Tag: Montreal

A Journey to Start All Journeys

Looking back I don’t have many posts outlining my early international trips this was my 2010 trip to New York City. This trip starts like any other trip a random bus ride to Montreal to see the Canadiens in their playoffs bid in Montreal. However, it took a bit of a turn. I instead ended up going to the Forum cinema and catching a movie and then went to PearlVision to fix my glasses that broke. It had been a very long bus ride to Montreal overnight on the Acadian Lines bus. Feeling down from the long trip that I only took because I sold people I was going to the game that I had no way of getting tickets to, and no booked hotel in Montreal I had a “great idea”. I was going to take the bus to New York City and then take the Greyhound up to Bangor and catch the Acadian Lines service home. After a day in Montreal, I went to the old bus station and got my tickets. I was really tired and quickly after leaving fell asleep on the bus. Only to be woken by the overzealous US Border Service Officer getting on…

The banged up emotions, banged up car, and big boom finale

As we left off the quest, I was on the back roads of southern Ontario, with the Spotify music pumped. I was taking the back roads partly because it was taking everything to keep myself together, and partly because the 410, 407, and 401 scare the hell out of me. It was at this point, I decided that seeing Niagara Falls wasn’t going to happen with the gloomy dark cloud of depression. It was also raining and cloudy too. After close to 2 hours, I arrived in Kitchener and the sun came out there. I managed to find a convenient little parking spot and walked down Festival street. I have written before about Kitchener-Waterloo Oktoberfest but there is something about this festival that in its own special way brings it over the top. There seems to even be a much higher percentage of people in a traditional dress than you even see in Munich. The Rogers Hometown hockey was there and there was a beautiful smell in the air that brought nostalgia back. Like most things, however, the second time is just not the same and the depression came back. I grabbed a sausage and water and then went to…

Drywall Flying Off a Trailer is Still a Sign

Drywall Flying Off a Trailer is Still a Sign

Planning for this trip started months ago, it was planned as the best available excuse to visit Brampton Civic Hospital to determine what was real and what was not. I had already sacrificed a day from this mini-vacation for my day visiting the Anthem of the Seas and had Friday to Tuesday for a road trip to Brampton. “Coincidence” (with air quotes) would prevail that it was also during Kitchener-Waterloo Oktoberfest. As the weekend approached, I was starting to have second thoughts about this trip and a feeling that it was not the most financially planned decision to make. It was literally the Friday morning that I was going to go. The plan was Montreal on Friday, Brampton/Kitchener on Saturday, Niagara Falls on Sunday, back to Kitchener on Monday for the parade and then drive home. As I was leaving Saint John and just passing Spruce Lake. Out of nowhere, a sheet of drywall flew in the air just metres in front of me and luckily there was none beside me and I switched lanes to avoid disaster. As soon as that happened, I had this dreadful feeling that this trip was a mistake. I continued on anyway. I crossed…

My Messed Up Canada Day Roadtrip

My Messed Up Canada Day Roadtrip

I was off the Friday before Canada Day and had Physio and a call for the pre-op to fix my pinky finger. I came up with a plan to take a spontaneous road trip to Ottawa. My surgery is concerning the possible side effects. I was pretty devastated after the call with my anxiety. Since I was less than 500km from my oil change mileage I went to Kia and booked the appoint for this past week. I went home and cleared out everything from my car I didn’t need, grabbed my passport and wad of US cash and took off down the Hwy 1 towards the border. At the border I got through pretty quickly and had no issues. Having all the signs in a weird foreign system of measurement increased my anxiety. In Calais, I fueled up and headed down Route 9 to Bangor. I stopped for dinner at Dysart’s. It was a pretty good meatloaf. I then proceeded down Route 2 to Skowhegan where I needed to pee bad so I stopped at a gas station and it was there my fate turned. My GPS lost my route and I was lost. I kind of remember Route…

Twenty-Four Thousand Four Hundred And Fifty-Five

Twenty-Four Thousand Four Hundred And Fifty-Five

This is not a random number, it is a big one, but not random. I woke up on the morning of September 2nd, 2016 full of energy and excited as hell. I was about to embark on the most epic trip to date. I thought to myself this is one trip that I will never forget. I remember it was a sunny day. I got up early and walked to McAllister Place and caught the bus uptown to start the day off by doing the same thing I have done for almost 3 years of Saturdays, I went to Billy’s Seafood for breakfast. I remember that I had my favourite menu item the Smoked Salmon Omelette and lots of coffee. Billy’s I always tell people is like dinner theatre the staff especially Billy the owner are a hoot. For most people, they would have already done the packing rather than go out for breakfast, but that is not my style. After breakfast, I went home and had 90 minutes to get ready for 28 days of travelling. So at this point, you would think I would pack right? Nope! I shaved and took a shower (for 60 minutes.) After 20…

Ninety-Eight Days but I’m Not Counting

Ninety-Eight Days but I’m Not Counting

It is really cold today. It has been less than a month now since I booked my next trip. On my last trip my old reliable large suitcase met it’s last days from the cobble-stone sidewalks of Rome. That’s right I have to move on with life and break in a virgin suitcase on this trip. My new suitcase is slightly larger and a harder case. I bought it at the Zellers liquidation sale. It’s biggest problem is there is only one outside pocket. I’m undecided still on whether or not to by a new dangly thing. My last one was given to me buy my old friend when I had forgotten my previous on prior to my first WordCamp trip. On an interesting note to me anyways, I was cleaning off my dresser and under the pile of junk was my dangly thing. I tried guessing what was in it as it felt unusually bulky. I thought it might have been the baggage tag for my last Toronto trip. I was wrong. (Even though some people think I would never really say that.) The tag in my dangly thing was the luggage tag from YSJ to FCO via YUL.…

2011 in 12 Sentences

As the year comes to an end I usually come up with a long post about the year that has been. Plinky suggested only on sentence per month so here goes. I went to BC. I learned about caregivers. Learned how to program Macros in Microsoft Excel. Lots of sports and trips to Fredericton. I went to Toronto. Started walking a lot more than ever. Went to Montreal and New York City. I got really, really bored and booked a trip. Went on a last-minute camping trip to 10 European Countries. Got better from travel illness. Started taking it easier and planning more. Started doing new things, like translating WordPress to Canadian English and Operation Red Nose.

Ah! Montreal

After twelve and a half long hours on a bus I have arrived in Montreal for WordCamp Montreal. This is my 5th WordCamp which I will do a post about sometime later. I took a walk earlier today and walked through the historic McGill University campus. One sweet sign that the orientation for the new students coming to university this year will have a better orientation than the three I’ve go to is the size of the beer tent. There must have been thousands of bottles of Boreale Beer and lots of kegs too. Anyone who has been to Montreal knows that is good beer.

BarbBarbBarb

Like most of you my readers are aware I am a huge WordPress enthusiast. I also like to write about local Saint John affairs too. While I would like to promote a site that is local and very interesting. It is (update as of 2020 this link no longer functions). I came across this website as a suggested person to follow. (@barbbarbbarb) This site is focused on fashion and is very well written. To tie it back to WordPress this site is running on an older version of WordPress 2.8.3 and is using a modified version of Kuuler I theme made by stratus, a well-known WordPress developer. Give the site a good read I’m sure you will enjoy it. Also, next weekend is WordCamp Montreal 2010. It is going to be a blast.

Lack of Comments

I have been trying to post a lot more lately. But one thing that greatly concerns me us the lack of good comments lately. Practically everything on this site is open to commenting even the photos and the albums. What’s better is that if you see someone in a photo that you recognize you can even tag them, and they get a custom album automatically about them. I’m working on integrating twitter feeds at the moment with these custom albums. Also I have run into a big hiccup with a problem in WordPress 3 that breaks the paging of an album. It is almost as if they did something that taxonomy pages only work for a post type rather than an attachment. I have also decided that I will be going to WordCamp Montreal again this year. I was thinking that I could show off how I was able to pull of my photo album in an advanced theming tutorial. That is one thing that I found dry about technical lectures at past WordCamps where they show off code but not put it together, to demonstrate something new. I think I would call it “Media and your Theme… Where can…

What a year this has been!

I started writing this on December 29th but researching the links has taken some time, in fact much longer than I thought to find all the links. I have defiantly accomplished a lot this year, looking back this has been the best year in a while. Of the things that stand out as my holy crap moment of the year was standing at the window in the Vancouver airport with the setting sun breaking a bit through the clouds. That was the moment it rang true to me that mountains were more than just really big hills. One of the biggest events that kicked off the year was the 2009 Atlantic Major Midget Regionals at the LBR. This one event not only was my first time writing for sports, but I also learned what makes up a shot on goal in a hockey game was. In addition, actually pulling off the live feed was amazing. That and meeting Don Mabee for the first time. The next moment of this year, happened when I attended to Faces of Fusion dinner in May. That is where I ran into Ian Finley from East Coast Connected. It was from that meeting that I…

WordCamp Montreal and Other Things Montréal

WordCamp Montreal and Other Things Montréal

Getting here to Montreal, I had decided to get the bus. (Orleans Express/Acadian Lines) Thus it presents this opportunity to write this long detailed encounter as I have the remainder of the 13 hour bus trip to finish. After arriving here in Montreal I took a nice stroll down Ste-Catherine to the train station. It was on this trip through the eerily quite streets of the jazz festival site that I ran across the first image. Although to is common to think of those in the financial services industry as “wanks” someone thought it would be a great idea to draw one on the two sided of the corner of the building. After the fist day of sessions at word camp there was this crazy man that started yelling at me in french, I think he though I took a picture or something. The funny part that is so not like me is the fact that I started yelling back at him in English and he did not seem to understand me at all. That make id kind of funny then he ran off and I went off to catch the subway to the hotel. The subway in Montreal seemed…

If I Could Change the Government of Canada

The first thing I want to start out with is a call I received earlier this week from fundraisers for the Conservative Party. Now I have always supported the party, and in ways still do. This brings me back to March 2005 in Montreal when the party had its last national meeting. Those long sessions debating the policies and constitution of the newly created party. The ideals of trying to give balance to the bottom-up Alliance to the top-down Progressive Conservatives. Now to see the current leader Stephen Harper disgraces the party by not knowing when to give up. Too many times in history have leaders like Idi Amin, Fidel Castro, Joseph Stalin and too many others repeat the same level of seeing themselves as the alternative to the status quo, then gain a position of power and do whatever they can to remain in office. Harper has blatantly in his struggle to maintain power thrown away the policies and constitution of the Conservative Party. One must remember that although the Conservative Party has more MPs the House of Commons does not have a majority and needs to work together. There needs to be reforms in the way government works,…

Maria Theresa (Cormier) Morin- May 13, 1935 – Jun 28, 2008

Maria Theresa (Cormier) Morin- May 13, 1935 – Jun 28, 2008

This morning I woke up and found the obituary for my grandmother in the paper. Here it is: Maria Theresa Morin MORIN, Maria Theresa – It is with great sadness that the family announce the peaceful passing of Maria Theresa Morin at the Saint John Regional Hospital on Sunday June 29, 2008. Born 1935 in Saint John to the late Andrew and Olive (Babineau) Cormier. Maria worked in Housekeeping at The Saint John Regional Hospital for many years. She will be sadly missed by all who knew her. Maria is survived by sons David Morin (Angela) of Black River, Michael Morin, Rev. Lawrence Morin (Heather) both of Saint John, Kenneth Morin (Arnett) of Murriett, CA and Trevor Morin (Marlene) of Black River; daughters Sharon Morin of Montreal, QC, Cathy Melvin (Norman) of Saint John and Debbie Morin (Frank) of Black river; brothers Arthur (Audrey) of Saint John and Ronald (Donna) of Bowmanville, ON; sister Rena Belliveau of Saint John; 14 grandchildren; 10 great-grandchildren; several nieces, nephews and many friends. Besides her parents, Maria was predeceased by her husband Lawrence; sons Mark and Eric; brothers Joseph, Frederick, Lawrence and Ralph; sisters Frieda, Bella and Eva and companion Wes Moore. Resting at…

On-Air Appearances

Television Appearances Guest Appearance: Daytime (Saint John Edition) {Rogers Television}(November 2006) Reporter: Too Close To Call “Saint John Sea Dogs’ Mike Thomas Interview” {Rogers Television} (October 2006) Reporter: First Local “Hockey Canada Interview” {Rogers Television October 2006) Turned Around in Background: Scott Thomas “My Way” Promo {Rogers Television} (2006-2007 season) Interviewed at a Stephen Harper Rally: Rick Mercer Report {CBC-TV} (January 2006) Sitting in Chair Laughing: Volunteer @ Rogers Promo {Rogers Television} (2005-2006 season) Interviewed in Montreal: Rick Mercer Report {CBC-TV} (March 2005) Guest Appearance: Municipal Vote 2004 Candidates Messages {Rogers Television}(2004) Reporter: Focus NB {Rogers Television} (2002-2003) Radio Appearances Guest Appearance: Talk of the Town (CFBC 930 AM SaintJohn) (2004) Debate Participant: CBC Saint John’s Information Morning(91.3 FM) (2004) News Director/Announcer: CHSR News at Noon (2002) Band Interviewer: CHSR 97.9 FM Fredericton (2002)