Remembering my Black Students

On Sunday, August 10, 2008, a major riot took place in Montreal North (also known at the time as Montréal-Noir), a neighbourhood populated mostly by Black Americans and Spanish speakers—one of the first incidents of typical American urban violence in Montreal.

A Lost Cause

Some considered the “ Montréal-Noir” neighbourhood […]

(… continued)

I tear from my mind the invisible costume of a politically (almost) correct college professor in a timeless trans-dimensional telephone booth (colleges are very well equipped) and come out as a post-secondary-teacher-chill-a -little-pot user) and say to my students while I approach them :

“Ok. Everyone stand on your desks. Come on, hop!” […]

Perched on the ledge of a hermetically sealed window inside the fifth floor of the college, I observed the parking lot below with attentive indifference. From this height, the vehicles looked like Dinky Toys—miniature metal car replicas of my childhood (In 1988, while taking a midnight stroll along deserted streets of Varadero, I spotted a […]

(Continued from Part 1: The Awakening)

I had put my TV, video player and car up for sale. Why? No more being a spectator in my bubble, even in my car. No more electronic Buddha or motorized cow. No more glass. I want to walk, take the bus, and talk to people; live on the […]

The video has nothing to do with coaching.
Bob Gainey (former coach of the Montreal Canadiens)

… car of Tomorrow!

The noise made me wince. It had originated from a TV set, in the convenience store I was in—an impersonal smirk, teeth lined up in a racist piano keyboard appeared on the screen. I had […]

It seemed to me that Pierres d’ailleurs, a shop housed in a semi-basement on St. Denis street just south of Mont-Royal Avenue, had been around forever. It offered everything from crystals to semi-precious stones; crystal skulls to pendulums—all sorts of new-age paraphernalia imaginable.