I’m not sure, but I think I pushed a wrong button somehow, leaving the final part of the post behind.

I was saying that this third photo of Gilbert was taken at the time of his retirement. 

Well, that’s it, he’s gone, never to come back.  I’m sad, very sad, but honored to have been part of his life.  We were like an old couple, quarelling and bickering about this and that, but never able to be separated too long and always available for a good meal, good cheeze and… a good glass of wine.  Do have one to his memory.

Thank you mon ami.  I hope I was up to standards for your final goodbye.

I clicked the Publish button by mistake instead of viewing what I had done up to there.

So here is the thrid photo taken at the time of his retirement.

Well, that’s it, he’s gone, never to come back.  I’m sad, so sad, but honored to have been part of his life.  We were like an old couple, quarelling and bickering about this and that, but never able to be separated too long and always available for a good meal, good cheeze and… a good glass of wine.  Do have one to his memory.

Thank you mon ami.  I hope I was up to standards for your final goodbye.

Hi,

I am Brother, René,  …Yulberto’s, Banyuls’, Gilbert’s brother.

I know the news of his passing has already been published by another member of this community to whom I had written after a post, but I wanted to post this final message on my brother’s blog on his behalf to bring this long adventure of his to a closure after he left us on July 15th, 2014.   He wanted to do it himself, but was finally caught offguard by a rapid decline of energy and concentration.  I know he would appreciate that I do it for him because he didn’t want to leave without saying goodbye properly.  I didn’t do it before because I was missing the password to his blog, but I finally guessed it.

Gilbert was a great mind.  His utmost passion:  accumulate knowledge.  His greatest pleasure: play with the knowledge he accumulated (after of course… good food, fine cheezes and wine).  Those who read him during the past years know how diverse his interests were.  He was so very fond of travel for all the knowledge he could grab there, he was a politically engaged activist at all levels of society, he was a truly knowledgable antropologist for his love for studying and analysing cultural differences, he was a historian with his accute memory of times passing by, he was a chef, a world music lover, he was… my one year older brother, the first of 7 seiblings.

Gilbert was, in his own way, a bit shy, as everybody has a part of them that is shy. His shyness could easily be felt when a camera was around.  There was something about him that said « I dont like posing for photographs », so people didn’t insist.  For that purpose, we have very little frontal views of him on photographs.   I know he never posted a photograp of himself on his blog, but I think he wouldn’t mind now as it could be considered as a farewell gift to the community that brought so much into his life.  So I dug and dug in my collection of photos and found these three:  on the firs one, he was approximately 19 years old when he opened the fisrt discotheque in the basement of a community hall in our little home town.

On the second photo, he smiles at me on my return from a six months trip in Mexico and Guatemala.

And finally, a photo taken on the year of his retirement four years ago.

En route vers l’Acadie / Enroute to Acadia – 2014.05.28 19h07
Scènes de Montréal – Montreal Scenes

Choreographer Maurice Béjart présenting his world famous ballet, created circa 1978 and partly featured in the 1980 film Les uns et les autres ^[1]:

« Ravel’s Bolero is not Spanish music. It is an abstract work, a violent work, an emotional work where one can hear the struggle between a melody, an Oriental melody, and a relentless rythm. On stage, no anecdote, no story. A circle of forty boys on chairs who in turn stand and, following the rythm, heighten, the power of the music. In the center, on the table, a lone boy dances the melodic line with his torso, his arms, and his body. Ravel’s Bolero, danced by Jorge Don and « Les Ballets du XXe siècle ». » (from start of video to 16:00m)

^[1] – Last scene of « Les uns et les autres ». For those who haven’t seen the film, reading this short synopsys may help understand it better. This 1980 movie is a must see, but unfortunately the released American version, retitled Bolero: Dance of Life, was heavily cut. The scene was shot on the spectacular axis joining the Esplanade du Trocadero on the Seine’s right bank to the Eiffel Tower on the other bank.

More?

I’m not dead yet. I’m certainly not a barrel of energy either, quite on the contrary. More to come on this and other small talk. 🙂

Jardin de Lyon – Place J.-Ernest Laforce
Scènes de Montréal – Montreal Scenes

Above

One element of the sculptural installation offered to Montreal by the City of Lyon, France, in 2000.

Doing nothing

… or just about. During one of my recent visits to my hepatologist, she asked me how much time per day I passed either sleeping, napping, or the equivalent. I responded in a split second 70% to 80% specifying that some of this was lying down watching TV. The thing is, I’m always tired (caused by my illness, says forementioned doctor). Just walking to the street’s corner, about 75 meters, makes me puff and huff like an old horse (which I am I guess). But the state of mind has also much to do with it. With the kind of Spring we had, it was nothing to help either. I have an urgent need to get the hell out.

Getting the hell out

It just so happens that my mother is celebrating her 90th birthday on May 31, and that all my brothers and sisters, along with a few nephews, are making the trip down to my hometown in Acadia. I’m pretty runned-down so renting a car and driving down there (750 Km – 9 hours) was out of the question. There is an airport at more than an hour’s drive from my mother’s place, but that meant my youngest brother would have to come pick me up, and return me back when I would leave, plus the uncertainties regarding the flight, etc. Not to mention having to be hours at the Montreal airport before leaving and the possible and more and more frequent overbookings. I was also offered to accompany a sister or brother in their car, but that would have been also tiring for me. Remained the Montreal-Halifax train, in a private roomette, and which only runs three times a week. What’s interesting is that both ways, the train travels in the night. However I was not sure they even had private cabins anymore. My brother took matters in hand and managed to get me that trip and, once not being custom, we were lucky to get it half price (361$). As is well known, luck and me are not in very good terms. It hates me. That brother, on the other hand, is the type who, in these matters or those involving finding a parking space, glides on luck like Olympics champions glide down the slopes. However, due to the three-trains-a-week factor, it ended up with my leaving Montreal on Wednesday evening, the 28th, and leaving for my return on the evening of June 4.

This will be my first trip on a train since 1974, when another teacher (who was very familiar with Old Québec) and I chaperoned a group of high school youngsters from my hometown on a trip to Québec City for the Winter Carnival. The train station is on the south side of the St-Laurent river, in Lévis. On our return day, when we got to the station, they told us that there had been some error or something and that they had no place for us and that we would have to wait for another train, the next day. We didn’t find this funny at all and told the train company’s representative that we had very valid tickets and that we were boarding that train no matter what. By the way, we’re talking here of an about nine to ten hour trip. His brains seemed to be defective since he failed to understand. That’s when someone (I don’t remember who but I’m pretty sure it was not me, maybe the other teacher, she had the guts for that, or some students) explained to said representative that either we get on board or we all sit in the middle of the tracks and block the incoming train, preventing it from continuing its way to its final destination, Halifax. Eventually they smarted up and we saw a wagon being pulled near the station and were told that it would be attached to the incoming train.

Those were the 70s. Good memories. 😎

Secrets solved and unsolved

Of course, this trip is subject to my being physically fit for it. This week, I went for another heart echography. It turns out with certainty that the mass in that vein (see previous post) is not a blood clot at all. That means of course that it’s an extension, as thought, of my liver cancer. Or, to make it short, death is more than ever on the menu. Cheering news. Less cheering is that I have more and more the impression that they haven’t told me all, that is about what will happen ‘before’.

Black Sheep

It’s less in the news but this post has been in the works for many weeks so…. That Donald Sterling is really something else.

Caption: A DARK FUTURE FOR DONALD STERLING
Sterling: «As long as it’s not black!»
Cartoon © BADO, Le Droit

Still hungry

Up to now, we were granted with only half a serving of Spring. I hope Summer’s plate will be generous enough to compensate. We are currently still only in the « blooming trees » phase. That Sewell street English-only sign is a curiosity since the street got its name in 1963 (says the City), not 1863. Goes to show why at times laws are required to have the overwhelming majority be respected.

Pizza cocktail

All these years, I didn’t know that my pizza pusher was also a real pusher. And not the lesser kind of them mind you, rather one of Montreal’s mafia kingpins : an Italian immigrant having come here in the fifties and named Moreno Gallo. He was expelled from Canada a few years ago for grand criminality reasons. It was made even easier when it was found that he also had never obtained his Canadian citizenship. He was assassinated last Fall in an Italian restaurant in Acapulco. He had taken sides in a war between some Montreal Mafia families, to the obvious displeasure of one some.

I had never heard of him before this Sunday. I don’t really follow the mafia’s genealogy. I did know that Ada Gallo has been managing the place since like forever but I didn’t know if she was an owner or hired, However, she’s there quite often and very much involved in minding the business. There was also a few years ago the added presence of a younger girl at the pastry and cash departments whom I figured was her daughter, since both had some common family traits.

One of my sisters heard on TV about cocktails molotovs having been thrown into Motta’s windows in the night of Saturday to Sunday. Knowing that Motta is for me almost the equivalent of a temple, she called me Sunday evening to ask me if I was distraught. She lives two hours away from Montreal, but for me who lives only a few blocks away, it was breaking news. I probably was sleeping or bushed most of the day. Anyways, a little fire started but was quickly extinguished by the fire department which has a station almost next door, on the west side of Marché Jean-Talon, while Motta is located right on its east side. No clue as to the reasons of this attack. Moreno Gallo is already dead but maybe Ada and her family paid the recent renovations with life insurance money and it pissed off those who killed him?

One thing struck me. There were many articles about the incident, most of them also publishing a photo of the late Moreno, and he is the spitting image of his daughter working at Motta’s.

Will I stop going at Motta? Of course not! You don’t deny yourself such pleasures because a few mafiosi. To use a consecrated expression, I’ll continue visiting Motta’s as long as death do us part.

Gay summer

Ste-Catherine street in the Gay Village is pedestrian again until early September. The iconic pink balls have been reinstalled this week, and new thematic installations will also be installed.

The Exception

Québec’s phenomenal (and genial) film director and actor, Xavier Dolan, got a 12 minute round of applause today, May 22, after the public showing of his lastest film, Mommy, in competition at the Cannes Film Festival. At barely 25, it is his fourth participation in different Cannes Film Festival categories, including this year’s main Palme d’Or. Talk of his film winning the Palme d’Or is the buzz of the town (in Cannes). Unfortunately, for lack of a better word, the main actress in his film is Anne Dorval, a fetish actress of his, and a well-known middle-aged Quebec actress who is also a big favorite in the Palme d’Or best actress category. Of what I heard on TV tonight, in the top categories, only one prize can be won by a specific film. Isn’t that just a wonderful dilemma! Then again, Cannes is known with coming up with unexpected winners, so it ain’t over until it’s over.

Xavier Dolan considers himself foremost as an actor. He also screenwrites his own films. Like many Québec kids born in the last decades, his family name is made up of his mother’s name hyphenated with his father’s. For practical reasons, he chose to only use Dolan (this must be pronounced French-style) but his dad, Manuel Tadros, didn’t mind. And like many fathers who talk of their kid as geniuses, in his case, it is now being proven true.

Dolan is also gay as can be. Gay-related issues are one of the connecting lines between all his films.

Tunnel Champ-de-Mars
Scènes de Montréal – Montreal Scenes

Above

They have painted the wall grooves all along the tunnel which passes under Autoroute Ville-Marie, joining Métro Champ-de-Mars with the Champ-de-Mars itself, in the back of City Hall. There is talk to cover that stretch of Ville-Marie (it’s now a trench there). In that case, this tunnel would become a tunnel under a tunnel I guess. The project is a work of urban art and is called « Printemps » (Spring].

Sterling Silver

I’m not very passionate about sports. Just to show, I learned today that the NBA was about basketball and not baseball as I had initially thought when the ‘racists comments’ affair started. I haven’t even bothered to read said remaks. Today I also learned that the said NBA insists on keeping its ball spittingly shiny.

Bungled Bundy

Clive Bundy does the exact same as what he reproaches to the federal government. He also wants the federal government to be abolished, all the while draping himself in the American flag (which comes from nowhere as everybody knows ). Obviously he is a nut. And I’m sure the white pointed hat which he keeps in a secret drawer at home is full of bolts which they couldn’t fit in his brain when he was born.

Old habits

Like many other people, when I buy processed food at the supermarket, I check the « nutrition facts » printed on the packaging, especially the trans fat, calories, and sodium daily percentage values. A few days ago, I saw a deep dish blueberry pie on special. It’s about half the size of a regular pie but twice as deep. Selling regularly for 4,49$, but since it was nearing its best before date, it was reduced to 2,29$. At that price, I was about to take it when I saw that one quarter of that already small pie had 36% daily value of saturated and trans fats. Back on the shelf. Then again, it was so tempting considering the price that I backed off and put it back in the basket. I played this undecisiveness game about three times before finally settling with leaving it on the shelf. A few rows later, it dawned to me that I was acting like a genuine fool. I mean, in my situation, who frickin’ cares about long term effects of processed foods? And besides, blueberries being blueberries that is a super-antioxydant, and this particular pie having 0% cholesterol to further plug that killer vein of mine, I just came back to start one and put the pie back in the basket. It had a short life. I like blueberries. 🙂 I also got a lesson: there was a before, there is now an after. I have to forget about the first. 😉

Sleep a little, breakfast, rest, nap, munch, rest, nap, activity (maybe), eat, rest [repeat]

I don’t post often lately (or even comment) because since my March 21 back operation, I never seem to regain some energy. If I’m good for something two hours a day, I can call it a good one. And I have LOTS to do. Thank goodness we only die once.

Late bloomers

Early flowers such as crocus and the likes are barely starting to sprout from the ground here. People are so fed up with the everlasting winter it’s not even describable.

Revival

Shortly before I entered hospital in late March, I went to buy myself a piece of pizza at my pizza pusher, Motta’s. When they were in view, I saw that all their big windows and the doors were blocked with brown paper. I almost had a fit. There’s a limit to what one can cope with. I’ve been going there for the last 29 years, they just cannot « close » on me. I not only buy pizza there but also pastry (zeppole, fiorentino, pasterias, cakes, name it), and different meat-based dishes like stuffed filos and the likes. When I got closer I noticed a large sign saying that they were closed for renovations, until the sixteenth of April. Ffeww! That was a close one. I could breathe again. 🙂 Finally, they came back to life on the eve of Easter. Just in time for the Resurrected in case his past days’ ordeals would have left Him with a little craving.

Shocking!

I don’t think a day goes by without something happening and about which, at the time, I get the urge to post about. Now that I’m in the mood and have the time, almost none of those come back to my mind. Frustrating in some way.

Palais des congrès (Nuit Blanche – 2014.03.02 3h09)
Scènes de Montréal – Montreal Scenes

Eggs, chocolate, and stuff

Happy Easter to all! 🙂

Easter bridge?

This bridge in Sölvesborg, Sweden, has arches shaped like eggs (some imagination required here). Some like it (me), some don’t (Friend). The lighting is by a Montreal lighting solutions firm, Lumenpulse.

Sin of food lust

The Nuit Blanche is one activity which is part of the two-week long Festival Montréal en Lumières (Lights Festival). The week before, I went downtown to check things out. It was on a Wednesday and around 20h30, and there were no big outside activities planned after 18h00. There were some people on the Place des Festivals but not much traffic in front of the UQAM Science building. However, like elsewhere in the Quartier des Spectacles, videos were still the same being displayed on different buildings. Among the videos displayed on the UQAM building, one was about a superlicious bunch of cherry-topped ice cream cups, and which was slowly melting in an almost indecent (so to speak 🙂 ) way.

I found these two videos about first a recap of the Montréal en Lumières festival and, staged in the preceding months, this year’s Luminotherapy on Place des Festivals.

Fate

On a sadder note, I found the capsized South-Korean ferry and its presumed 268 dead (most likely drowned) students as being particularly horrific.

Hair raising

Meanwhile, the freak who runs the other Korea has no sense of humor when it comes to his hair. His guys in London also think that starving people and playing with nukes is, for some reason, matter for respect towards him in all the rest of the civilized world. Comes to think of it, ‘the rest’ is probably superfluous in the preceding sentence.

Nuit Blanche 2014 – 2 mars 00:59
Intersection Ste-Catherine/St-Laurent
Scènes de Montréal – Montreal Scenes

Thanks!

Thanks all for the good wishes. I greatly appreciate.

The European Way

Not all European Union regulations are bad. It’s been in the cards for a while but it now seems that the EU is dead serious about forcing cellphone companies to come up with a universal charger for their products if they want to continue selling them in Europe. I for one applaud heartily, if only to stop the dreadful waste the current situation brings along with it. One of the reasons why I hate the thought of buying an Apple product is precisely the way they keep their customers captive by having nothing standard with the industry, a situation that irritates me greatly.

Mysterious Hiatus

Note: This section is from a March 13 post which I never got to finish and publish.

A commercial passenger plane vanishes. Inexplicably. Or did it? I for one thought from the very beginning, and still thinks, that it’s all policital. I mean, whatever happened to that plane, somebody somewhere knows and won’t tell because it can’t be told. Today someone at CNN finally switched on his light and suggested something of that nature. Meanwhile, there’s an international search going on and it has nothing to do with the plane’s passengers, but all to do with commercial aviation. Some commentator on a news program here mentioned last week that the search will go on and on for the simple reason that commercial passenger aviation is based on trust, and that if this trust evaporates away, it would become an economic disaster. I bought that on the spot, without even asking for a wrapper. Counting the number of countries now engaged in that search, I can’t say he was that off track.

Speaking of tracks and trust, Israel which is not the kind to be left stranded on the wharf when the spilling-oil-on-the-fire train leaves the station, announced today that it would upper its security measures by expanding the area where they will ask a plane to identify itself and if it doesn’t they will simply down it. At least that’s what the former Israeli ambassador to the U.S. told the acting host of Piers Morgan Live on CNN, and to support this menace, he added that it has already been done in the seventies, when a Libyan plane approaching Israel was shot down killing 500 something passengers. He said that without a drop of emotion in his voice. Told by the host that after an inquiry this operation had been described as the result of a very bad judgment, and that the plane was there because it had been caught in the middle of a sand storm, he didn’t blink an eye. I don’t know, but I’d hesitate to board any plane traveling anywhere near those paranoids.

Update April 11 – Very early on, soon after the searches began, a guest expert who knew what he was talking about was on CNN explaining that the search should be done underwater, where the remnants of the plane most probably lied, since the distress signals can’t be caught from above the waters. One full month passed by and a zillion planes and helicopters and boats were sent on a search mission, without finding even a trace of anything. Then someone stroke a match and found the light, days becore the emergency locator’s batteries were scheduled to drop dead. I know, the location they now search is a long way from the original search site. But if all those exceptional energies put into finding debris had been put into underwater search, they might have found it earlier me thinks.

Anyways, CNN must be blessing the gods these days. After having been on this story almost continually for more than a month now, they will still get material to blabber about for weeks and weeks. How they can repeat the same stuff over and over and still make it sound like something new after all this time is baffling. By the way, I’ll have to work on my English. I stupidly thought that « breaking news » meant news that just happened and worthy of bumping the current programming. Obviously it must be something else since CNN has been using and still uses that expression for each and every report on this search extravaganza.

Ridicule

Following a comment of mine on a Californian site, here are seven of my eight cheese graters. The eight one is lost somewhere in a drawer. If ever there is a contest dedicated to ridicule, I think I have an edge over the other contestants. 😛

Black and White

At 1:10 AM, while Black Day horror was slowly unfurling over the city, thousands of unsuspecting Montrealers, including yours truly who knows his share of St-Luc Hospital, were celebrating the yearly Nuit Blanche (White Night) in downtown Montreal.

The first video is from a new Montreal video games company founded by two ex-Ubisoft employees and which plans to accurately reproduce the planet (except oceans, deserts and other such no man’s lands) using drones, for their video game Reroll. Ambitious. But feasable?

On Nuit Blanche night, it was snowing and cold. I had to constantly put my right hand in my coat pockets to re-warm my fingers. I kept the glove on my left one. It was not fun at all to handle the camera, not to mention that the glove occasionally blocked the microphone. I also can’t figure why some videos are 16×9 and others 4×5. I never bothered to read the whole instructions booklet or I did and forgot most of it. Anyways there are half a ton of other better quality videos on Youtube about that night… 🙂

Closed

A few months ago, one of the murals I posted a pic of last fall was classified as third best in the world for 2013 by the prestigious (I’m told) Complex Magazine. « Barré » means closed, and by extension, locked (in Quebec french at least).

Publicité parlante/Talking Ad – Théâtre de Quat’Sous – 2014.03.03
Scènes de Montréal – Montreal Scenes

Dead end

^[4]

JE VOUDRAIS VOIR NEW YORK (literally: I WOULD LIKE TO SEE NEW YORK ^[1] )
Daniel Lavoie ^[2]
Russian tour, Fall of 2013
Moscow – 19 october 2013

I have never been to Rio
I only travel in world maps
I have never been to Djara
But in my mind a lion is rumbling
I would like to see New York
New York!

I have never been to New York, although I often wished I had. It was not to be, for a bunch of reasons which it would be futile to elaborate upon. I will most likely never get see New York either. For that, however, I have a damn good reason.

On the evening of March 20, I entered St-Luc Hospital to fix that thoracic window (hereafter called ‘the hole’) which I had in the back since my medical adventure in 2012 and which required until now a daily replacement of bandages. Essentially, plastic surgery, under general anaesthesia. It went well. About four days later, they (the plastic surgery people) were ready to give me my leave.

However, I think I already mentioned this (maybe I didn’t) but when I was in hospital in late 2012, they found a small « treatable » mass in my liver. Mass is a fancy word they use when they mean cancer but don’t want to use that word, yet. In 2013, I got two treatments for that, called chemo-embolisation. One-shot injections of chems in the ‘mass’ area. Tests (Scans) this January found out the second intervention was not ‘conclusive’, aka that a little of the ‘mass’ remained. To settle the matter once and for all, they (the hepatologists) decided to go with the RF needle method which is much more effective because it burns the nasty cells, but could not be used in the two former interventions because the hole was in the way and the concerned area was too close to the lungs. To check the feasability of this intervention, they had me pass a heart echography which revealed that the vena cava (joining the liver and the heart) was almost blocked by a mass which extended into the heart’s auricle. They didn’t seem to have any doubt as to this mass being an extension of the liver’s mass. This means that a) some cancerous cells are now in my bloodstream, b) there is no known cure for this, c) a new oral chem-med exists but only as a palliative measure (aka to add a few more months) before the end, of life that is. And this med has potential side-effects which are not funny. As to when this end will happen, they don’t seem to know more than me, it depends apparently. Could be six months, could be less, could be a year, could be more. All I know is that I am still in waiting as to how they can explain such a dramatic upturn in the situation since mid-January. If the cancer has really gone berserk, it can happen, then my life expectancy would be countable in days or weeks. That’s not at all how the doctors speak. Or, my take, they blundered, this new extension not being new at all, having simply passed under their radar. Why, I don’t know, but I do expect to hear a lot of gibberish by them about this. Specialist doctors can find a bundle of reasons to explain the unexplainable. Having a « complex case » as they say themselves, and dealing or having dealt with more than a half-dozen of them in the last eighteen months, from pneumologist to thoracic surgeon, to hepatologists, to psychiatrist, to urologist, to neurologist, to plastic surgeon, to cardiologists and maybe some others I forget, the more I mingled with them, the more I learned that what they say is to be taken with a good dose of well-advised skepticism. I used to have a blind trust in them. That’s over.

I finally only got my leave from hospital last Wednesday at 23h00. Since then, I’ve been pretty much energyless. Could be the general anaesthesia, or the twice-daily blood-thinning injections I have to give myself, or the body mending the nice swastica-like scar I now have in the back, or the insomnia and/or bad sleeping, or simply anxiety. However, I do plan to continue living what’s left of my life, as long as I can that is, on the light side. With humor, sprinkled with a dash (or two :razz:) of bitching. With what goes on in this patch of land these days, there’s no shortage of material to fuel this last one, although it being of somewhat local interest. So for now, let’s call it business as usual. It worked in the past, so why fix it?

By the way, the blood-thinning is to prevent, in case a piece of that veinous mass would decide to go on its own, that piece from arriving whole in the lungs, which would trigger a pulmonary embolism. That means immediate death, in which case you’ll understand, I wouldn’t have the luxury to come here and say goodbye.

^[1] Daniel Lavoie sang an English version of his song on a special show hosted by Liza Minelli, in the eighties. It was named « Never Been To New York ». I could find no trace of it on the net but it is apparently on one of his three English records. The translation is therefore mine.

^[2] Manitoba-born Daniel Lavoie has long lived in Québec and is well-known in the French-speaking world, and also beyond (as this video testifies to). Many of his songs have become classics. His personal site is in French only.

^[3] Lyrics in brackets were concert-added.

^[4] If the link doesn’t work, there’s another one from the St-Petersburg (Russia) concert, with slightly different added lyrics, here.

Art Souterrain 2014 – Place des Arts – 2014-03-02 00h19
Scènes de Montréal – Montreal Scenes

Discrepancy

We’re back in elections in Québec. That’s because we have a multiparty system and last time none of them got a 50%+ majority. Last time also, Sept. 4, 2012, election day and operation day coincided. I think I can say with some assurance that the then elected government got a much better deal than me on that day.

Godly foods

We’ve had below average cold weather this past week, the worst being the wind. Still, even with no wind, at -20°C (-4°F), walking about outside to do errands is relegated right at the bottom of the to do list. And in that bottom, those errands requiring to go to the Marché Jean-Talon area were simply not in the competition.

Otherwise, I would have gone to buy myself another zeppole, maybe with crème pâtissière instead of ricotta this time around. And maybe another « fiorentino » while we’re at it. I had bought some the week before when I went at Motta’s to buy some tarallucci and came back with those instead. Not on my list either, I had also bought at a bread shop a six-pack bag of « brioches du carême » (Lent buns). I don’t know why we call these Lent buns, while elsewhere where they were invented, they are called hot cross buns. Anyways, traditionally, they are only sold here during Lent.

For reminders, zeppole are Italian pastries traditionally made for the feast of San Giuseppe (Saint Joseph) which every true Christian surely knows is celebrated on March 19. 😛 They look like twiirled doughnuts with a texture reminiscent of rum babas and stuffed with white or yellow sin. The fiorentino (florentin in French, florentine in English), at least the one they make at Motta, is a round and rippled splash of dark chocolate covered with diced candied fruits and flaked almonds. Or since we’re into religious things, something like a giant host used for the communion between the god of epicurian bliss and his believers. They cost 2$ a piece, that’s why I only have this type of communion once every now and then.

Since it’s been freezing like hell the whole week (how can hell freeze??? isn’t that an oxymoron?), I suppose this icy choo-choo twain must still be parked at the Marché Jean-Talon train station, not yet melted into oblivion by the soft caresses of Spring of which we’re starting to doubt it will ever show up.

Cake story

Some people lost a bundle in a bitcoin screw-up recently. Now they want to have some kind of regulation. I thought the point of bitcoins was exactly to be free of any regulations by the nasty governments. We could remind them that there already exist currencies which are regulated and of which they don’t want to be part of. You can’t have your cake and eat it too. Or said in other words, if you stroll across a field looking at the sun instead of at the ground, you shouldn’t act surprised if you step into fresh cow cakes.

Death of a Queen

Angèle Arsenault, an Acadian songwriter, singer and television personality originally from Ile St-Jean (or Prince Edward Island as the conquerors have renamed it), and who was living in Québec, does not live here anymore. In fact she does not live period, having died of cancer last week at 70. She was very popular in the seventies and eighties, having sold a record 300,000 albums in one of those years. She was the always optimistic girl with the eternal cracking smile, singing about everyday life, in everyday words, and on simple but lively music. Just about anybody could recognize him/herself in her slightly satyrical songs, like in Moi, j’mange (Me, I eat) about a compulsive eater, De temps en temps moi j’ai les bleus » (Once in a while I have the blues) about having the blues at times and what she does about it, Je veux toute toute toute la vivre ma vie (I want to live it all, my life, all of it) which she did, in fact, here singing with the first concerned, kids, on a daily television show that was broadcasted live from Complexe Desjardins (as in the preceding video), or the nice lullaby Y a une étoile pour vous (There’s a star for you.. there’s a star for each one of you), a song, as she says, about hope, and I would add, especially for the desperate.

But there is another song of Angèle which I posted about on Acadian Fête Nationale day in August of 2011. This song, « Évangéline (Acadian Queen) » is one of her most satyrical. She turns the drama about the Évangéline story, created in the mid 1800s by American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow before becoming THE national Acadian myth, into some kind of funny story, ending with listing how Évangéline’s name was recuperated by business and institutions. At the time of that post I thought it hard to translate the song. I did try again this time around and surprise, it was a breeze. I think it has to do with us being North American, aka whether we want it or not, and especially in the regions where the French-speakers are a minority, the English linguistic mindset contaminates, so to speak, our language. So here is the song in the new lingua franca, accompanying a different (and better) video.

ACADIAN QUEEN
Lyrics/music Angèle Arsenault

Évangéline Fried clams
Évangéline Salon Bar
Évangéline Sexy Ladies wear
Évangéline Comfortable Running Shoes
Évangéline Automobile Springs
Évangéline Regional High School
Évangéline Savings Mortgage and Loans
Évangéline The only French Newspaper in New Brunswick
Évangéline Évangéline
Acadian Queen

Verbal Bio/eulogy in English found on Youtube and another one to be read (in English still).

This next video is a curiosity, the only English song of her that I know of. She sings the plight of Acadians when they were ethnically cleansed in 1755 (they say deported I believe 🙄 ): I am an Acadian. Nothing new for those who’ve read my preceding rants about Acadian history over time. 😉