environment | A storytelling home

It’s been a while since I’ve linked to the articles I’ve written for Untapped Cities. Since June I’ve been writing two articles/month about fun, unique things to discover in Montreal.

Here’s what I’ve been writing about:

The environmentally friendly Ruelles vertes (green alleyways) being created behind the tightly packed facades of buildings in residential neighborhoods:

http://untappedcities.com/2013/08/07/montreals-ruelles-vertes-green-alleyways-help-the-environment-and-create-a-sense-of-community/

A fun pedicab tour of Hochelaga-Maisonneuve, an area with a rich past that earned a bad reputation in the last few decades but is currently experiencing a creative transformation:

http://untappedcities.com/2013/07/22/eco-friendly-pedicab-tours-document-montreals-urban-transformation/

Mural festival invited twenty street artists to come and give part of Saint-Laurent boulevard a colorful makeover:

http://untappedcities.com/2013/07/03/first-edition-of-the-mural-street-art-festival-in-montreal/

After a successful test season last year, four public pianos have been installed for the summer in the district of the Plateau-Mont-Royal:

http://untappedcities.com/2013/06/25/pop-up-pianos-montreal-piano-des-villes-piano-des-champs/

Miyuki Tanobe is a Japanese painter that fell in love with Montreal in the 1970s and became known here as a painter of street life. On a nondescript street corner in Verdun, a mural has been painted in her honor:

http://untappedcities.com/2013/06/10/a-mural-for-miyuki-tanobe-painter-of-street-life-in-montreal/

Every Sunday (weather permitting) a group of fighters meet to hold friendly foam sword combats:

http://untappedcities.com/2013/05/27/sundays-montreal-guerriers-de-la-montagne-knights-warriors-mount-royal/

I’ve already spoken about my mother’s work on this blog before, when I wrote about the piece of her’s that I have displayed in my entrance.

This lovely fall weekend, I went to the opening of her latest exhibit, which is on until January 20th at the Musée Beaulne in Coaticook, Quebec.

My mother’s main theme for the last 15 years has been her love for trees. She likes to build pieces paying homage to their strength, their beauty and their importance on this planet. Many of these artworks also include a message pertaining to the destruction of forests, be it by mother nature itself (the 1998 ice storm) or by humans in their actions that are too often guided by greed and lack of environmental awareness.

In her latest showing, she has decided to add a human element to her work, thus acknowledging their presence on this planet and their fundamental goodness as people (as opposed to only showing them as destroyers).

I thought I’d share some pictures of the exhibit on here: