Yesterday I was taking pictures at my grandmother’s 92nd birthday celebration and I took a few outside. Around my own home the leaves are turning a slight yellow and a nearby park has some red slowly filtering in, but in the area my grandmother lives in, the trees have apparently exploded into full color.

I certainly don’t mind the early arrival of Fall’s colors. It’s my favorite season. I’d just like the rain to stop so I can go out and enjoy it a bit more. Luckily, today is supposed to be quite nice, if a bit chilly.

September sees an incredible number of walks to raise funds to help beat cancer, a disease that tragically touches so many lives. Perhaps Terry Fox, one of the greatest Canadians was a big influence in making that happen. In September 1981 shortly after his death, the first Terry Fox Run was held in Canada and around the world. More than 300,000 people participated, raising $3.5 million. Terry Fox Runs are held yearly in 60 countries now and more than $ 360 million has been raised for cancer research. His legacy lives on in so many different ways.

One of the most innovative is the Paws for Hope walk-a-thon (les Pattes de l’Espoir). The first of these took place in 1993 thanks to a great initiative by a Canadian Cancer Society employee in Quebec City. Ms. Nichole Laderoute, who had been diagnosed with cancer, wanted to create a fundraising event that would be fun for the whole family and feature her loyal friend: her dog.

Since then it’s grown and is taking place at eight locations this year. We took part in the walk-a-thon at Parc Angrignon today and you couldn’t have met a more attractive and friendly group of people and dogs despite the somewhat threatening skies at early light. The event was officially opened by the Provincial Spokesperson, columnist Michel Girouard, and his dogs “Cachou” and “Sacha”. We then all took a three kilometre walk in the park around the lake and were blessed with sunny skies throughout. We all had lots of fun and raised $ 16,000 for the Canadian Cancer Society so it was a win/win situation. It now will become an annual event at this location.

If you’re sorry you missed it, then you can check out what it looked like in 2005. There is a final walk-a-thon in Brossard on Sunday, October 1st, at the Parc du centre canin international. Check out details with Fernande Houle (T: 450 442-9430) at the Longueuil Office. The Canadian Cancer Society’s Paws for Hope walk-a-thon is a fundraising activity sponsored on a provincial scale by Mondou and Royal Canin.

Boy was it ever windy today! Trees were downed and some areas lost power. On the news report tonight, there was a building whose side wall of bricks was blown off and onto the roof of an adjacent garage, collapsing the roof. It’s a good thing that no one was hurt. I just went to take down my laundry and discovered that the wind blew off one of my pillow cases and a towel. I found the pillow case outside a neighbour’s place a few houses down but the towel seems to have vanished.

From the group that deveoped L’Itinéraire – the magazine sold by Montreal’s homeless comes 3eoeil Mag DVD – a quarterly publicated produced by and for homeless youths.

Providing a group of young volunteers with production skills in the development of video shorts is an essential component of this project.

For info, visit www.3eoeil.com

Is it just me or does this cooler Fall weather make you more hungry? To satisfy my need to feed, I headed to Chinatown today for some dim sum. Although Montreal dim sum is by far not the best that North America has to offer, it’s still not bad. I bet it’s better than dim sum in say, Rimouski. So we decided to go to Restaurant Ruby Rouge on Clark Street and business was bustling as there was a lineup for tables. It seems that a lot of people were out for brunch on this wet and rainy Saturday. Grandmas, grandpas, mums, dads, kids, babies. Much of the charm of going out for dim sum is the atmosphere. The interactive dining experience is also fun. You get to point and pick and choose. And eat and eat and eat…
It’s too bad that the Chinatown in Montreal is so small and the zoning laws restrict any further growth. I’ve been to the Chinatowns in New York, Boston, and San Francisco and it just doesn’t compare. I guess we’ll have to make do with our little one. Pass the crab balls!

Historically, the peak autumn colors appear around the 10th of October in Montreal. Today, my street is littered with fallen leaves and we haven’t even closed out summer! Is it just me, or has fall been somewhat accelerated this year? I adore this time of year and watching as Mont Royal turns orange, first on top and then creeping down the sides. The botanical gardens are also a good place to see some vibrant displays. Here’s a tree screaming, “Yellow!” at Square Victoria.

My son’s school just called to say that his schoolbus (a form of public transportation) can’t bring him home this afternoon because it can’t get through the car-free barricades leading to the Old Port. The school is calling all the downtown parents to ask them to pick up their children at 3:30, which for most of us, means taking the afternoon off.

Thus the people who are the least car-dependent of any Montrealers — the ones who walk everywhere and take public transportation — will be among the most inconvenienced by car-free day. Meanwhile, school busses in car-dependant neighborhoods like NDG will be able to get home just fine.

An e-mail message yesterday and a Montreal Gazette article this morning brought this question to mind. I hope Herb Auerbach, of Vancouver BC, won’t mind me mentioning his message. This alerted me to a ceremony on October 26 to place a plaque in memory of Vincent Ponte at Place Ville Marie. Mr. Auerbach represents a group called the friends of Vince Ponte. Vince Ponte was the person who created the master plan for Downtown Montreal. A Time Magazine profile in 1970 called him the Multilevel Man, so you’ll understand why he is so important. He felt that Montreal, with New York and San Francisco, were the three North American cities that had the most distinct personalities. He made his home here in 1964 and died earlier this year.

Now the Montreal Gazette this morning has an article about Kent Nagano, the new music director of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra. Its title is ‘In harmony with his new home’. It mentions that he is currently toggling between homes in San Francisco and Paris while working mainly in Montreal and Munich. He is also the music director of the Bavarian State Opera in Munich. He is still making up his mind on whether to have a home here too, but it sounds as though he already feels at home in Montreal. “To feel not a guest, but at home, we have never experienced this before, this sense of openness, of inclusiveness.”

By coincidence I was interviewed by Yves Faguy of the Videotron TV Cable channel, VOX Cablecast about Brand Montreal a week ago. If my comments survive the editing process, it will be part of “Le 514″ a programme about Montreal on Wednesday 27th September at 7:30 pm. Like Vince Ponte and Kent Nagano, I think Montreal has its own very special character, that I’ve dubbed ‘la ville vibrante‘.

Why is Montreal your home?

Have you heard the hype? The Blackberry Pearl is coming! It’s all over the web, in so many of the local papers and all over the blogs.. It’s almost like the second coming.

Granted, it’s a sleek looking phone. I’ve often wondered what all those crackberries are doing on their blackberries.. on the metro, restaurants, elevators.

So I did some digging. What makes the Blackberry such a fantastic tool is email, more specifically, push email. Which is to say, Blackberry software on a server has the ability to push email to your phone. Your phone does not have to poll or query the mail server to see if there is mail. This saves bandwidth and also speeds up retrieval of mail.

The Pearl, if you haven’t already looked, resembles many of the latest phones: MP3 player, camera, thin, sexy.. etc

Rogers, is supposed to debut this phone in October. I have heard rumors of October 2nd.

There is however, a dirty little secret to Blackberry’s and the Pearl: The data/voice plans.
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Don’t forget that this Friday is International Car Free Day! Montreal will be taking part for the 4th time along with 1,500 cities around the world. Streets downtown will be closed to traffic from 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. The downtown perimeter runs north-south from de Maisonneuve to Rene Levesque and east-west from St-Urbain to McGill College. Signs are up warning motorists as parking will also be prohibited within the perimeter. As well, Camilien-Houde road leading to Mount Royal will be closed. There are organized activities planned, a concert, and a contest to win free transit passes.
Personally, every day is Car Free Day for me since I don’t own one. But I wonder how many people will be griping and cursing on Friday. As I take the rush hour bus to work every morning, I am astounded by how many single passenger cars there are clogging the road.

For more information, check the site:
http://www.amt.qc.ca/comm/enville06/