I spotted this alleyway entrance while walking up St. Laurent Street just below St. Joseph Boulevard.
Monthly Archives: September 2014
The Fabulous Fabergé Eggs
I saw the exhibit on the Fabergé Eggs at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts this week and they are an excellent example of this week’s Photo Challenge: Endurance. They are stunning pieces of art and craftsmanship that have endured over time. Carl Fabergé also created other jeweled and gold encrusted items such as frames, dishes, umbrella handles, cane handles, and carvings, but it’s the famous eggs that caught my imagination.
Waiting for Sir Patrick Stewart
My Survival Guide for Montreal Comicon 2014
The cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation, which was one of my favorite TV shows at the time, are the featured guests at Comicon this weekend. With last year’s Comicon experience under my belt, this was how I prepared for it this year:
1) Bought ticket online. It’s cheaper. It costs a bit more if you buy it at the door.
2) Brought lunch, a snack and a bottle of water. Last year, I bought lunch at the site. The lineup was way too long and all the tables were full. By the time I got my food, I practically had to gulp it down to make sure I could get into the next Q&A.
Eating lunch while waiting for Sir Patrick Stewart
Summer in a Glass
I can’t believe we’re in the last two weeks of summer! I didn’t finish my summer-to-do list like spending an afternoon plunging down a water slide, using an extreme heat wave as an excuse to have a Dairy Queen Blizzard for supper, and convincing myself (and others) that lying on a beach working on my tan is how a writer comes up with great, creative ideas.
Sigh!
One thing I do to help prolong that summer feeling is to make an old-fashioned ice cream soda, the way we made it when my parents owned a restaurant. A soft drink cost fifteen cents in the 1960s and we didn’t serve it from a can or a bottle. The restaurant had a real soda fountain complete with the taps with big handles that you pulled down for soda water, pumps for syrup and a fridge for ice cream. When a customer ordered a soft drink, we filled a glass with soda water and pumped in flavoured syrup to make either coke, 7-up, cream soda or cherry-coke.
To make an old-fashioned ice cream soda, take a tall glass, put in a couple of scoops of vanilla or chocolate ice cream and fill it with 7-up. If you want a coke float, switch the 7-up for coke.
It’s so delicious, it’ll disappear as quick as summer.
What are you doing to enjoy these last days of summer?
Walking Tours with the Museum of Jewish Montreal
Doing research for a project can either be a chore or a pleasure. It was the latter for me recently. I’ve been researching Jewish history in Montreal when a friend mentioned that the Museum of Jewish Montreal gives walking tours. It sounded like a lot more fun than just reading about it, so I signed up for “Making Their Mark,” a tour of the Jewish community that existed in the Plateau area from the turn of the 20th century until the 1950s.
I met Laura, my tour guide, at the corner of St. Laurent and Milton. Since I was the only one who signed up for that day, it would be a private tour. We spent the next two hours viewing buildings that were formerly synagogues, schools and hospitals which Laura brought to life as she talked about the immigration of Eastern European Jews and how they established their community, culture and what was once Montreal’s thriving schmatta industry.
Day's Lee 