Travelsmartplanet

View of the Voiles de voiles Pirate Ship adventure from the SOS Labyrinthe in Old Montreal. The Voiles consists of games, aerial courses and bouncy castles that can keep you occupied for hours.

The SOS Labyrinth is one of the great family attractions at Montreal’s Old Port. Essentially, you have to make your way through this huge complex maze and find 4 items: the Captain’s hook, a pair of Dutch wooden shoes, a travel wallet and a Cuban pitchfork. The stories behind these items can be found on the wall as you enter the labyrinth, and they are also on their web site. Plan to spend about an hour here. 

Here’s Sandra with Dave Fisher’s successor on CJAD, Ken Connors.

Stan and Sandra with Dan Laxer and Dave Fisher during his retirement party at CJAD.

This weekend we celebrated the retirement of Dave Fisher after 32 years of hosting radio programs at CJAD. Seated from left to right are Dan Laxer, Dave Fisher. Tommy Schnurmaker, Barry Morgan and Aaron Rand. The usual Sunday morning Trivia Show took place in front of a live audience of CJAD staff, broadcasters and former on-air guests, who participated in answering the questions along with the radio audience.

George Bowser and Rick Blue have an amazing way with words. True to the their well-known genre it’s the songs at Centaur’s Last Night at the Gayety, that really “sing”. They are just so darn clever. The play, about Montreal’s infamous years of “Casinos, Bordellos and Booze” (one of the songs) could have been formulaic, but manages to relate a story which not only keeps you interested, but giggling and titillated throughout.

A tale of this era could not be told without the usual suspects: the gangster, nightclub owner, priest and cops (the good and bad). The glue holding it all together is the famous stripper Lili St. Cyr. Julia Juhas is a knockoff, so perfectly cast; she elegantly glides across the stage dressed to kill in early 50’s fashions, yet bumps and grinds so provocatively with those sinuous long legs.

What could be wrong with a night of inside jokes, overacting, silly songs, erotic dancing, love, lust, murder, gangsterism and priestly disgust – all so definitively Montreal. Bowser and Blue make sure to point out, tongue-in-cheek this city was made for burlesque because there’s a main street named Beaver Hall Hill and the crossroads of downtown is after all, called “Peel”. Lili retorts that she prefers Las Vegas because its main street is known as “The Strip” (bada boom).

This is the skeleton of the largest turtle that ever existed – an Archelon. Instead of a solid shell, it had an open framework of struts covered by a thick coating of rubbery skin. This allowed him to swim more efficiently. You can see it at the Museum of Science and Nature in Ottawa.

In the magnificent Queen’s Lantern, the glass open space at the top of the Museum of Nature, what looks like a giant jellyfish is hanging. You can see it from afar outside the museum, and inside as you navigate between floors. The windows with stone dividers provides a beautiful view both of the outdoors and inside the museum.

We took a Jane’s Walk around the Plateau area of Montreal, and discovered these “ruelles champetres”. They are back lanes which have been turned into public gardens by the neighbours. https://sites.google.com/site/ruellechampetre/home.

Here’s Pierre Deschamps letting me taste some fresh honey at his farm in St Eustache north of Montreal. The miellerie has been operating for more than 40 years, and it’s the only honey we ever buy.