St Jean-Baptiste Camping weekend I: Wood-Peppers and Bleeches

The weekend before last was St Jean-Baptiste weekend, or Quebec's national holiday. K found a great way for us to go camping. It's called Huttopia, and it's basically pre-pitched tents. We went along to the site at Parc National de Plaisance, on the Ottawa river.  It was tremendous fun, the girls loved every minute, as did K and I. Definitely something we'll look into doing again.

The park is situated on a bunch of little islands, which is great for going on boats, wandering round the march, seeing beavers (although we missed them) and playing in the water. The only down side was the mosquitoes, although all our bites seem to be healed now.

I was rather thankful we got to see as much wildlife as we did. After multiple visits to zoos and nature centres, where you get to see all the animals all the time, I was a little worried it would be an anticlimax in terms of the number of animals we saw. As it turned out, there was no worry, as the park was rife with marmots (which both girls tried to sneak up on at different times). Some woodpeckers (or as LP called them, wood peppers) decided to peck on a tree just outside our tent, and we saw planty of other bird life. And during our walk in the marshes we saw frogs galore, some fish, and a turtle.

Pics after the cut, as always, click to enbiggen.

Apocalypse Cow

My good friend Michael has had his first book published. I have been aware of all the steps involved, as K was in on the first rounds of editting for him way back, but it didn't really strike me how proud I was of him till our copy of the book came through the post at the beginning of the week. So here's to you Michael, I'm super chuffed for you for what you have achieved.

As modelled by my beautiful assistant.

Buy it here on amazon.co.uk



Or here on amazon.ca

New Livejournal!

Ok, so for a while I have been looking for a place to host my Livejournal. This was not an easy decision to make, as I have had this blog for over 10 years. But, there have been increasing DOS attacks to the site, and I fear for losing all my posts there. I have them backed up, but not hosted elsewhere.

I hope to transfer them here, at least for the meantime. As to all the comments, I fear they may be lost, and this is a real disappointment to me, they are as much a part of the blog as the posts themselves.

As to Blogger, I have another blog, and  do think there are a great many things Blogger does better than Livejournal, but then again LJ has been around for a very long time, and has done little to update it's interface. I hope this is a move for the better, but I do fear I will have lost a lot of history in the move. 

Sasori is dead, long live Sasori!

The Scotsman abroad IV

Taking things one step further than joining the St Andrew's Society, then starting our own Scots in Montreal group, I applied for our group to be a part of an umbrella group called the Quebec Thistle Council. This is of course, another group of really old folks, not doing very much and calling themselves Scottish. The guys who run it are of course all members of the Black Watch. But that is almost besides the point.

The one thing they do do  every years however, is run an Awards Dinner. At this event, they award various Scottish Cultural events, such as Piping, Scottish Cuisine, Piping and being a member of their group. I am being flippant of curse, the full list of awards can be seen here (as a pdf).

Anyway, I went along, and wasn't suprised in the slightest at the average age of the participants (I would guess at 60-70). And of course I was asked, in a thick Quebec french accent, if I had any Scottish ancestry, a question which always makes me smile (full highland regalia, which I was wearing, means nothing at these events).

Other highlights of the evening were talking to a gentleman who was classmates with Prince Phillip at Gordonstone (the fact that this came up in a 5 minute conversation is, as K says, very telling). I was sat beside Andrew Carter, radio DJ and last years winner of Scotsman of the year, who was welcome relief from the usual guest, and was there as he thought he should after winning last year. I say I was sat there, as the guy in charge of seating made it clear at the start of the evening I was to ensure this gentleman was made aware of how vibrant the Scottish community in Montreal is. Our group being the only one of the member groups who can number more than one member between the ages of 30 and 40 (beginning to see a pattern yet? ;p).

Also, the President of the Société St Jean-Baptiste (the Quebec National Society) was proudly relating to me how she was descended from the Plantagenets, and how she had ancestors on both sides of the War of the Roses. Genealogy was a big topic for the evening.

It seems I have now attended enough of this type of event, that my face is known to a few of the regulars, many of whom I can chat away with, so in the end I had a pleasant and entertaining evening, although whether I go next year remains to be seen!