The Griffintown development issue sure is on everyone’s mind, these days. In brief, Griffintown is now a hot topic for Montreal. It’s a great up-and-coming area between University and Guy (some say all the way to Georges-Vanier) from Notre-Dame to the waterfront. Imagine a bustling and friendly new neighbourhood right south of the downtown core. Unfortunately developers have come in and are keen to make it into another short-sighted Dix30 eyesore, fraught with gigantic condo buildings and big-box stores, alienating residents. This decision was taken with no real public consultation whatsoever.

There will be a march to from Griffintown to the Hotel de Ville organized this Sunday April 27 at 3pm starting at the horse palace at 1220 Ottawa, down by the canal. I personally, have never been one to rally for causes, deferring to other more zealous individuals to fight for common beliefs. However, the Griffintown cause is one that affects all of us in this city, and more importantly, I’m convinced that the strength of the people actually might just make a difference. So if you’re interested in keeping Montreal beautiful with well-thought out urban planning and attention paid to those of us who love and live in this city, come join us on the march!

Sites of interest:
Save Griffintown
CSRG
Facebook event

Help support the cause!

La semaine dernière, la journée où la température était environ 11C, plutôt que d’aller chez moi après le travail, j’avais fait une promenade d’une heure sous le beau soleil. Ça faisait énormément de bien.

Aujourd’hui, j’ai presque fait la même chose; la promenade a duré 30 minutes plutôt qu’une heure. Il y a un beau soleil avec un petit vent bien doux.

Ce n’est pas comme si je n’avais pas autres choses à faire avec des échéances à respecter, mais en bon québécois, je dirais “Je me calisse du reste! Je veux faire une promenade!”

What happened today, yesterday actually, was beautiful. That snow could have been the same one for Christmas. I consider it the last blow of winter. It’s like a losing boxer who has enough energy left to do a little significant damage, but after the blow, there is no way he can recover. For the next 6 months, I don’t think the temperature will be lower than today, I mean yesterday, April 4.

Earth Hour takes place tomorrow (Saturday) night at 8:00 p.m. In case you haven’t heard, Montreal is one of the participating cities that will be turning off the lights for one hour as a symbolic gesture to counter climate change. For those who wish, it’s also possible to sign up to pledge your participation.

As for yours truly, although I think it’s a noble cause, I have tickets for a show on Saturday night at 8:00 p.m. I’m hoping that they won’t be turning off the lights at the theatre. Otherwise, we’ll have to spend an hour imagining what they’re doing on stage. I’m pretty energy-efficient most of the time so I don’t feel guilty about not taking part. Saving energy for one hour doesn’t make a difference if you spend the rest of your life wasting it.

I myself, have just about HAD IT with winter. A few weeks ago, I was still going around saying, I’ve spent all my life here, it’s just another winter, nothing to get worked up about. But last week’s storm was the last straw. And never have I had to literally climb over a snow bank right in front of my stairs in order to get onto the sidewalk. Seems that in the night, a snow plow passed by, pushing all the snow to one side, leaving a gigantic hardened pile right at the bottom of my stairs when I came out in the morning. I had to kick away at it with my boot until I could secure a foothold and clambor over it. Aye Carumba! Or as one of my former bosses used to say all the time, “J’suis tanné!”.

So today I took some time off to head to the spa. I treated myself to my first pedicure ever. Even though it’s clearly not sandal season, I needed a ray of hope and some pampering for my poor dry feet. They too have suffered through this endless winter. Being a newbie to the pedicure, I had to ask around for recommendations. A friend of mine hooked me up with a naturopathic spa in the NDG area. I am delighted to report that I had a wonderful experience at the Source d’Eden Spa. This spa is located on Décarie just a few blocks from Villa Maria metro and was just the kind of oasis I needed. My feet are now soft and smooth and my toes are looking forward to the day when they can be freed from the confines of boots and slipped into a nice pair of breezy sandals.

I often like to ask people to recommend their favourite places for different treatments. That’s how I found my massage therapist at the MAA Sports Clinic. And my hairdresser who I’ve been seeing for countless years. So to the girls (and metrosexuals?) out there, do you have any good recommendations to share? Hidden jewels in Montreal? Specialists who are so good, you don’t really want anybody else to know about them? C’mon. Time to spill. I think most Montrealers are in need of some spa therapy right about now.

I get out of the house and head for the metro station. I pass the (how do you say tourniquet in English?) and I see two girls (women? They looked like teenagers) with a trolley and there was a real living baby inside.

One of the girls could either be the mother or the sister, but that’s not important. The two women were lifting the carriage from either extremities and as they were clumsily going down the stairs, the trolley was continuously swinging front and back.

Of course, the only thought in my mind was that the baby was going to fly which is very cool to see in movies.

The worst didn’t happen, so this is just a little story without a bad ending.

Everytime there’s a storm, you know that beautiful days are coming up, like the yesterday and today; beautiful sunny sky, mild wind, not too cold. Of course, anybody who goes to school or to work can’t enjoy any of that.

When I see a storm or live through one, the storm itself doesn’t annoy me. That’s actually the fun part. The sad part is people’s pain and misery. Why can’t people just  smile and enjoy a little difference in life? Without things like storms, life wouldn’t be valuable. Catastrophes are important.

The snow storm occurred Saturday and I was moving around a lot. Snow flying around and low visibility sure made things fun (no sarcasm). Sunday was the aftermath. I spent most of the day outside, shoveling. I noticed everybody helping each other, especially with cars. Add a snow storm and you notice that human beings are actually capable of working together. I’m just wondering why a disaster has to take place for something like that to happen.

I’ve seen an old man who wouldn’t hold the door for a mother holding her baby and carrying bags. I’ve also seen the opposite. For readers in the world who never dealt with snow, holding a door is actually much easier than shoveling white powder falling from the sky.

Today is Tuesday. There are still mountains of snow on many streets. It’s a pain to walk on sidewalks, at least that’s how most people feel. Try this: It’s fun to slide around on sidewalks. Brighten up your day! The sun is already there to help with that.

By now, a lot of the local media has been covering the misadventures of all of those “poor” travelers who were returning from a week (or more) in the sun only to fall victim of The Storm of 2008 (trademarked). I still don’t understand why some companies still consider it normal to keep their passengers prisoners of their metal tubes for 12 hours as the water runs out and the toilets start to overflow. What do you think will happen when next year’s clients start their research by googling “Air Cubana”?On Saturday, we were on our way back from Rome via Amsterdam on a KLM MD11. We’ve known since Wednesday that we would be coming in during a storm but the captain was hoping to get us in just before the worst of it. Unfortunately, the position of the jet-stream forced us on a flight path that was much further north than usual (seeing Greenland was immensely cool) and KLM lost their bet.We were initially diverted to Detroit but, as we flew over Ontario, the captain was told that the weather over Toronto was “barely” acceptable. Since many of his passengers didn’t have a visa to enter the US, he decided to give Pearsons a try. That guy was one great pilot, although the visibility over YYZ was atrocious, this was the smoothest landing I’ve seen in years. Not everyone was so lucky, while we were taxiing to our gate, we could barely see the landing lights of another plane as it came in but then aborted its landing.From that point on, we would spend many hours simply waiting. Waiting to be allowed to disembark (1 hour), waiting for our bags (2 hours), waiting in line at the check-in the next day (4.5 hours), waiting for our departure authorization after boarding (1.5 hours) and waiting for the stupid people movers (1.5 hours) at Trudeau Airport because we were now a “domestic” flight. Total travel time from our Rome appartment to our house in Pierrefonds, 50 hours. Nevertheless, we were always kept informed, the water, booze and juices didn’t run out, the toilets didn’t overflow and, even through they were under no legal obligation to do so, KLM got all of their passengers to spend Saturday night in a nice hotel in downtown Toronto. They even paid for a breakfast buffet on Sunday which did wonders for our mood. Furthermore, we could really tell that they were doing all that they could to get us at our final destination. No bullshit, if they didn’t know about something they told us so. Importantly, if they told us a time estimate they also told us where the info came from and whether we should believe it or not. Sometimes the captain would get so frustrated with ground control that his communications were almost funny but we appreciated being treated like adults for a change. All in all, the crew performed admirably under very difficult conditions.The moral of the story is that sometimes you get what you pay for. Cheap flights are cheap because they can’t afford to plan for anything else than optimal conditions.

Dave Phillips of Environment Canada says Montreal, as of the morning of the 8th of March, is but a measly 60cm from breaking that 70-71 snowfall record. You’ve heard of that record right? It’s the one your parents (if you’re my age) go on and on and on about.. “Ya, Justin but this is nothing like 1971″. Well, we are 60 cm from being able to say, BAH! ‘71 was a joke compared to ‘08. Or worse yet, to be able to nag our kids with “nothing like ‘08 son.. I remember ‘08″

It has snowed 80% of the time this winter. Which is to say, 8 out 10 days this year, there’s been some snow falling. And take it from a guy who rides his bike into work, I can believe it. One thing I plan on doing next fall is getting another frame that actually makes for proper mudguard clearance. I am fed up with having my feet and shins coated with salty water. Luckily I invested well enough in decent cycling boots and shoe covers but still.

So what’s gonna fall today into tomorrow? 30cm? That leaves us another 30cm to break the record. Ha! We’ll do that in a few days with the way it’s going.

So listen Montreal, hang tight, stock up on scotch, wine, and cook up something great for dinner and then sit back, look out the window while watching the Habs sit atop first place.. Spring will arrive. I swear.

St-Patrick’s parade is next week BTW. Just thinking about it cracks me up.

Oh, and don’t forget to move your clocks forwards tonight.

As I rode home yesterday from work, I started to ride up my street and there in all it’s ultimate horror were the little orange signs indicating snow clearing from 07:00 - 19:00

On my new street, they actually clear the snow during the day. Something they never did were I previously lived.

I went through the 7 known stages of grief:

1) Shock and Denial - No, I am SURE I parked the car on the other side of the street. Yes, I can remember now.. Coming home from snowboarding and I thought “they’ll clear the right side first, I’ll park there”.

2) Pain and Guilt - Oh WHY did I park on the wrong side ? Ug, this is going to be hell. I’ll never find a place to park. It’s all over. They’ll tow my car, I’ll go into debt, they’ll Denver Boot it and I’ll lose everything. I hate winter.

3) Anger and Bargaining - Ok, maybe if I call the city, I can get them to change their minds. Ya, those blue collar worker types, they’re a cool bunch. They always look so relaxed. They’ll move the signs for me. I know it.

4) Depression - Who am I kidding? Oh I so long for the days when I lived at the other apartment when they cleared the snow only at night. There’s no spots now. There will be no spots tomorrow. Where did I put that bottle of prozac ?

5) The upward turn - I slept horribly. Tossing and turning all night worrying about where I would put my car in the morning. I woke up, grabbed a bowl of Cheerios (did you get that? upward turn.. Cheerios) and camped out on my front porch.. Listening and looking like a hunter trying to catch his elusive prey: the Montreal parking spot. I could hear cars starting.. there’s hope!

6) Reconstruction working through - Hang on! Someone IS leaving.. and they are on the right side of the street! I dropped the half eaten bowl of Cheerios on the front porch and raced out to grab the spot.

7) Acceptance and hope - Sitting in my car, pieces of wet cheerios stuck to my t-shirt, I sat for a while in silence admiring my new spot. Montreal in the winter isn’t such a horrible place. It’s actually quite fantastic. I love winter. Really, I do.

Wait, don’t they normally clear the other side the night after clearing the first side ?