The Giants are in Montreal

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There are some huge celebrities here to celebrate Montreal’s 375th birthday, and I really mean huge.

The Giants are in town for the weekend. Not the football team. The Giants of the Royal De Luxe company are marionettes from France. There are three of them: The Sea Diver which is the largest, a Little Girl, which is the diver’s niece, and her dog. This is their first appearance in Canada.

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It takes a lot of people to manipulate them and watching them work is as fascinating as the marionettes themselves.  Continue reading →

Papa Jackie Serves Happy Families

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Saturday night, my family had an emergency meeting of sorts. Our favorite Chinese restaurant, Papa Jackie, is closing for renovations for two months as of May 8th. My brother sent out a text alert Thursday announcing that he had made supper reservations for Saturday night at six o’clock. We responded quickly like any dutiful family member would when there’s a promise of a good meal. So there we were, eleven of us, squeezed around a table for ten. Every table in the restaurant was reserved and most likely, so was the next seating at eight.   Continue reading →

Good Pirates and Bad Pirates

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I was parked outside the Arrivals section at Trudeau Airport this morning looking up and down the waiting area for someone. I have been picking up strangers at the airport once a year for the past few years. This isn’t as bad as it sounds. The occasion is TD Canadian Children’s Book Week when I volunteer to pick up visiting authors and drive them to their hotel or to a school or bookstore for a reading. This time, I was Continue reading →

Doctor by Day, Mystery Writer at Night – Meet Melissa Yi

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May is Asian Heritage Month!

I thought I’d kick it off by introducing an author I met last summer in Ottawa at a book festival called Prose in the Park (read the post here.) Melissa Yuan-Innes, a.k.a. Melissa Yi, is an emergency doctor and the author of a doctor-detective series that is set right here in Montreal. I purchased the first book Code Blues and enjoyed it so much I bought the second, Notorious D.O.C. I’m officially hooked. It’s no surprise to me Continue reading →