ILLUSION OF POWER You read that right. Illusion of Power. During the summer, my wife, Judith undertook the translation of my third novel, Illusion de pouvoir in English. The novel recounts the difficult life of a character who becomes the mayor of Montréal. She is in review mode and hopes to have the novel published … Lire plus
A translation by Judith Turcotte The municipal authorities are responsible for the purification of wastewater and by extension, the discharges of untreated water directly into the St. Lawrence River and they are free to do what they want. The people are preoccupied by the quality of the water entering their homes but are indifferent to … Lire plus
A translation by Judith Turcotte The construction of the seaway (at the end of the fifties) was considered as an important engineering achievement. At its inauguration, Raymond Charette, a journalist at Radio Canada declared: “June 26, 1959, is now a milestone in Canada’s history of ommunications and intercontinental and transoceanic connections.” During the inauguration, the … Lire plus
My family comes from Notre-Dame-de-Pierreville, a small municipality located on the shores of Lac Saint Pierre. I was the eldest of a family of six and my mother, Odette, would ship me off to my grandparents’ farm whenever a new sibling was born. I still have fond memories of the farm except for the picking … Lire plus
Montreal is not the only municipality to have used the St. Lawrence as a garbage dump. Old dumps can be found all along the river. One of my readers commented on one of my blogs. “I spent part of my childhood between Varennes and Vercheres; there was no garbage collection in those days. The river … Lire plus
I was 13 when I began crossing the St. Lawrence to go to downtown Montreal. I was starting high school at Collège Sainte-Marie, an institution run by the Jesuits, located at the corner of de Bleury and Dorchester (now René-Lévesque). We are in 1959, there was no metro and we had to take a bus … Lire plus
For the past few years, politicians, in an attempt to convince us that the St. Lawrence waters are now clean, announce the opening of beaches on its shore. This is way too premature. Beaches are often closed because of the quality of their waters. You are entirely free to go swimming there but I will … Lire plus
A few years ago, when the city of Montreal dumped 8 billion litres of sewage into the St. Lawrence, I read an article that reported that the event would have gone unnoticed had it not been for a nautical association who made the information public. It took a private group to attract the attention of the … Lire plus