A Tres Ecumenical Evening in Montreal

Dinner at Chez Schwartz for smoked meat sandwiches followed by a trip to the Oratoire-St.-Joseph. 

Amen!

 (Pictures: M.C. Gigliotti)

International Incident #3: "The Mass is ended, now leave."

Attended a beautiful French mass at the gorgeous Notre-Dame Basilica of Montreal on Saturday evening, at the end of which there was a taped announcement in French and English, the gist of which was "thanks for coming, now please stop praying -- we've got a light and music show to prepare for!"
(Pictures: M.C. Gigliotti)

International Incident #2: What's Canadian for "Rubbernecking"?

TWICE on the trip from Niagara Falls to Montreal on Route 20 we suffered traffic delays (of 45 minutes and 30 minutes, respectively) simply because of accidents on the OTHER side of the highway.

I thought Canadians were supposed to be smarter than we!

(And, if the young lady at the concession stand at the Royal George Theatre in Niagara-on-the-Lake, where older daughter and I were attending the George Bernard Shaw Festival's production of the  K. Weill/O. Nash/S.J. Perlman musical One Touch of Venus, is any indication -- with her mis-use of a calculator to tally the purchase of a bottle of water and a box of Junior Mints, our neighbor to the north is no threat to beating the US in all that STEM stuff either).

"So what part of Ohio are you from?"...

...asked the Canadian Border Patrol officer when we pulled up to show our passports, after admittedly I had noticed but ignored the stop sign (in two different languages!) and drove up almost right behind the car in front of us.

"We live in Connecticut," I responded.

"Oh, usually people who don't stop at the stop sign are from Ohio."

"I was raised in Ohio!"

"Okay, I'll take that as a legitimate explanation.  How long you here for...?