The 105-Year-Old Blogger

I grew up in the pretty little suburb St. Lambert, across the Seaway Canal from the Island of Montreal. At the end of my street, I had a clear view of the canal and its ships, the Expo Islands, and then the city. Mount Royal loomed behind them all. I could clearly see the cross on its peak — one of my favourite views. At night, the cross was lit up in white lights. Image by PublicDomainPictures from Pixabay  During the summer of 1978, Pope Paul VI died. While this world event unfolded, I was at my relatives’ cottage, perched above the Northumberland Strait near the tiny community of Tidnish, Nova Scotia.  Whenever I was there, engaging with the ocean and the tantalizing tidal mud flats, there was nothing to make me want to go back to the city.  But that summer I would have loved to have seen what happened to the Mount Royal cross: to mark the death of the Pope, the lights on the cross were changed to purple. Image by Aimee Valentine from Pixabay  By the time I got ...

The September 20, 1977 Montreal blackout has been forgotten. Even the internet can’t remember it. But that event and date are stuck in my head because it was my 16 th birthday. I’m not sure what exactly caused all of Montreal to go dark that day, but it must have had something to do with the wonderful raging windstorm. I remember the wind because I was out in it under black, brooding, rainless clouds—reveling in the dark dramatic weather. I also revelled in the fact that I wasn’t in school; cancelled because of the power failure. Best Birthday Ever. I stood in the wind at the end of a street near my house, enjoying our view of Montreal.   It was dark in the middle of the day, and the downtown cluster of buildings were uncharacteristically unlit; mere rectangles (like the one in 2001: A Space Odyssey ) against a dark Mount Royal. Meanwhile, my mom was shopping in the dark for my birthday present at the local department store; using the subdued daylight coming through the wind...