20090227 Loftboutiques Phase 2's Step-ladder Chairs

In the rooms of Loftboutiques' Phase two complex in Saint-Sauveur there is an interesting particular type of chair. It is a transformer chair! Notice on the left the chair has hinges. Turning them and tuning the chair upside down makes the chair tun into a step-ladder! Nice!
...actually, the concept may be a bit fragile, one of the two chairs had evidently been broken and repaired. This is just an invitation for kids to have some breakneck fun on them. I'd rather use a real step ladder.
Keyword "stepladder chair" or "step-ladder chairs" or any such variaton in Google Images to see more of such designs. It's more of a curiosity than a useful thing. It is not a recent design. I found a museum web site that shows one such chair built about the year 1900.

20090226 Curious Deer in SFdL

In the back woods of Saint-François-du-Lac, one can see many many deer at once. But usually they do not come close. Actually, when I approach on cross-country skis, they run scurry away. But this lone one was curious. It just stayed nearby. I talked to it and it did not go away. So I managed to make a decent pic. Skiing conditions were warm. The snow was sticky to the skis if I stayed put just a few seconds.

20090225 Ski de fond à Baie-du-Febvre

I had heard that there were some groomed cross-country skiing paths in Baie-du-Febvre, so today, a bright sunny day not too cold, I decided to check it out. You've got to find the Centre Communautaire and park there. It's a designated starting point.
More on this at http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=227296&id=739480474&l=8d56d

20090224 Ski Sorel au Camp Ville La Joie

Went cross-country skiing from Sorel to Sainte-Victoire-de-Sorel. Conditions were perfect. Nice snow, nice air. Saw many more skiers.
More of this day's pics are at http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=226935&id=739480474&l=bb9fc

20090223 Ski Brossard to La Prairie: Beaver Dam

Along the Ruisseau Des Bois at the limit of the municipalities of Brossard and La Praire, I saw this beaver dam! This is suburban Montreal, a large city! More of today's pics at http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=226690&id=739480474&l=bed29

20090222 7è Salon Du Vélo Expodium

Went to the Montreal bike show called the 7è Salon du Vélo Expodium. Most expensive bike was marked down from $10,000 to $8,000! Not a Wal-Mart bike!
More pics at HERE

20090221 Festi-Vent Sur Glace, Saint-Placide

Went to the kite festival on ice today in Saint-Placide today. This is a vid I posted on Youtube. Pics at http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=225728&id=739480474&l=5ef09

19300802 Mathilde Lefebvre RIP

This is the oldest necrology bookmark (aka funerary card, signet funéraire, nécrologique) I have. Mathilde Lefebvre is an ancestor of mine. She died at the venerable age of 92 years old! That would put her birthyear as 1838! She lived a totally different lifestyle than the one we know today. Perhaps Micheline would like to post who she is, from a family tree POV.  She was my grandmother's grandmother. So that would make her my great-great-grandmother. I may correct this text if contradictory info comes to me.
There was one Mathilde Lefebvre on the Titanic, but she was 12 when the ship went down, so that cannot be her.
One woman, Diane Kapp, at http://genforum.genealogy.com/lefebvre/messages/33.html is looking for info about one of ML's children, one called Georgiana. As stated on the bookmark, ML had a second husband by the name of Joseph Legault dit Deslauriers. DK says that ML married one Damase Joseph LEGAULT Oct. 10, 1863 in Montreal (Notre-Dame). So I'd say that the same ML she's talking about.
BUT... according to http://awt.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=charlebois47&id=I046218&ti=4317 (dead link), ML married Joseph Legault-Deslauriers on the 5th of October 1863, had as parents Germain Lefebvre and Sophie Gougeon, and was born about 1842. That birthyear is probably wrong in light of the above image. Her first husband was Theophile Dubrule (Dubreuil) with who it looks like she had no children. With Joseph Legault she had 2 : Georgiana Legault-Deslauriers and in 1875 my great-grandmother Anna Legault-Deslauriers. Anna married my great-grandfather Victor Emmanuel Valiquette 13 JUL 1896 in Basilique Notre-Dame, Montreal and later Jean Baptiste Charlebois 10 APR 1917 in Ste-Helene, Montreal.

Click on the image to see it much bigger.

1934? Denise Bilodeau & her ivory doll

I remember mom telling me about that ivory doll and how she loved it. Years later, she wished she still had it, but like most people's childhood toys, it just got dissappeared with time. Likely it's her mom who got rid of it when my mom lost interest in it. How can anyone blame her. That's what happens most of the time. My mom probably did the same to my toys when I lost interest. It would be fun to see my old Viewmaster 3D slides again, but what can you do.... Avec le temp va, tout s'en va......




This is the reverse view of the above print. I'm showing it for the unique stamped logo marked "GENUINE BRILLANTONE NEVER FADES", for anyone interested out there on the internet. Actually, I wonder who could be because I've Googled the word "brillantone" and came up with mostly hits leading to italian language web sites. Oh, well, looks like I've posted a quite particular contribution to the web.

1951 Two Young Women Motorcyclists

It would be an unusuall sight even today to see two women riding on one motorcycle, so imagine seeing that way back in 1951! My mom Denise, on the right, was the passenger, and her best friend, also a Denise, was the driver and owner of the bike. What pair! I wish a shot of them while riding would have been made! They acually rode from Montreal, QC, to Albion, RI, dressed like this! The 5 years old little girl is part of the family they visited there, the Boudreau family. Click on the image to see it fullsize.

20090217 Amaryllis aka Hippeastrum

My Hippeastrum is in bloom again, the fourth time in so many years. Nice. I practically do nothing to it. I even forget about it and it refuses to die. It's in a tight pot so I think it likes that. When leafs die I just let it rest and do not water it for a couple of months. In summer I put it outside.

1936 My dad on a horse's buggy

This is probably my dad Laurent Guertin at his home, 6973 rue Beaulieu in Ville-Émard district of Montreal, the oldest pic of that place. I appoximate the year to be about 1936. So we can see that horses were still in use way back then. But possibly not by his father Albert, but by ice deliverers. Even milk men used horses as late as the '40s!

1958 Kodachrome Print

Got this print in my family archives. The colors have been preserved beautifully. The reverse side is like this:


It is stamped "This is a kodachome print made by Kodak". From what I read on the web, this is a print made from a slide.
I've also posted two more prints at
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=6024272&l=8557e&id=739480474 and at http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=6024275&l=f0974&id=739480474
They are of small size and of thick glossy plastic with rounded corners. Very sharp images. Looks professionally made.

Some prints are on the web such as at http://flickr.com/photos/candyruth/102193851/in/set-72157594167599499/. Colors are often very good to excellent.

20090214 Bob Walsh

Saw bluesman Bob Walsh at the Théâtre Belcourt in Baie-du-Febvre for Valentine's day from front-row center seats with my sweetheart. He's a bit I shot. A long nearly 3 hours show. We got our money's worth. Long and very good!

This is actually the first video I manage to successfully post on YouTube. It's at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeRXG_AZB-o It was a quite easy prossess. I'll do it again.

20090213 Inside Looking Out

Just a cropped shot. Sometimes we look at old pics and see we do'nt have anything that shows the millieu we lived in. Only as background ellements. Once in a blue moon I take a pic of just anything inside. These pics take value only many years later.

20090212 Super 8 to VHS vs Super 8 to DVD

This is how Super 8 movies looked like when they were transefered to VHS way back in the 80's. I never really liked what I saw. That yellowish bloom all over the top was very often seen.



Today I got a brand new transfer of the movies directly from Super 8 to DVD. Had it made by a shop in Sorel-Tracy called Son Image Concepteur Media www.sonimage.ca
As you can see, the image is much improved! No more yellowish bloom. Also, we can see much more detail. Very nice! Cost us a bundle but it was worth it I think.
Now, I've got hours of re-autoring to do from the basic DVDs they gave me to put those on my harddrive, and then creating menus and commentary and music tracks with Nero and burning those as definitive copies.

20090211 Anne-Sophie Mütter & l'OSM

I'm quite a big fan of the virtuoso violinist Anne-Sophie Mütter. When I saw a few months ago that she was coming to perform in Montreal with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, I initiated a transaction by the web to buy tickets to see her. That transaction did not pan out. So I more or less forgot about it until this morning when I saw the revew of her show in the morning La Presse newspaper (the review in french is also on the web at http://www.cyberpresse.ca/arts/musique/musique-classique/200902/11/01-826169-mutter-eclipse-fruhbeck.php but see also in english http://www.montrealgazette.com/entertainment/music/Anne+Sophie+Mutter+returns/1261298/story.html) . She was going to do a repeat performance today. I checked for available tickets and found that there were some left but very few. So I went to the Place Des Arts box office, but they told me they were sold out! I objected saying I saw just now on the web there there were some tickets left! So the lady told be the way to the MSO's offices at the PDA. I had to ring so that I could be let through not one but two locked doors to gain access to the the MSO's offices and it was there that I at last got two of those tickets I saw on the MSO's web site.
Last time I went there was in the '70s, 1975 or 1976 I think, and the musical director was Franz-Paul Decker. Now Kent Nagano is the director, but tonight he was replaced by Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, who I did not know. But the main event was Anne-Sophie Mutter. She did not play the whole concert, only the Concerto pour violon et orchestre en mi mineur, op. 64 (1844) by Mendelssohn, a piece she also plays on her latest CD. What virtuosity, what mastery, what finesse, what grace, what energy she deployed! Amazing!
I did not catch her in my camera, but the orchestra alone only later on after the intemission.

20090209 Phalaenopsis

Got a Phalaenopsis plant to replace the one that died, probably because of too cool temperature in the room it was in. There are so many colors to choose from, it's difficult to make one's mind up. I was going for a slightly difformed one that looked like this one, but in the end I went for the classic perfect form. Got it from Costco in Brossard for only $16. Not bad. I may get other colors before this one dies.

20090209 Ski Brossard

Cross-country skiing in Brossard's Centre de Plein Air de Brossard. After the rain and above zero C temps we had, conditions were of hardened snow. Not ideal conditions. In groomed paths, the sides of the grooves are so hard that they use the skis and boots more than in fresh fallen snow. The Centre de Plein Air has paths in young woods and open areas like this one. When I got there, I decided to go out of the paths and just anywhere in the fields and I found that that was the best place to go. Usually, one cannot go in the fields because you dig too deep in the snow, but today the snow had hardened so much it supported me most of the time. Not so much when there were low plants because that rendered the snow more porous, but when there were none it supported me ok. I guess in a harvested cultivated field is the best because then there are no wild plants to make the snow porous and so it stays harder that way. Skiing out of the groomed paths is better for the skis as there are no groove sides to use them prematurely. Last year we had the best cross-country skiing conditions as far back as we could remember. This year does'nt look so good.

20090208 Euphorbia X lomi "Somona"

Euphorbia X lomi "Somona" is a very easy to grow flowering indoor plant. As I saw last fall in Florida, it is widely cultivated as an outdoor plant over there. Easy. Just a little plant food once in a while will do.
Produces wonderful small red flowers. Other varieties produce pink, peach, white colors in a various forms.
More pics at http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=220110&l=dc8e1&id=739480474