Blue Bird Cafe Fire 50th Anniversary

Welcome to September. Fifty years ago on September 1, 1972, a Friday, Montrealers, in fact, Canadians across the country, were eagerly anticipating the much ballyhooed Summit Series between a team of Canada’s best NHL hockey players and what we erroneously thought would be a ragtag group from the Soviet Union. Canadians across the country, were

Odd cheer for classic country lyric

According to Wikipedia, Country is a genre of popular music that originated with blues, church music such as Southern gospel and spirituals, old-time, and American folk music forms including Appalachian, Cajun, Creole, and the cowboy Western music styles of New Mexico, Red Dirt, Tejano, and Texas country. Growing up, it was referred to as Country

1-800-RAT-OUTS

The current COVID-19 Code Red situation in Montreal has caused an interesting conundrum, one that has received many hours of radio talk and newspaper ink. The number of people allowed to convene in one’s house is limited. The government radio advertisement states that ‘Indoor gatherings of family and friends are prohibited’. Not ‘not suggested’, not

Charles Manson Dies

Sludge: noun 1. mud, mire, or ooze; slush. 2. a deposit of ooze at the bottom of a body of water. 3. any of various more or less mudlike deposits or mixtures. 4. the sediment in a steam boiler or water tank. 5. broken ice, as on the sea. 6. a mixture of some finely

Time to Amend the Second Amendment

I’m not a constitutional expert by any stretch of the imagination. As a lover of words I am fully aware that they can be squeezed, massaged and twisted to mean different things to different people. As the Led Zeppelin classic goes.”’Cause you know sometimes words have two meanings.”  But sometimes that process can become downright

Charlottesville: Blood On The President’s Hands

Had the video been poorer in quality, a bit grainy, maybe even black and white, you might have assumed you were watching a history documentary on CNN last Saturday afternoon. Something about civil rights marches in the sixties. But no, the scenes of mayhem in the streets of Charlottesville, Virginia were live. It was enough

Karla Homolka’s Children Are Innocent

There has been a very heated debate in Montreal over the last few days. To get an idea of just how emotional this has become requires a bit of background. The person at the eye of the storm is one Karla Homolka, a convicted sex murderer. Well, sort of convicted. When she was married to

Live PD, Field Sobriety Tests, David Brenner and ET

From time to time I like to watch the occasional police program on television. I don’t mean works of fiction, but the alleged ‘real’ thing. Shows like The First 48 are what I enjoy, although that has become very repetitive with time. The new kid on the block in the genre is a show called

Quebec City Shooting: Spurred By Trump’s Anti-Muslim Rhetoric?

Two armed masked men armed stormed into a mosque on Sunday evening just as prayers were ending. They opened fire killing six men and injuring 19 others, five of whom remain in hospital in critical condition.   A nasty divisive debate has gripped the US regarding the nature of the bans. Are they religion-specific?  Is

Montreal’s Blue Bird Cafe Fire Forty-Four Years Ago

Welcome to September. Forty-four years ago on September 1,1972, also a Friday, Montrealers, in fact Canadians across the country, were eagerly anticipating the much ballyhooed Summit Series between a team of Canada’s best NHL hockey players and what we erroneously thought would be a ragtag group from the Soviet Union. What more could a barroom