The work of Montreal illustrator and author, Marie-Louise Gay, is being honored by Canada Post. Stamps depicting her award-winning children’s picture book series “Stella” are now on sale. I’m very happy for a fellow author and Montrealer.
Read what Gay says about the honor on her blog.
May Wong reads from her book, “A Cowherd in Paradise: From China to Canada”
When a friend e-mailed me that May Wong was coming to Montreal to do a reading this past Sunday, I knew I had to go. Her book, “A Cowherd in Paradise: From China to Canada” is about her parents who were separated for years because of Canada’s Exclusion Act which came into law in 1923. My parents story sounded similar to hers and so I went eager to hear what she had to say.
Wong had the audience’s rapt attention as she set the background for her story, explaining the historical details that shaped her parents’ lives. Her father chose her mother from a picture. Her mother didn’t know what her future husband looked like until after the wedding ceremony. While her father was establishing himself as a restaurateur in Montreal, her mother was in China stuggling to survive natural disasaters and the Japanese invasion. The title of the book is a tribute to her mother who was responsible for the family’s water buffalo when she was a little girl. The book includes old family photos and a copy of her father’s head tax certificate.
While I haven’t read the book yet, I think it would be interesting for those whose parents, like mine, didn’t talk about the past. It is very fortunate that Wong’s mother, not only wanted to tell her stories, but also wanted Wong to publish them. The book is a treasure not only for Wong’s family, but for families of other head-tax payers as well.
The Montreal Botanical Gardens is the host of the Mosaicultures Internationales this year. The theme is “Land of Hope” and the living larger-than-life sculptures from around the world are spectacular. Enough from me. A picture is worth a thousand words.
Clown Fish (aka Nemo) (Japan)
Polar Bear sculpture gets watered.
Memoires of a Childhood Dinner (France)
The Bird Tree (Canada)
Comesse’s Butterfly (France)
All In a Row (Madagascar)
Mother Earth (Canada)
Mother Earth (Canada)
Ambassadors of Hope (Canada)
Phoenix (China)
Spirits of the Wood (Canada)
Spirits of the Wood (Canada)
Guardians of the Island (Chile)
The Man Who Planted Trees (Canada)
The Man Who Planted Trees (Canada)
The Crane Girl, a True Story (China)
Park employee waters flowers in a pot.
The Uffington White Horse (England)
Fragile Frogs (United States)
Every day on my way to work, I pass by a Hong Kong style pastry shop called Patisserie Cocobun in Atwater metro. It sells a wide variety of freshly baked Chinese buns which include buns filled with either coconut, mango, red bean, custard or if you prefer, no filling at all. I love the bread which is either soft and sweet or lightly crusted. Either way, they’re delicious! I bought one out of curiosity and now I’m hooked.
The hot buns are filled with either BBQ pork, curry beef, hot dogs or other combinations with ham and are the size of a sandwich. Since the buns cost less than $2 each, it costs me an average of $4 for lunch. Cocobun also sells bubble tea and other Hong Kong style cakes and cookies.
Curry beef bun with flaky egg tart for lunch
Red Bean laced bun
Custard bun
One of the many projects I’m working on is a collection of published short stories called “The Red Pagoda and Other Stories.” It’s taking longer than I thought, but I hope to have it out as an e-book before the end of the year. However, one of the stories can be found in Carte Blanche, the online literary review of the Quebec Writers’ Federation. Click on the link above and it will take you to the website. I hope you enjoy it.
Day's Lee 