When I was eighteen all I wanted to do was draw cartoons and be a photographer. Few other things interested me with the exception of fishing and hunting, an odd pairing of passions. My grandmother bought me all manner of Nikon photographic equipment, my father built me a black and white film and print processing lab in the third bedroom of our modest duplex, and after some convincing agreed to send me to a private art and design school, the Académie des Arts de Montréal, afte

This little story was told to me some fifty years ago, by whom I can’t even remember, and has stuck with me ever since. An older gentleman used to take his regular evening walks on a small pier in his hometown. One night on the pier there was a young boy of around eight or nine sitting on the edge, his bare feet dangling above the water as he gazed straight ahead. The boy started being there every night, so one night the older man stopped and asked him his name. "Charlie" the

Forget about shrinkflation, slumpflation, stagflation, good old regular inflation, or any other “flation.” What’s occurring around the world and most notably in North America is that corporate greed has gone crazy. Emboldened by the likes of Donald Trump, supported by the Republicans, and encouraged by the main stock market players, and the wealthy “corporate rodents” believe that to milk the consumer for every cent they have is just fine. Supply chain problems, COVID, global

Most of us have been to a horseracing track or seen a race on TV. Wagering at these races is based on an odds system, the underpinnings of which I won’t explain in this short article. A couple of years back, I wondered if it might be possible to apply these simple odds to stocks, more for amusement than for anything else at the time. However, someone recently pointed out that the formula I’ve developed could make for one hell of an online gambling site or even a website with

At around 24, I worked on various projects after leaving my job as assistant advertising manager at Atlas Copco Canada. I also lived with a stunning young redhead named Danielle Sarrazin that I’d met shortly after being dumped by my beloved Nicole. Now Danielle, who didn’t have a creative bone in her body and with whom things didn’t end well, had a sister named Dominique, who was an up-and-coming abstract painter. Dominique was also recently married to Guy St-Onge, an accompl

Back in the late eighties, magazines, real ones printed on actual paper, were entering their last great decade of popularity. City magazines were proliferating and few as much as Montreal’s leading publications, Montreal Ce-Mois-Ci, and Montreal Calendar magazine. Both of these had gone through several owners in their twenty-year run by the late eighties and the last one was a publisher named David, whose money had been earned from selling Baldor electric motors as their Queb

My father had the habit of taking me to the woods from an early age. Six years old, to be precise. Back then, one didn’t have to drive for four hours to reach some form of legitimate wilderness. We had woods even in developing areas such as Ville Saint-Laurent and even more on Laval island in Montreal. I’m talking about woods you could hunt in. But, of course, now all these areas are covered in residential developments and shopping malls. On one occasion, my dad went the extr

My birthday fell on the same day as my mother’s and my maternal grandmother’s, which someone once told me the odds of were quite long and even longer as both my mother and I were born a few minutes before midnight. My mother, Madeleine, was a delicate, refined, and gorgeous lady with jet-black hair and bewitching eyes. She had a passion for the movies and could name every actor in any of them. She was born in Montreal, and her maiden name was Painchaud, which translates to “h

Like so many others, my first job was a summer job. As I was heavily interested in photography, I would go to Simon’s Cameras, Montreal’s oldest and best camera store, then celebrating in 1969 its fortieth year. Located on what used to be called Craig Street next to Old Montreal, it was directly across from the La Presse newspaper, the largest circulation French paper outside of France. It was a small store with products stacked to the ceiling, some dating back to the forties

The devastating effects of self-serve check-out systems at supermarkets. I occasionally take a few minutes after doing my weekly groceries to watch the time it takes consumers to process their orders using the new automated self-serve check-out systems versus the traditional clerked check-out lanes. As most folks know, under the hypocritical guise of efficiency and speed, supermarkets, as one of the most flagrant examples, have been rapidly implementing these stations for a w

For the last 20 or so years of his working life, my dad sold trucks. Big trucks. Big International Harvester trucks to be specific. In Montreal, he had a very odd sales territory, defined as St-Laurent street, known locally as The Main, for its entire length from its upper end near the river that separates Montreal and Laval islands, right through to its other end on the St-Lawrence river in the Old Port of Montreal. His turf consisted of both sides of the street and was fitt

When I was nine years old, and my folks had been divorced for a few years, my mother and I lived in an old apartment building on Gatineau Street in the Côte-des-Neiges district of Montreal. The landlady at the time was a Miss Pompadour, a stout French woman from Marseilles, who occupied a huge apartment with a large stone terrace. Miss Pompadour had taken a shine to my mother and me, and we occasionally would go down to her place for pâtisseries and the like, which I enjoyed

The year was 1967 when Montreal was host to Expo 67, the international world fair. I was thirteen, and both my father and mother smoked heavily, and in fact, both eventually died from direct and indirect illnesses caused or made worse by cigarettes. My friend Louie was fifteen but could pass for older, and stores back then didn’t really check proof of age for cigarette sales. One could often use the “they’re for my mother” line. So after much research, I asked Louie to get me

I've spent a lifetime of work in marketing communications and publishing, traveling, clubbing, concerts, fine wining and dining, outdoor activities galore, and a myriad of adventures. Less mobile and motivated than I once was, I now spend most of my time in front of a computer with three huge monitors, an iPad Pro, and an iPhone 13 ProMax. It seems that these are my world now, but don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining. Combining my various social media accounts, I follow a

Let me start by stating that there is no guaranteed system when it comes to wagering on horse racing. Betting on horse racing can be nerve-wracking, extremely complex, and very expensive. Begin with the premise that any horse in a race can win. The “odds”, determined by the amounts bet by the public, most of them unqualified to handicap anything, only point to the likelihood of favorites succeeding. But the horses don’t know that. And just like humans, they have good and bad

Everyone knows the gas-powered automobile has heard its death knell loud and clear. So the oil companies are staging a full-frontal attack on our wallets, despite already record profits, gouging the consumer to the hilt, especially during a pandemic and even more now with the current Ukrainian conflict.. This is in preparation for them gouging us to the hilt when they control most of the charging stations for e-vehicles in the future. And expect no help from governments who c

A few times a year, back in the eighties, we’d all go down for family gatherings of various sizes to the Howard family camp at Breeches Lake in Quebec’s Eastern Townships, on what was originally the Wolfe County Fish and Game Club, founded in the early 1900s. Breeches Lake is a nearly 1 1/2-mile long lake, quite deep and set in glorious mountainous scenery. Now we had casually fished this lake for several years with little to show for our efforts as weekends at the camp were

My dad was a very stern individual. Once in the great outdoors though he relaxed a bit but remained a strict man. As I grew into my late teens, he had taught me the dos and don’ts of fishing, boating, and hunting in no uncertain terms. He was always watchful and unforgiving when it came to preventing accidents out in the bush and on the water, and had a visceral intolerance for fools. During a particular fishing trip, we loaded up the large wooden rowboat we used, an 18-foot

Back starting in the nineteen sixties my father and I would religiously go fishing and hunting for 5 to 6 weeks starting in early August in northern Quebec avoiding the hordes of mosquitoes and blackflies present in June and July. The region we favored was located close to the main southern access to the immense Baskatong reservoir, some three hours north of Montreal, at the confluence of the Piscatosin and Notawissi rivers. Renowned back then for walleye, northern pike, lake

Back in the sixties, in cases of separation, custody was given to the mother. That continues to a large extent today, from what I understand. My father would have me every second weekend and would take me to do “guy” things at every opportunity. Fishing, hunting, orienteering, woodcraft, car, boat shows, and the like. When I was around ten, if memory serves, I came back to my mother’s house on Sunday evening after a weekend with him. Upon arrival, although dark out, it wasn’t