Exposure

This time of year, the days are longer and the extra light is surprising.

Winter ends, I go outside, and all of a sudden, I'm surrounded by neighbours. Spring conjures them up on the sidewalk.

I'm in my bathrobe, putting out the bag of dirty diapers, the green box full of wine bottles, or, later in the season, waving a shovel crazy-lady style at a cat defecating in the garden. Oh, hi.

In the winter, the cold makes everyone scurry home where long hours of darkness insulate us. Now, walking down the street is as revealing as taking a shower at the Y. Oh, hi, here we are, completely exposed.

It takes some adjustment.

In the face of all this light, I don't wear my glasses. Instant privacy. If I can't see the neighbourhood, it can't see me! I am regularly proven wrong, when blurry people wave at me and I wave back without knowing who they are.

But this willful myopia keeps the buzzing café across the street in its place, at a fuzzy remove.

That is – until I catch a glimpse of something interesting – like a couple actually getting married on the terrace outside Open da Night, or Thomas Fersen lining up for coffee, or neighbours I didn't even know were pregnant, out in the sun, with a brand new baby.

In that case, I run for my glasses and peer out the window, or better yet, rush right outside to get a good look.

Because, of course, I don't want to miss anything.

February

This time of year, it feels like there is only slush and garbage and plastic bags windsocking in the trees.

Inspiration is hard to come by.

Last week I went to another city, another country. They do things differently there.

I felt like the world's last pedestrian, wandering through webs of parking lots, malls and chain restaurants. The emptiness was huge. No row houses, no stroller jams on sidewalks, no one flying through stop signs on bike.

It just wasn't crowded or dirty or slushy enough, either.

Good to be home. Even in February.

End of an Era

The sign in the window of Maple Leaf Hat and Cap Company reads, "Closing. Everything Must Go."

I can't believe it. I was in here just a month ago. Barry Shinder was sewing caps and telling me that business was slow.

He's being saying that since I first met him a year and a half ago, so it's a scenario I could comfortably imagine repeating itself for years to come. I would go in to buy gift caps and visit my favourite piece of living history (see original blog post) and Barry would be there, sewing away as he's been doing for his entire life.

But he's closing up shop.

The little factory on the first floor of the St.-Laurent triplex is more chaotic than usual. Bolts of fabric are heaped willy-nilly on the cutting tables next to half-sewn caps, boxes of brims and big juice jars full of snaps. Orange For Sale or Sold! stickers dot the old metal shelves and cabinets.

Barry Shinder's manufacturing costs became too high.

Last week his main client, the garment company who contracted him to make their caps, said they couldn't afford his prices anymore.

They offered him a job. So now, instead of sewing caps in the business his father started on the Main 80 years ago, Barry will commute to work in the Chabanel district and get paid a wage. No overhead, no staff (for years he's employed three workers during his busy season).

"I'll be a worker instead of a boss," he says. "I'm losing money here so anything I make will be better. It'll be money with no headaches!"














Barry Shinder doesn't look like a man without headaches. He's losing weight and sleep worrying about how he'll manage to get rid of everything, rent out his 1800 square feet of factory space, pay off his debts and change his life.

"I've never worked anywhere else. This is my whole life." Then he pauses and adds optimistically, "At least I'll get up in the morning knowing I have work. And imagine, an 8-4 job! Instead of seven days a week!"

He'll be bringing his dad's old Singer sewing machine with him to sew caps. "That is one thing I'd never sell," he declares.

While we're talking, the owner of a hat shop in Côte de Neiges comes in to scoop up some stock at reduced prices. Usually, he goes to a wholesaler where all the hats are made in China and sell for a maximum of $5 each. "Five dollars, and that's top quality!" he tells Barry. "A simple cap, like this," he says, picking up a cotton flat cap, "20 cents."

"But the plastic in that brim costs me 45 cents!" Barry objects. He turns to me and sighs. "There you have the whole story."

A triplex in Mile End is valuable real estate these days, yet Barry says he can't imagine selling. So at least there's that. The rows of sewing machines, the stacks of caps and the dust from decades of fabric-cutting will all be gone. And what will become of the shelves of old blocks he used for shaping caps? At least Barry will still be around.

"If I had to move out of this area it'd kill me," he says of the block where he's lived since 1953 when he was six years old. "I could walk around here blindfolded."

As I leave, wet snow is falling and I notice that just north of Barry's place, in what used to be a neighbourhood tavern full of battered wicker chairs, a fancy new bar has opened up. Change is everywhere. Everything must go.


link to original blog post on Maple Leaf Hat and Cap

Ode on a City Wall

I came to Montreal for the first time when I was 21. It was summer and I'd just spent a season planting trees in the bush, getting sunburned, blistered and bitten by blackflies.

The city was hot and steamy, full of traffic and bicycles. People crowded the parks and sidewalks and ate in restaurants that opened onto the street as if there wasn't enough room inside to contain so much life.

I ran through a sprinkler park wedged into the middle of a block of rowhouses, walked up and down the Main, bought beads in a shop by the bus station, drank the best coffee I'd ever had and ate things I'd never tasted before – Chilean avocado sandwiches and heart of palm salads. I was so hungry for all of it, for the whole city full of languages, the clatter of old Portuguese guys playing dominoes, the cold beer for sale at every dépanneur on every corner, the way people looked and talked and danced. I was in love.

I came back a year later. It was November. The city was frozen, snowless, bleak and ugly. I walked all over looking for traces of the things I loved. There were only grey streets, à louer signs in storefronts, barren rings of hockey rinks waiting for ice. Montreal was on the skids and I was without prospects, but somehow it was all exciting.

I got a job as a waitress and then as a reporter for a tiny newspaper that paid me by the column inch. At the top of my stories they misspelled my name. My roommate and I lived on reduced price cheeses from Vielle Europe and frozen perogis.

Our landlord controlled the heat in our cheap St.-Urbain apartment and it was the warmest place I'd ever have. I slept with my window cracked open; swaddled up in bed I could feel feathery snowflakes kiss my nose. We lit our kitchen and its ugly linoleum with a desk lamp and a string of fairy lights. Though the green shimmering Montreal I'd first met was nowhere to be found, it was still the early days of love. Nothing could get me down.






















The "i love you..." graffiti makes me think of all this. The first time I saw it, I crossed the street to get a better look. It was on the no-man's-land of St.-Viateur East, low-down, close to the sidewalk. The writing was loopy, the way a schoolgirl would write in a diary. Later I saw that sometimes the i was dotted with a heart. The words are always followed by a pensive dot, dot, dot.

I ask people in the neighbourhood if they've seen this writing and they nod and smile, saying, "Oh yeah..." as if it reminds them of something, too.

A note scrawled on a garage door or on a bit of stucco close to the ground. It's like a little valentine. The words are seed bombs that guerilla gardeners throw into fenced-off vacant lots, planting flowers in the cracks in the concrete. Like the hearts that someone (the same someone?) is putting in the stop lights, the messages are surprise gifts, company in an unexpected place.

But who is this, "I", this "you" ? I wonder.

There's something wistful about the loopy writing. Maybe it's the dot dot dot that sends me back to that time back when I first loved the city, before I ever got my bike stolen, or my brakes stolen off my bike, or my handlebars stolen off my bike, before I ever got sick of bagels and waiting for the bus. Back when I used to go out late and come home later and we seemed to subsist on beer and ginger candies; when our Greek landlord greeted us shouting, "Beautiful girls! Beautiful girls!" The way he pronounced girls made it sound like he was complimenting us for having breathing organs like fish.

I take pictures of the graffiti, which really seems too sweet and gentle to call graffiti. I start a small collection.

But after a while the writing on the wall turns into one more familiar thing that I actually know nothing about, like the mystery of so many of my neighbours. Where does he go every day? Why does she leave the lights on all night? What are their actual jobs?

Then I notice the i love yous are fragile. When I go back and try to find them again, I discover they've been scrawled on top of or painted over.

That's to be expected, not much stands still, untouched. Bikes get stolen and my giddy infatuation has turned into something more complex. Yet in the noisy blur of snow plows and bike thieves, someone is out there, writing love on the wall, surprising us and triggering a thousand different thoughts with the words and the dot dot dot...

The Big Picture

Maclean stands on St.-Viateur with a clipboard and a pencil, peering across the street. He's an artist, but at the moment he's not making sketches, he's on a reconnaissance mission for Car-Free Mile End.

"I'm taking down the names of all the stakeholders," he says, as he notes the name and address of each business for future reference.

The sun is starting to go down, the light is bouncing off the buildings and seems suspended in the heavy air. It's warm for late November and there's been a smog warning every day this week.

The mild, sluggish quality of the day dovetails with Maclean's project, a community initiative designed as a local response to global warming and peak oil.

"I'm motivated by big picture issues," he says of his plan to get cars off St.-Viateur between Parc Avenue and St.-Urbain. "We have to do something."

Maclean is soft-spoken and never seems rushed, even though he's the father of a two-year-old son, paints in his studio three or more days a week, works at an art auction house, transports his family's laundry and groceries on a bicycle cart, plays ball hockey religiously on Sunday mornings and, now, spearheads a grassroots community group dedicated to opposing car culture.

"I used to want to design cars," he admits. As a kid in Winnipeg, he wanted to be an engineer. Although he's since changed directions, he never left behind the question, or the problem, of the car.


Maclean first started re-directing traffic on St.-Viateur about 9 years ago.

One summer morning we woke up to find the stop signs at the corner of Waverly transformed from "ARRET" to "ART."

Alternating letters were blocked out with red tape. It was so simple and striking that it was surprising no one had ever seen the art in the stop signs before. "People don't think about what surrounds them because they see it so often," Maclean told the newspaper at the time. "But my altering a stop sign just slightly makes them think twice."

Friend and fellow artist Billy Mavreas is prompt and pithy when asked to describe Maclean's work: "It's constantly evolving around a constellation of central themes – the Canadian landscape and road system."

In 2007, as a response to global warming, Maclean launched the satirical website kyotomotors.ca. He made tiny chrome magnets, perfect replicas of the "Legacy" or "Denali" tags on SUVs, except the names he covertly stuck on the backs of neighbourhood vehicles spelled: "Excess"; "Denial"; "Obligation"; and "Kyoto."

"I thought I could be the cheeky artist and put these Kyoto Motors magnets on cars and then say, 'OK, I've done my part,'" he says now. Over time, he realized that if he really wanted to close the gap between SUV drivers and cyclists, cynical gestures weren't helpful.

"Matt helped me see that," he says, referring to Mathieu Vick, cofounder of Car-Free Mile End.















At Café Olimpico on the first snowstormy morning of December, he and Matt talk global as well as local and vent their frustration over climate change deniers.

"Ultimately, peak oil will change things, whether people accept global warming as real or not," says Matt who is finishing a PhD in Astrophysics on the evolution of stars. "Instead of wasting 10 years debating whether it's real, we should act now! If we get cars off St-Viateur, it's going to help." Matt gives an edgewise glance and smiles, shaking his head at the notion of this small project as a remedy for a potentially doomed planet.

"It sounds ludicrous," concedes Maclean. "But the best case scenario to come out of Copenhagen is for people to ask, 'What's going to happen on the ground?' It's people who decide what their communities are going to do."

In the five months since they formed Car-Free Mile End, which has a core of six active members (including Zvi Leve, an urban transportation expert) and hundreds of fans on Facebook, they have created a blog, carfreemileend.blogspot.com, and a website, carfreemileend.com.

If you think the idea of getting cars off St.-Viateur is dreamy and unrealistic, have a look at the website FAQs: carfreemileend.com/faq.html. The answers are detailed and grounded in research. They explain the draw of a vehicle-free area for local businesses; make provisions for commercial delivery vehicles during certain hours; and cite the importance of avoiding a tourist-trap atmosphere.


And, if the notion of getting cars off a four-block stretch of one street seems like a local drop in the bucket, think about how cities will need to be rebuilt to adapt to life after peak oil. This is one of Nik Luka's main areas of study. He teaches architecture and urban planning at McGill. Matt and Maclean met with him to make their case and Nik Luka liked the idea. He's assigned a group of graduate students to study the potential of a car-free St.-Viateur and help survey locals.

Maybe this century-old, high-density, foot and bike-friendly neighbourhood can set an example and un-pave the way to carless, or at least car-light future.

To begin with, Car-Free Mile End plans to organize several festive, temporary street closures in summer 2010.

"It's not enough," says Maclean. "What's enough requires dismantling industrialized civilization. Rant, rant, rant," he adds, self-mockingly.















It may not be enough, but Maclean believes in the repercussions of individual actions. He refuses to own a car. He observes a self-imposed ban on flying. He dreams of putting "delivery by artist" in the contract so that when his dealer sells one of his paintings he can wheel it to the buyer by bike. And, he is "very much against pens" since finding out about the huge plastic (including disposable pens) trash vortex in the ocean.

In his studio full of tools and canvases and road signs, there are globes; the earth, the moon and stars. He's been painting the heavens, piercing vivid blue and orange tarps with grommets to form the shape of constellations.

He finds some solace in the grand scheme of the cosmos and the cyclical movement of planets around the sun.

Today, as snow whips by the window, he'll be working on one of his Dead End paintings, inspired by the black and yellow checkered sign that denotes the end of the road.

"It's the ultimate human predicament," he says, as he considers the checkerboard grid. "Whether it's personal, or the end of a whole civilization, it's like, Whoa. Slow down! a) you're going to die, b) you're part of something bigger."

The artist is here to signal us: our lives, our neighbourhood streets are part of the big picture. Stop. Proceed with Caution.


Links:
carfreemileend.com
carfreemileend.blogspot.com
kyotomotors.ca
rogerbellemare.com/maclean

Titles of artwork by Maclean above (not including work in progress in studio):
Untitled (ART - Hutchison and Van Horne), 2005
Northern Landscape, 2007
Winter Dead-End #1 and #2, 2005

Subterranean Blues

When you step down into the cavernous basement warehouse of Jeans Jeans Jeans, owner Borys Fridman is there to greet you, like a maître d' at the front of a crowded bistro.

"How we doing?" he says, and to his legions of returning customers: "Good to see you! What can we do for you today?"

This is no generic Gap-style greeting. Borys gives you his full attention, pinpoints your size exactly, and with his jeans ESP, reads your needs.

Then he calls out to his staff: "Maria/Vanessa/Fatima, can you show her something dark and simple, no bling on the pockets, straight leg?"

Here your eyes widen and he tells you, "I also read minds."

And this is how, from the fluorescent-lit cave of a million jeans, they bring you the ones you'll probably want.

"He's the Jeans Guru!" says my friend Merrianne, a long-time customer. "At first you don't understand why this older mustached guy is telling you what jeans to wear – but then you realize, he really knows!"

People come in and ask for him by name. One customer says that if she went into the store and Borys wasn't there, she'd come back later. As she puts it, "You want his stamp of approval on the jeans you buy."

Borys seems to know all there is to know about his chosen field. He started the business 35 years ago, when he was 21. In the 80s, he had 16 stores all over the city, including this one that he's kept, in a rue de Gaspé warehouse at the east end of St.-Viateur.

The garment district is being redeveloped and with plans in the works to extend St.-Viateur East, it's not yet clear what the future holds for Jeans Jeans Jeans. Borys, who grew up on Durocher and Van Horne, and has seen the neighbourhood through plenty of changes, says with a shrug, "We'll deal with what we have to deal with."


Once he announces your requirements to his people, Maria, or one of her fleet of helpers, squeezes between the racks of jeans and hops on a stepladder to pull down the right size from colour-coded hangers.

If Jeans Jeans Jeans is a three-ring circus with ladders, acrobats and jeans in every ring, Borys is the ringmaster. He juggles a dozen customers at once, reading their perfect and not-so-perfect bodies with his mind, funneling them into fitting rooms, chatting, charming, and kneeling at the foot of strollers to talk to toddlers.

"I multi-task," Borys says, as his eyes dart around, tracking clients. "I pay attention, make sure everyone is taken care of, that customers are happy, having a good time."

His father, Izak Fridman, who is 82 and works in the store five days a week (dressed not in jeans but in dress pants), says proudly, "He's very good with people."

"It's just a matter of paying attention," says Borys.

When he notices a red-headed employee searching through the racks with an energetic focus, he calls: "Talk to me, Vanessa!"

For a minute they confer about a customer who has so far rejected all the jeans she's been offered. "Try Miss Me," Borys suggests, naming a brand. "It's a little bit louder but it'll be nice on her." Vanessa climbs the ladder to do his bidding.

Most of the time, Borys gravitates to the front of the store where he can keep an eye on all comings and goings. The cracked concrete floor is covered with a strip of indoor/outdoor carpeting duct-taped at the edges. Overhead, a sign explains that zero spending on carpets and fixtures keeps prices low. All the jeans here are heavily discounted, often selling for half of what they'd go for in other stores.

It's not fancy, but the service is attentive.

"It's the opposite of the uninterested fashionistas at a posh place," says Merrianne. "You feel special the whole time!"

This kind of attention can be disconcerting if you're used to regular store clerks who traffic in indifference or the other extreme – the hard-sell. At his place, Borys insists, "We don't sell jeans, we make customers." You can try on jeans all day if you want, leave without buying, and come back the next day to mull over the decision some more.

The store is open six days a week and Borys is there every day. Mornings he visits suppliers to get the brands customers are asking for that week. At night, he's a barfly with a purpose.

"I go out to see what's going on and what people are wearing. I drop in or stand outside to get an idea of trends, of what moves the market."

Wherever he goes, Borys is recognized. He once ran into customers on a beach in Mexico. "They said, 'Hey, it's the jean guy!' I always get a little embarrassed. Outside of business, I'm a shy person."

I notice that he doesn't want to talk about himself. He would rather talk jeans, and this he does with moxie and innuendo:

"You try on a pair of jeans that's right for you, you come out with a little smirk on your face that says, 'Yes, I'm hot!' When it's right, it's right."

"Your assets are perfect," he says, when a guy turns to check the view in the mirror. To a woman, he'll say: "Your attributes look great," or, "You need to go a size smaller in those;" or sometimes even, with what he refers to as 'tactful honesty': "They don't look good on you."

People value his frank response – the confidence he's acquired through years of experience tends to give him the last word on the subject.

Borys tells me about Nudies, the expensive "dry denim" jeans you're supposed to wear for six months before washing (!) and True Religion, another pricey brand, with a Buddha on the label. He says his own personal preference runs to Rare Jeans or Edwins made with Japanese denim. "Guys are touchy-feely about that perfect pair of jeans. They're also brand-whores more than women."

All this makes me reminisce about the bygone era when all anyone had to do was buy new Levi's once a year.

Borys tells me that Levi's are back, big time, with young hipsters.

I get excited. "Really? Levi's are back? Can I get some?"

"Hm. Not at your age," he advises gently.

What?!

"You've done that," he tells me. "It's like old boyfriends. You see them, you want to be with them again, and within 30 minutes you know why you broke up. It doesn't work to do it again."

I try to argue this point, but he is unmovable, even smug, as if to say: go against my advice at your own peril, you'll only embarrass yourself.

On a grey Saturday afternoon at Jeans Jeans Jeans, the women's changing rooms are full. A small crowd is lined up and waiting as more people clomp down the stairs. The woman hidden at a sewing machine behind a clothes rack hems jeans non-stop.

Girls rotate in front of the mirrors, trying get a good look at their backsides.

"Tu les aime pas?" a slender young woman asks her boyfriend as she revolves in a skin-tight pair of dark jeans that are sparkly with rococo stitching.

The radio blares "Young Hearts Be Free Tonight," and I watch the teenagers with the dazzling back pockets. I imagine a day in their far-off future, when they ask about the jeans with bling and Borys, still on the job as the denim authority, tells them: "You can't go back. It's time for something different."

p.s. November 2010
Jeans Jeans Jeans moved out of the basement and around the corner to:
5575 Casgrain
Montreal
514-279-3303

Live Forever

Lana Kim McGeary


My grandmother Adele grew herbs in her Vermont garden and hung bunches of comfrey, red clover, sweet cicely, lovage and lemon thyme from her kitchen ceiling to dry. Rosehips tangled by her back door through which the resident garter snake slithered often enough to be named Henry/Henrietta. Adele used to serve nasturtiums in a salad bowl the size of a baby's bathtub and was fond of saying, in reference to the healthy habits she energetically espoused: "You'll live forever if you're not careful!" and "Everything in moderation, including moderation!"

When I hear about a woman who gives walking tours of edible herbs in Mile End and on Mount Royal, of course I think of Adele.

A friend points out Lana Kim McGeary to me at the Social Club on St-Viateur. She's an herbalist who enjoys strong coffee. I sidle up to her and mention that my grandmother Adele Dawson was an herbalist. She says, "Of course I know Adele Dawson! She's famous!"

I love that she says this, and that she uses the present tense. It's as if Adele is right here, even though she died 17 years ago.

After meeting Lana, who says that Adele was a pioneer in bringing back the tradition of the Wise Woman or village healer, I go home. For the first time, I Google my grandmother –someone who never heard that term. It turns out that Adele is alive on the internet. I have a copy of her book Herbs: Partners in Life, but I didn't know it was in its third printing and available for sale online. There are even customer comments on Amazon that say, "I liked Dawson's voice," and "her writing style is friendly and wise."

This makes my eyes sting, although it shouldn't surprise me that Adele is still making herself heard. A few years ago, I transcribed some of my favourite passages from her book because I liked the way her personality bubbled off the page.

"No one wants to take a chance on having a parsley shortage," she writes, making me think I've been remiss not to have ever worried about this. In an assertion that sounds counter-intuitive, she says: "Another healthy and appetizing addition to the salad bowl is the stinging nettle." (That's if you get to the plant before it grows too prickly.)

She provides a recipe for a summer drink made with comfrey, violet and raspberry leaves and mint, and then advises the reader to "wait smugly for the inevitable delighted comments of your guests."

That's Adele –waiting smugly for the inevitable delighted comments of her guests! She was always so confident and satisfied with her efforts, it only made sense for everyone else to appreciate them, too. She liked to say she was a NBEOE –a Natural Born Expert on Everything– and, after a Vermont newspaper once referred to her as a state treasure, she often shamelessly augmented her status, declaring, "I'm a national treasure, you know!"

So, it's because of my grandmother Adele, herbalist, national treasure and NBEOE, that I find myself sitting on a sunny slope at the base of Mount Royal with Lana, who's leading a Mountain Herb Walk.

I've met Lana a few times by now and talking to her always feels like a little trip to Vermont somehow, or, as if Adele is making an appearance in my neighbourhood. Lana pays attention to the plants that grow in the cracks in the sidewalk and was able to identify the sprawling green overtaking our infinitesimal yard: "Ground ivy," she noted. "Very good for kids, for fevers."

Now it's early October and the leaves on Mount Royal are just starting to turn. It was a weekend like this, 24 years ago, back when I was a teenager, that I went to Adele's 80th birthday party. It was two days long, with guests spilling out of the house into the garden. There was a pig and a lamb roasting outside, and cake, and 80 bottles of champagne. Friends and family members from all over had every motel from Marshfield to Plainfield booked solid.

On the mountain, I feel the sun on my back and wonder how many people throw themselves a party like that at 80.















Lana is talking about the pharmacopoeia that is the dandelion. She mentions eating the tender greens in the spring and using the root for tinctures in the fall. "Some say there is nothing the dandelion can't heal," she says.

Her language is familiar to me and so are the names of the other plants she points out on our walk, not that I could recognize them growing. Burdock, wild ginger and stinging nettle –that healthy and appetizing addition to the salad bowl!

Further up Mount Royal the city recedes, the birds are more audible under the canopy of maples, the traffic fainter; it's more like Vermont.

I've been wondering about it and I realize I don't know exactly when Adele became an herbalist. I consult with my mother and my aunt.

They say that it was after she moved to Vermont, adding that it may have been inspired by a life-changing remedy of boneset tea that cured her of Dengue fever while she was in the West Indies.

Adele was almost 60 when she started a new life. That's when she planted a garden and threw herself into learning about herbs. She collected a library of books on the subject, studied hard and figured out how to use them.

"She would give out herbs, but also advice, " my Aunt Susie remembers.

"I never knew how much to take seriously," my mother says. "We were never sure. She had such utter confidence about everything. I do remember being impressed that she was able to identify so many wild plants."

Our family tended to see Adele as an unreliable narrator because she'd always been an extravagant storyteller, an instinctive embellisher, the ultimate self-appointed expert.

But as Lana points out, part of herbalism is learning as much as you can yourself so you don't have to rely on healthcare experts. It's DIY, and Adele was a natural on that front.

Of course, I'm only scratching the surface here. Many may want to weigh in, family members included, or especially. While I'm at it, maybe I should confess that I still have Adele's copy of Culpeper's Herbal that I borrowed from her library of books on herbs (a collection that really should stay intact) approximately 13 years ago. I may be unreliable myself.

Birthday parties aside, there were always people at Adele's. Artists, potters, dowsers, woodworkers, writers, travelers. She had housemates like a college student. And she had followers. I remember being surprised by the reverence they sometimes displayed, as if they didn't know she was a whole person with a sense of humour and mischief, a stubborn side, and a temper like a sudden hailstorm.














One time one of her admirers asked me, "How does it feel to be Adele's grand-daughter?"

How to answer a question that was not really about me? I felt too dull, quiet and shy to be the granddaughter of a natural-born national treasure, but that didn't seem like much of an answer.

Meeting Lana spurred me to consider the question again. For my answer, see above.



Herbs: Partners in Life

For more information on Lana Kim McGeary's walking tours and workshops, contact her at: abundanceliving (at) hotmail.com