Mary Soderstrom's Blog, page 114

Véhicule Press is taking a chance again: we've just signed a contract for a new book, tentatively called Making Waves: The Portuguese Adventure. Doesn't sound like it has much in common with my recent non-fiction, but, never fear, there is a direct line.

As I've traveled around over the last few years, researching my trio of books about nature, cities, and history and my recent fiction, I've been amazed at how frequently I encountered the Portuguese and their descendants. That wasn't a surprise in São Paulo, Brazil, featured in Green City, but in Kochi, India, I visited the church where the great explorer Vasco da Gama was buried after his death in 1524. Then there were the people with Portuguese surnames I met in Tanzania when I went looking for the home of wild African violets for The Violets of Usambara. Long before then, though, I saw Portuguese cod fishermen playing soccer in a parking lot in St. John's, Newfoundland, and even farther back, I remember the local grocery in San Diego, founded by a Portguese family to provision the tuna fleet.

In short the Portuguese were everywhere, and, as I discovered when I began research, they were leaders in other ways too--Lisbon was rebuilt along rational, Haussmannian lines a century before the Baron rejigged Paris, while the Carnation Revolution of the 1970s is a model of how to change a regime peacefully, to name only two.

Now all I have to do is write the book!

Photo: the view across the Tagus River, not far from where it flows into the Atlantic.

Here's the picture of the statue where we'll be meeting for a Jane's Walk of Outremont on Saturday Mary 2 (in French) and Sunday May 3 (bilingual.) As you can see the park is beginning to turn green. The forecast for the weekend is sun, too, so be there or be square.

Meeting Place: Parc Beaubien, Côte Ste-Catherine Road between Stuart an McEachran in Outremont.

Duration: An hour and a half, or so.

End: Parc Saint-Viateur, where those who want can picnic together.

In May 2007, a year after Jane Jacobs died, her friends in Toronto began a tribute to her--free walks led by people passionate about a neighborhood in honour of the urban pioneer and great champion of the walkable city. Since then the Jane's Walk idea has spread across the continent. This year there will be more than 20 cities participating, and Montreal will probably have about a dozen individual walk, all taking place on May 2 or 3.

The Centre for Urban Ecology is the organizer in Montreal. So far walks are set for Mile End, Milton-Park, NDG, la Petite Patrie, the Gay Village, St. Henri-Tucot interchange area, Villeray and Ouotremont, with some neighborhoods getting more than one walk. Since this is a citizen's initiative, the walks will probably be quite eclectic.

Among them will be two in Outremont led by me, one in French on Saturday May 2 and a bilingual French-English one on Sunday May 3. The title is: From Dr. Beaubien's Farm to Bernard Avenue Bling. Both will begin in Parc Beaubien before winding around the neighborhood where I've lived for ages. We'll go past the remnants of one of the first farms in the area, go along an old Amerindian trail (Côte Sainte-Catherine Road,) past some truly lovely big houses, check out the eruv and some much more modest housing before ending up along the Bernard Avenue shopping street. Then those who want can picnic in Parc Saint-Viateur, either feasting on a lunch they'd brought or on goodies bought at one of the restos on Bernard. Sign up here.