Going through the magazine and I couldn’t help but wonder why the city doesn’t pump out more propaganda praising the people and places that make up our city. What’s more, 43 years ago they had no problem issuing a fully bilingual monthly review. But I bet you people would say it couldn’t, or shouldn’t be done. It seems as if we hit a high water mark that year and have been retreating, in some senses, ever since. We’re still a kinda-global city which occasionally makes itself relevant, but we seem to have a hard time sustaining interest the way we used to. Perhaps a result of too much navel-gazing, too much existential angst.
Apparently, he circumnavigated the globe at least three times, traveled to upwards of fifty cities and took over 10,000 photographs along the way. He lived at the same address on Coursol Street since 1953, and watched the city grow around him as he grew into the city he loved. I hope the family preserves those photographs, I can only imagine what a unique perspective that camera benefited from, and what an amazing exhibition it would make. He certainly deserves it.
Above is a video they put out, demonstrating their ability to play soldier. They are very good at playing soldier, my guess is that they’d put most 10 year-olds to shame with their impressive knowledge of crawling, running, kneeling, pointing, map-use and camouflage colour-coordination.
All told, it seems as though this whole sordid affair is little more than a bunch of grownups feeling threatened by ‘the other’ and resorting to childhood fantasies of war, heroism and all that other shit. I can’t imagine these organizations are anything more than loose affiliations, but still – it makes your skin crawl.
The question is how best to respond to organizations of this type – extremist nationalists of any variety base their entire public image on the pretense of directed aggression against a self-described minority and the societal ideal of an individual willing to risk their lives in defense of the defenseless. But when the threat is imagined, there’s no limit to defensive posturing, no act nor preparation too extreme. In essence, it’s a carte-blanche for self-perpetuating extremism.
With many thanks to the public broadcaster that put this up gratis on the interwebs; amazingly the public broadcaster didn’t have this video in their archives…
On November 7th 1990 a couple was out for a swim in the heated rooftop pool of the Bonaventure Hilton. Looking up, they saw a large metallic shape with several bands of glowing lights, slowly hovering around the as-yet still incomplete 1000 De la Gauchetiere. Alarmed, they contacted hotel security, which in turn contacted the authorities. Police arrived on the seen and a small crowd gathered on the roof. They were all seeing the same thing – an immense, aerial vehicle, slowly maneuvering around the tower. The constables contacted their brass, including the commanding officer of the local police station, who in turn put a call in to the military base at St-Hubert, and then to Mirabel and Dorval airports. Nothing on radar, no military exercises, nothing official and no idea what it was that, at least officially, 300 people saw that night. Over the course of a few hours, the object slowly drifted across the city, moving northeast before taking off over the Big O. The police even went so far as to turn off the floodlights at the construction site across the street – it made no difference. It was generally silent, and even caused a power failure in the East End.
Some argued that it was a highly localized type of Aurora Borealis, though as someone who has watched the famed Northern Lights, I can say that no one calls the RCMP or the Canadian Air Force for suspected Northern Lights, especially not high ranking police officers.
The following is a great video with additional interviews made by Canal D (so its en Francais), check it out and come to your own conclusions, but for the record, this one is still one of the most well-known unsolved flying object cases ever recorded.