of them. Barry lived in Montreal with his wife over the winter of 2013-14 and hopes to come back soon; talking to him, it’s clear he knows his Cohen lore, speaking in the kind of terms a visitor to Ireland might reserve for Joyce or Yeats.
“I think what a great artist does for a city he has lived in is he leaves a kind of shimmer behind in the streets and places he has written about,” said Barry. “In Montreal we get a sense of Mr. Cohen’s shimmer, especially up around the Main and Parc du Portugal, given his long connection with the neighbourhood there. But there are whole swaths of Montreal you can’t walk around without thinking of Leonard Cohen. We all dream of being fed tea and oranges when we’re down by the river, don’t we?”
Indeed we do. I was first exposed to Cohen at the tender age of 10 when I heard three of his songs — The Stranger Song, Sisters of Mercy and Winter Lady — in Robert Altman’s McCabe and Mrs. Miller, a movie I had furtively stayed up past bedtime to see. A lifelong semi-obsession was thus sparked by hearing lyrics I was too young to understand in a movie I was too young to be watching. Somehow, those stately cadences and that dolorous tone exerted a deep pull, sending their smoke signal to a suburban prairie kid from a distant shore of glamour and adulthood.
Here, I could sense, was a state to aspire to, to grow into. A little later the bond was cemented when I purchased Cohen’s Best Of album and learned, on reading the capsule song notes provided by the artist, that Sisters of Mercy was written in a hotel room in — gasp! — Edmonton. From that moment, the shimmer was on my hometown. If only in this small way, we could stand proudly next to New York — where another song on that album, Chelsea Hotel #2, was written about an experience in another hotel room — and next to Montreal, the city to which I finally moved in my mid-30s, having internalized all things Cohen — the albums, the two Montreal-steeped novels, the poetry — in the meantime.
I’m not going to say I came here because of Leonard Cohen. But I’m not going to deny it, either.
Such is the power of the Cohen effect that it can transcend, even bypass, direct artistic influence. Guillaume Morissette, whose Main-centric New Tab is one of the best Canadian novels of 2014, can testify.
“It’s funny, as a Montreal writer, I’ve never felt particularly close or connected to Leonard Cohen’s work, but as I am aging, I am surprised by how much meaning and wisdom I am able to find in his life and career,” said the 27-year-old, a francophone who writes in English. “Just reading about his battle with depression — ‘a kind of mist, a kind of distress over everything’ — his thoughts on voluntary simplicity, his pursuit of Zen Buddhism or the lengths to which he went to write a novel like Beautiful Losers, can be, I feel, very inspiring and intellectually stimulating.”
A narrative that has been retold as often as Cohen’s can take on an air of inevitability, so it’s worth reflecting on just how unlikely a path he took to his current position. Cohen made the decision to be a professional musician only after concluding that the literary life, however acclaimed his books might be, wasn’t going to pay the bills.
He did it, moreover, at a time when youth reigned supreme in pop culture. For a comparison point, when Songs of Leonard Cohen was released in late 1967, Cohen was 33; the gold-standard singer-songwriter, Bob Dylan, who had already reset the parameters of songwriting at least twice, was a ripe old 26. It’s a lovely irony, then, that an artist first viewed as a kind of urbane older brother to the original hippies should have outlasted them all — literally in many cases, and as an artistic force in almost every case.
What’s more, unlike so many of his still-active contemporaries, Cohen isn’t competing against his younger self. Mick Jagger fights a noble but inevitably losing battle every time he takes a stage and tries to dance like it’s 1972; Cohen has never been in that invidious position because from the start he had a style that lent itself to graceful aging.
And in a bonus that not many could have foreseen, the man once dubbed Laughing Lenny in ironic reference to his perceived dourness has evolved into one of the more droll presences on the cultural landscape. Tower of Song’s “I was born with the gift of a golden voice” is only the best-known example — since the mid-career reinvention of I’m Your Man (an album whose cover achieved the miracle of making the eating of a banana look drop-dead cool), there’s hardly been a Cohen song, even counting the weightiest and most spiritually anguished of them, that doesn’t pack at least one zinger.
One of the many things to celebrate on Sunday is that Cohen isn’t just crossing the 80 line — he’s breaking the tape in spectacular fashion, entering his ninth decade as a thoroughly contemporary artist, one whose imminent new album, Popular Problems — a work that on early listening reveals itself as a dazzling, rhythm-and-blues-laced meditation on the Big Questions — will be crashing sales charts worldwide when it’s released on Monday.
An octogenarian slugging it out with Katy Perry and Taylor Swift is simply not supposed to happen, but it is happening, and that’s a wonderful thing. You wish Kurt Cobain could be here to see it. Not long before his tragic 1994 passing, the Nirvana leader played no small part in making Cohen cool with a new generation through a famous namecheck — “Give me a Leonard Cohen afterworld” — in Pennyroyal Tea. Might the distinctive spelling of one of Popular Problems’ song titles — Nevermind — be a sly tip of the hat in return? It’s nice to think so.
In a career that has seen so many epic twists and turns, there are none more remarkable than the Hallelujah phenomenon. Nothing else in pop culture history can quite equal the three-decade caterpillar-to-butterfly transformation of an obscure 1984 album track into possibly the most sung song of the 21st century, a spiritual-secular anthem for all occasions. That it happened via a completely organic process — no blockbuster movie tie-in hype, no big-name guest-rap dance remix — makes it all the more satisfying. (I was working in radio when Various Positions was released, and I’ll own up: my pick to click from that album was Night Comes On. You win some, you lose some.)
A book could be written on this story alone, and indeed one has been: Alan Light’s fine The Holy and The Broken. When I interviewed Light for The Gazette on release of the book in 2012, he had this to say: “It’s very easy to be cynical about music today, and to decide that it’s been so commodified and cheapened that it’s just not as important as it used to be, that people don’t care about music the way they used to. But talking to people about Hallelujah, it’s evident that a truly great song can still be incredibly meaningful, and can still connect in a way that no other art can do.”
He did it, moreover, at a time when youth reigned supreme in pop culture. For a comparison point, when Songs of Leonard Cohen was released in late 1967, Cohen was 33; the gold-standard singer-songwriter, Bob Dylan, who had already reset the parameters of songwriting at least twice, was a ripe old 26. It’s a lovely irony, then, that an artist first viewed as a kind of urbane older brother to the original hippies should have outlasted them all — literally in many cases, and as an artistic force in almost every case.
What’s more, unlike so many of his still-active contemporaries, Cohen isn’t competing against his younger self. Mick Jagger fights a noble but inevitably losing battle every time he takes a stage and tries to dance like it’s 1972; Cohen has never been in that invidious position because from the start he had a style that lent itself to graceful aging.
And in a bonus that not many could have foreseen, the man once dubbed Laughing Lenny in ironic reference to his perceived dourness has evolved into one of the more droll presences on the cultural landscape. Tower of Song’s “I was born with the gift of a golden voice” is only the best-known example — since the mid-career reinvention of I’m Your Man (an album whose cover achieved the miracle of making the eating of a banana look drop-dead cool), there’s hardly been a Cohen song, even counting the weightiest and most spiritually anguished of them, that doesn’t pack at least one zinger.
One of the many things to celebrate on Sunday is that Cohen isn’t just crossing the 80 line — he’s breaking the tape in spectacular fashion, entering his ninth decade as a thoroughly contemporary artist, one whose imminent new album, Popular Problems — a work that on early listening reveals itself as a dazzling, rhythm-and-blues-laced meditation on the Big Questions — will be crashing sales charts worldwide when it’s released on Monday.
An octogenarian slugging it out with Katy Perry and Taylor Swift is simply not supposed to happen, but it is happening, and that’s a wonderful thing. You wish Kurt Cobain could be here to see it. Not long before his tragic 1994 passing, the Nirvana leader played no small part in making Cohen cool with a new generation through a famous namecheck — “Give me a Leonard Cohen afterworld” — in Pennyroyal Tea. Might the distinctive spelling of one of Popular Problems’ song titles — Nevermind — be a sly tip of the hat in return? It’s nice to think so.
In a career that has seen so many epic twists and turns, there are none more remarkable than the Hallelujah phenomenon. Nothing else in pop culture history can quite equal the three-decade caterpillar-to-butterfly transformation of an obscure 1984 album track into possibly the most sung song of the 21st century, a spiritual-secular anthem for all occasions. That it happened via a completely organic process — no blockbuster movie tie-in hype, no big-name guest-rap dance remix — makes it all the more satisfying. (I was working in radio when Various Positions was released, and I’ll own up: my pick to click from that album was Night Comes On. You win some, you lose some.)
A book could be written on this story alone, and indeed one has been: Alan Light’s fine The Holy and The Broken. When I interviewed Light for The Gazette on release of the book in 2012, he had this to say: “It’s very easy to be cynical about music today, and to decide that it’s been so commodified and cheapened that it’s just not as important as it used to be, that people don’t care about music the way they used to. But talking to people about Hallelujah, it’s evident that a truly great song can still be incredibly meaningful, and can still connect in a way that no other art can do.”
I was vouchsafed a demonstration of that power in the most unexpected of ways one hot summer day about five years ago. While on one of my periodic forays to Parc du Portugal, I espied a pair of 40-something German tourists, fans from a country that embraced Cohen very early, and I struck up a chat. The men — let’s call them Jurgen and Hans — were in Montreal for the express purpose of earnestly working their way down a checklist of Cohen-related local landmarks.
They had just come from a building they had determined to be Suzanne’s place by the river and were on their way to Belmont Ave. in Westmount to see the childhood home, but now they were stopping off in front of the humble house Cohen purchased in the 1970s, and where he had been periodically living recently, touring commitments and monastery stints permitting. Scanning the surroundings, they simultaneously seized on the same street sign across the park.
“Aha!,” cried Hans. “Marie-Anne! ‘So long, Marie-Anne!’ This is not coincidence! He is naming his song for this street!”
“Actually,” I said, “the name is spelled differently in the song.” And I didn’t stop there. Oh, no. I also pointed out — God, what a pedantic jerk I can be — that, regardless, the song predated Cohen’s purchase of the house by several years.
Hans and Jurgen, who had been on the point of dancing a jig in celebration of their discovery, now stopped. An awkward silence followed. I felt like an absolute heel. I wished I could take my know-it-all words back and leave these sweet-natured men happy with their innocent mistake. The moment was saved when the two friends turned toward the house. I turned with them. Jurgen, very softly at first but with growing confidence, began to sing.
“Well, I heard there was a secret chord…”
Hans joined in, in rough harmony. The curtains of the house’s windows were closed; there was no sign that anyone was home. Still, Hans and Jurgen sang as if Leonard Cohen were inside listening and just might be drawn out. They weren’t very good singers, but then, some foolish people once thought the same of the man to whom they were paying tribute. I don’t mind admitting it — before they even got to “But you don’t really care for music, do ya?”, I was already crying like a baby.
It may have struck some readers by now that most of the references in this piece have been to men. Well, it’s time to rectify that and then some, because there’s no getting around it: Leonard loves the ladies, and the ladies love Leonard right back. As interpreters, collaborators, muses, women have played an indispensable part in the Cohen story: Judy Collins, Joni Mitchell, Jennifer Warnes, Anjani, Sharon Robinson.
And in an irony so rich it would beggar belief in a screenplay, it was a woman, erstwhile manager Kelley Lynch, whose fleecing of most of her client’s life savings effectively forced him into the sustained burst of touring, writing and recording activity that has comprised his remarkable and ongoing late renaissance. In a twisted way, we owe Lynch thanks.
Heather O’Neill (Lullabies for Little Criminals, The Girl Who Was Saturday Night) and Kim Thuy (Ru, Man), two of Quebec’s most acclaimed contemporary novelists, would seem eminently qualified to speak on the Cohen effect as it pertains to women. “So many of my ideas about love came from listening to his songs,” said O’Neill. “He sang about love as though it were wild and dangerous. It was where all great poems and stories came from. His charismatic, aristocratic, down-and-out persona as a poet deeply affected my characters. They all have a little bit of Leonard Cohen in them. Nobody does nostalgie de la boue better. He raised us and turned us all into romantics.”
Thuy came to Quebec from Vietnam at age 10, having escaped Saigon as a refugee. She knew nothing of Leonard Cohen when she arrived here and for some time after, but that had changed plenty by the time she won the Governor General’s Award in 2010 for her debut novel, Ru. At the awards ceremony in Ottawa, she was moved to quote a line from From A Thousand Kisses Deep in her acceptance speech, with help from translator Sophie Voillot. “Par mille baisers de fond, je vous remercie grandement.”
They had just come from a building they had determined to be Suzanne’s place by the river and were on their way to Belmont Ave. in Westmount to see the childhood home, but now they were stopping off in front of the humble house Cohen purchased in the 1970s, and where he had been periodically living recently, touring commitments and monastery stints permitting. Scanning the surroundings, they simultaneously seized on the same street sign across the park.
“Aha!,” cried Hans. “Marie-Anne! ‘So long, Marie-Anne!’ This is not coincidence! He is naming his song for this street!”
“Actually,” I said, “the name is spelled differently in the song.” And I didn’t stop there. Oh, no. I also pointed out — God, what a pedantic jerk I can be — that, regardless, the song predated Cohen’s purchase of the house by several years.
Hans and Jurgen, who had been on the point of dancing a jig in celebration of their discovery, now stopped. An awkward silence followed. I felt like an absolute heel. I wished I could take my know-it-all words back and leave these sweet-natured men happy with their innocent mistake. The moment was saved when the two friends turned toward the house. I turned with them. Jurgen, very softly at first but with growing confidence, began to sing.
“Well, I heard there was a secret chord…”
Hans joined in, in rough harmony. The curtains of the house’s windows were closed; there was no sign that anyone was home. Still, Hans and Jurgen sang as if Leonard Cohen were inside listening and just might be drawn out. They weren’t very good singers, but then, some foolish people once thought the same of the man to whom they were paying tribute. I don’t mind admitting it — before they even got to “But you don’t really care for music, do ya?”, I was already crying like a baby.
It may have struck some readers by now that most of the references in this piece have been to men. Well, it’s time to rectify that and then some, because there’s no getting around it: Leonard loves the ladies, and the ladies love Leonard right back. As interpreters, collaborators, muses, women have played an indispensable part in the Cohen story: Judy Collins, Joni Mitchell, Jennifer Warnes, Anjani, Sharon Robinson.
And in an irony so rich it would beggar belief in a screenplay, it was a woman, erstwhile manager Kelley Lynch, whose fleecing of most of her client’s life savings effectively forced him into the sustained burst of touring, writing and recording activity that has comprised his remarkable and ongoing late renaissance. In a twisted way, we owe Lynch thanks.
Heather O’Neill (Lullabies for Little Criminals, The Girl Who Was Saturday Night) and Kim Thuy (Ru, Man), two of Quebec’s most acclaimed contemporary novelists, would seem eminently qualified to speak on the Cohen effect as it pertains to women. “So many of my ideas about love came from listening to his songs,” said O’Neill. “He sang about love as though it were wild and dangerous. It was where all great poems and stories came from. His charismatic, aristocratic, down-and-out persona as a poet deeply affected my characters. They all have a little bit of Leonard Cohen in them. Nobody does nostalgie de la boue better. He raised us and turned us all into romantics.”
Thuy came to Quebec from Vietnam at age 10, having escaped Saigon as a refugee. She knew nothing of Leonard Cohen when she arrived here and for some time after, but that had changed plenty by the time she won the Governor General’s Award in 2010 for her debut novel, Ru. At the awards ceremony in Ottawa, she was moved to quote a line from From A Thousand Kisses Deep in her acceptance speech, with help from translator Sophie Voillot. “Par mille baisers de fond, je vous remercie grandement.”
The last word here, fittingly, can go to a Cohen contemporary — journalist, broadcaster, former Governor General of Canada, and this year’s CBC Massey Lecturer, Adrienne Clarkson. Asked this week for her thoughts on Sunday’s milestone, Mme. Clarkson didn’t waste any words. “It isn’t really Leonard’s birthday,” she said. “He doesn’t have an age.”
Fans can wish Leonard Cohen a happy birthday on Sunday at www.leonardcohen.com
ianmcgillis2@gmail.com
Twitter: IanAMcGillis
Fans can wish Leonard Cohen a happy birthday on Sunday at www.leonardcohen.com
ianmcgillis2@gmail.com
Twitter: IanAMcGillis
Thursday, September 18, 2014
Popular Problems...............an album by Leonard Cohen
In 3 days from now our own Montrealer Leonard Cohen will turn 80 years old, and to celebrate (as the site says ) he is releasing a new album...........I like most of it so far & if you want to hear many of it's tunes then CBC has some available for you to sample right here.........
http://music.cbc.ca/#/blogs/2014/9/First-Play-Leonard-Cohen-Popular-Problems (sorry you have to copy & paste this link it seems)
I however like the sample on Leonard Cohen's website which has a very simple video of one of his songs (that I like ) with lyrics "Almost Like the Blues"........very cool (IMHO)
Click on his link: http://www.leonardcohen.com/ca
and scroll & play the video. Or watch it at the bottom of this post.
That being said I really appreciate having the tunes available on the CBC site,............I think they are almost all great..........let me rephrase that , I'm sure they are all great...I just like some more than others...... I hope you Cohen fans appreciate this latest offering from one of Montreal's true Cool Talents..........and if you don't think he's cool, then think of his response when winning a Juno a few years back ,when he said roughly " Only in Canada could he win best male vocalist"
Now that's funny & humble.............too cool for school Mr Cohen.
Now there's a Montrealer with a great vision of self & a sense of humour......Thanks Mr Cohen.for being normal............ can't wait to get your album ,I got to see your show here in Victoria BC this past spring ....what a great show. Thank You & the girls & the musicians.
Watch the Video .....I hope everyone likes it: but I guess that's where You Choose....I suppose that's why it's Titled ...."Almost like the Blues"...........Cheers ! LesF
http://music.cbc.ca/#/blogs/2014/9/First-Play-Leonard-Cohen-Popular-Problems (sorry you have to copy & paste this link it seems)
I however like the sample on Leonard Cohen's website which has a very simple video of one of his songs (that I like ) with lyrics "Almost Like the Blues"........very cool (IMHO)
Click on his link: http://www.leonardcohen.com/ca
and scroll & play the video. Or watch it at the bottom of this post.
That being said I really appreciate having the tunes available on the CBC site,............I think they are almost all great..........let me rephrase that , I'm sure they are all great...I just like some more than others...... I hope you Cohen fans appreciate this latest offering from one of Montreal's true Cool Talents..........and if you don't think he's cool, then think of his response when winning a Juno a few years back ,when he said roughly " Only in Canada could he win best male vocalist"
Now that's funny & humble.............too cool for school Mr Cohen.
Now there's a Montrealer with a great vision of self & a sense of humour......Thanks Mr Cohen.for being normal............ can't wait to get your album ,I got to see your show here in Victoria BC this past spring ....what a great show. Thank You & the girls & the musicians.
Watch the Video .....I hope everyone likes it: but I guess that's where You Choose....I suppose that's why it's Titled ...."Almost like the Blues"...........Cheers ! LesF
Tuesday, September 16, 2014
Montreal in the 1960's from youtube
Came across this youtube video of Montreal in the 1960's , some great shots we've seen before but always welcome to see again, (jmho)
Monday, September 15, 2014
Friday, August 15, 2014
45 years ago today ........we headed down to Yasgurs Farm
Wow 45 years ago..................Yikes baby that's a while ago & doesn't really seem that long.
Woodstock......................1969 just across the border from us in NYS.
I always laugh at a line I heard years ago, that if all the people who claimed to have been to Woodstock were really there , then there would have been 2 million at least......................lol
Woodstock......................1969 just across the border from us in NYS.
I always laugh at a line I heard years ago, that if all the people who claimed to have been to Woodstock were really there , then there would have been 2 million at least......................lol
Joni Mitchell – Woodstock Lyrics
I came upon a child of God
He was walking along the road
And I asked him, where are you going
And this he told me
I'm going on down to Yasgur's farm
I'm going to join in a rock 'n' roll band
I'm going to camp out on the land
I'm going to try an' get my soul free
We are stardust
We are golden
And we've got to get ourselves
Back to the garden
Then can I walk beside you
I have come here to lose the smog
And I feel to be a cog in something turning
Well maybe it is just the time of year
Or maybe it's the time of man
I don't know who l am
But you know life is for learning
We are stardust
We are golden
And we've got to get ourselves
Back to the garden
By the time we got to Woodstock
We were half a million strong
And everywhere there was song and celebration
And I dreamed I saw the bombers
Riding shotgun in the sky
And they were turning into butterflies
Above our nation
We are stardust
Billion year old carbon
We are golden
Caught in the devil's bargain
And we've got to get ourselves
Back to the garden
He was walking along the road
And I asked him, where are you going
And this he told me
I'm going on down to Yasgur's farm
I'm going to join in a rock 'n' roll band
I'm going to camp out on the land
I'm going to try an' get my soul free
We are stardust
We are golden
And we've got to get ourselves
Back to the garden
Then can I walk beside you
I have come here to lose the smog
And I feel to be a cog in something turning
Well maybe it is just the time of year
Or maybe it's the time of man
I don't know who l am
But you know life is for learning
We are stardust
We are golden
And we've got to get ourselves
Back to the garden
By the time we got to Woodstock
We were half a million strong
And everywhere there was song and celebration
And I dreamed I saw the bombers
Riding shotgun in the sky
And they were turning into butterflies
Above our nation
We are stardust
Billion year old carbon
We are golden
Caught in the devil's bargain
And we've got to get ourselves
Back to the garden
Wednesday, August 13, 2014
Nuns Island -bypass bridge
Wow remember when we could only get to the island by boat .....now they want to bypass it.......lol
Here is a Gazette story from today Aug 13 2014
Here is a Gazette story from today Aug 13 2014
MONTREAL — The Nuns’ Island bypass bridge will open sometime this fall, according to the Jacques Cartier and Champlain Bridges Incorporated.
The bridge, which has been under construction since August 2013, will allow the bridge agency to close and reconstruct the existing Nuns’ Island Bridge, which is planned as part of the replacement of the Champlain Bridge.
Like the existing bridge, the bypass will have three lanes each direction. The bridge will also feature a dedicated bus lane, and will also have widened bike lanes.
The agency says that the bypass construction will also allow them to remove a traffic light on Highway 15 which slowed down traffic to Montreal in the afternoon.
The bridge, which has been under construction since August 2013, will allow the bridge agency to close and reconstruct the existing Nuns’ Island Bridge, which is planned as part of the replacement of the Champlain Bridge.
Like the existing bridge, the bypass will have three lanes each direction. The bridge will also feature a dedicated bus lane, and will also have widened bike lanes.
The agency says that the bypass construction will also allow them to remove a traffic light on Highway 15 which slowed down traffic to Montreal in the afternoon.
© Copyright (c) The Montreal Gazette
Wednesday, August 6, 2014
Son of a Beach .......now competing East-West
Very nice idea to have a beach in anycase & since Projet Montreal thought of it a few years ago, is reason to consider their preferred location,...............but HEY Projet-Montreal ,any way you look at it behind the Auditorium is just plain DUMB...........the Condos built right there are built over the main GARBAGE DUMP and no matter what BS you hear from any level of Gov't officials ( they are all liars anyway) you woul;d have toxins leaching into the water from that area........the whole river I doubt is 'safe' but it is a swift running current & flo...that the other end near the (can't say nuthouse anymore) Douglas would make a little more sense (heavy on the 'little' )............lol
.....and BTW: if you don't believe me walk down the river bank just about anywhere & dig a stick into the bank & voila you will see crud & sludge oozing out......... so you may want to think about being upstream a bit since there were virtually no industries along the river from the Nat.............to St.Anne de Bellevue........(roughly).............JMHO- LesF
Here's the update Gazette story:
The mayor of the borough of Verdun said he’s going ahead with his plans to build a new beach near the Douglas Hospital, despite calls from Projet Montréal to move it east.
Several factors, including water levels, current speeds and project costs, make the Verdun Natatorium site a better location than the Verdun Auditorium, according to borough mayor Jean-François Parenteau, who said he’s hoping to bring the project to a design competition next October.
Projet Montréal leader Richard Bergeron proposed the planned beach be moved behind the auditorium, where he and other opposition councillors swam at a news conference on Wednesday.
“It would be really more expensive if we make something behind the auditorium,” Parenteau countered. “Maybe two times or three times more expensive.
“It’s important to have a beach, but it’s important to make a good decision for the citizen, too.”
Parenteau estimated that the auditorium site would cost $3 million because of extra work needed to improve the slope of the beach, while the natatorium site would cost $1.5 million.
According to borough administrators, that’s a rough estimate based on costs for other recently built beaches, and precise figures would need further study.
Bergeron cast doubt on those numbers.
“We have no idea how much it will cost, no more him than me,” he said.
A 2004 study by the borough concluded that the natatorium would be a stronger potential location, thanks to a gentler slope underwater and slower currents.
An added bonus for the borough is that the site near the natatorium, a former snow dump, has to be cleaned anyway. To build the beach there would “kill two birds with one stone,” Parenteau said.
But Projet Montréal prefers the auditorium site, citing access by public transportation.
Three métro stations are within one kilometre of the proposed beach.
“It’s an important criterion, specifically for adolescents,” Bergeron said Wednesday. “So that they can be independent and come to the beach, from anywhere in Montreal.”
The auditorium site is also in a busy residential and commercial area.
Bergeron noted that additional studies on cost must be done before a final decision is made.
“If the natatorium wins out, despite the fact that it’s not accessible, despite all other reasons — well, it wins, that’s all,” he said.
Both sides said they’re willing to sit down and discuss possible sites.
“It must not be the subject of a political war between parties,” Bergeron said. “We’re looking for collaboration.”
“I’d be quite happy to go swimming in the natatorium (site), but it seems to me that Montrealers will have better access to the site we recommended this morning.”
gbarry@montrealgazette.com
.....and BTW: if you don't believe me walk down the river bank just about anywhere & dig a stick into the bank & voila you will see crud & sludge oozing out......... so you may want to think about being upstream a bit since there were virtually no industries along the river from the Nat.............to St.Anne de Bellevue........(roughly).............JMHO- LesF
Here's the update Gazette story:
The mayor of the borough of Verdun said he’s going ahead with his plans to build a new beach near the Douglas Hospital, despite calls from Projet Montréal to move it east.
Several factors, including water levels, current speeds and project costs, make the Verdun Natatorium site a better location than the Verdun Auditorium, according to borough mayor Jean-François Parenteau, who said he’s hoping to bring the project to a design competition next October.
Projet Montréal leader Richard Bergeron proposed the planned beach be moved behind the auditorium, where he and other opposition councillors swam at a news conference on Wednesday.
“It would be really more expensive if we make something behind the auditorium,” Parenteau countered. “Maybe two times or three times more expensive.
“It’s important to have a beach, but it’s important to make a good decision for the citizen, too.”
Parenteau estimated that the auditorium site would cost $3 million because of extra work needed to improve the slope of the beach, while the natatorium site would cost $1.5 million.
According to borough administrators, that’s a rough estimate based on costs for other recently built beaches, and precise figures would need further study.
Bergeron cast doubt on those numbers.
“We have no idea how much it will cost, no more him than me,” he said.
A 2004 study by the borough concluded that the natatorium would be a stronger potential location, thanks to a gentler slope underwater and slower currents.
An added bonus for the borough is that the site near the natatorium, a former snow dump, has to be cleaned anyway. To build the beach there would “kill two birds with one stone,” Parenteau said.
But Projet Montréal prefers the auditorium site, citing access by public transportation.
Three métro stations are within one kilometre of the proposed beach.
“It’s an important criterion, specifically for adolescents,” Bergeron said Wednesday. “So that they can be independent and come to the beach, from anywhere in Montreal.”
The auditorium site is also in a busy residential and commercial area.
Bergeron noted that additional studies on cost must be done before a final decision is made.
“If the natatorium wins out, despite the fact that it’s not accessible, despite all other reasons — well, it wins, that’s all,” he said.
Both sides said they’re willing to sit down and discuss possible sites.
“It must not be the subject of a political war between parties,” Bergeron said. “We’re looking for collaboration.”
“I’d be quite happy to go swimming in the natatorium (site), but it seems to me that Montrealers will have better access to the site we recommended this morning.”
gbarry@montrealgazette.com
Thursday, July 17, 2014
Verdun to get Beach by 2017..............story in today's Gazette Deja Vu all over again.
http://blogs.montrealgazette.com/2009/10/23/projet-montreal-promises-a-beach-in-verdun/
MONTREAL — Official plans are still in the works, but a new beach should be open in Verdun by 2017, said borough councillor Pierre L’Heureux.
“We’re really in the preliminary, very early stages of planning,” said L’Heureux.
L’Heureux said the plan is definitely to have the beach ready by 2017, and based on early estimates, he feels it’s a realistic objective.
A few different locations have been considered and though not yet official, one front-runner would be in front of the Douglas Mental Health Institute, where the old legal snow deposit used to be, on the shore of the St-Lawrence River and alongside LaSalle Blvd.
“It’s an area that needs to have work done, regardless, so we would essentially rehabilitate the landfill, and give the waterfront back to the people of Verdun,” L’Heureux said.
The councillor said Verdun is currently looking into different design plans, after a public consultation in May showed that somewhere between 60 and 70 per cent of people were in favour of having a new beach.
Coralie Deny, of the Conseil régional de l’environnement de Montréal, said a new beach in Verdun is overdue and a step in the right direction for the city of Montreal.
“There’s always been a great demand by Montrealers to have more access to the water, there’s a lot of visual access, but not much actual physical access where people can get in the water,” she said.
Montreal is almost a “forgotten island,” Deny said, explaining how people who live on the island tend to forget its surrounded by water given how little access to it there is.
“What the beach is really part of is this whole vision of turning the borough back toward the river,” L’Heureux said.
A new beach is also set to open in Rivière-des-Prairies–Pointe-aux-Trembles in 2016. Early design for that beach show it will include a boardwalk, service centres, badminton and volleyball courts and a reflecting pool. The total costs for the project are $3 million.
L’Heureux said Verdun would be interested in a similar model, but on a smaller and less expensive scale.
jfeith@montrealgazette.com
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