Dear Dad I've felt you very close by all this past week.. Warming me as the temperature grows colder, cheering me as my thoughts go darker. I have felt drawn to Old Montreal in a very powerful way and couldn't figure out why i kept heading down there. Till I wandered around on a chilly day, taking photos as the sun kept popping out of the clouds, and it occurred to me that Old Montreal was OUR place.. the place where old meets new, in its old stone and cutting edge design, somehow connecting the old world whence you sprang and the new world that held so much promise for you. Old Montreal was the neighborhood the we visited most often, the location of one of your earliest -and grandest- workplaces when you came to Montreal,the place where you splurged on a fancy meal at a fancy restaurant for a mightily impressed teenager going to college in the big city, the place where we visited museums with baby Kev and Mish, the Old Port where we would walk past huge ships and where we skated in winter, alongside the mighty St-Lawrence and looking back at the city that always inspired us and out at Habitat and the other vestiges of Expo 67, where a funky young version of you got excited about the world's foods and fashion and music and art and... infinite possibilities. It's been lovely having you alongside me, Papa. Your positivity drive me forward and your gentle spirit comfort and inspire me now and always. Love, Fi
