NEU!

Oh yeah, and then my internet service conked out. There was a reason I did not post yesterday, and that that was the original reason I started that 'story'.

Since meaningless details of the local area are so interesting (esp. when measurements are given in metric!), Montreal, like most islands, has a road that runs around it. From Dorval (where the airport is) to Pointe-Claire (my town) it is called "Lakeshore" or "Bord du Lac". It becomes "Beaconsfield Boulevard" in Beaconsfield (the true affluent suburbs that people should hate, if you ask me - the cheapest homes go for about 1/4 million, but many are 1/2 a multiples of - the part of the West Island I live in is old cottages built on the old farm land outside Ville Marie (Montreal's original name) long before (colonial slave owning era, Pointe-Claire was one of the earliest settlements in New France) and then after WWII - most people who buy property in my neighbourhood now tear down the shitty old houses and build uglier new ones. So, the property value is high (this house might sell for $215,000, but the buildings are shit. There are more and more abandoned homes in Valois, the village I live in), despite the fact that it is not a Boulevard, but do not tell that to the Beaconsfield snobs that insisted on renaming that stretch of road that. It actually returns to the name "Lakeshore" when you get to Baie-d'Urfé. Then it changes to "Rue Sainte-Anne" in Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue which then curves up North turning splitting into "Chemin Ste-Marie" and "Chemin Senneville" the latter which snakes over the top of the island and turns to Montreal's longest unbroken road (I think?) "Boulevard Gouin Ouest" when it meets the above mentioned Chemin de l’Anse-à-l’Orme. Gouin (boulevard of seedy strip joints and tenements full of drug dealers) runs all the way through Kirkland (more or less Beaconsfield North, now home of W____'s older sister, or the last I knew), Pierrefonds (though most people driving it switch to Pierrefonds Boulevard here because the Gouin veers off and follows the water and is quite the narrow old road), Sainte-Geneviève, Dollard-des-Ormeaux (home of Jer!, the Western part of which is as wealthy as Beaconsfield, the Eastern part is the poorest part of the West Island, where W____ was from and where my mother taught. W____ actually lived in a nicer home than I did though), Roxboro (which blends with the East of DDO and has actual slums/projects and a rising number of killings) to Saint-Laurent to Ahuntsic to Montreal North (home of Motorcycle Mama) where most start following Boulevard Henri-Bourassa Est (Henri-Bourassa Ouest begins in Dorval and is a continuation of the Pointe-Claire road, Hymus. Follow Hymus West and it turns into Chemin Ste-Marie in Kirkland and then splits in two, one fork turning into Chemin de l’Anse-à-l’Orme and the other continuing as Chemin Ste-Marie until it turns into Rue Sainte-Anne and back into Lakeshore!) and the rest of the Island is now pretty much all "Montreal". But Gouin continues parallel to Boulevard Perras (?) heading East, until "Gouin Est" takes over for the East End of Montreal. It becomes "Rue-Notre-Dame" as it snakes South under the island. Depending on preference and idea of what constitutes the "Island of Montreal", you can continue along the mainland on Notre-Dame as it sorta turns into "Saint-Jacques" and then "Saint-Joseph", or you can jump across the canal and into Verdun/La Salle (and ignore Pointe-Saint-Charles) along "Saint-Patrick" on the Northern bit of LaSalle (where Miche was born?) or the Southern bit that runs along the Aqueduct, "Boulevard de La Vérendrye". On the other side of the Aqueduct is Verdun's "Boulevard de Champlain", while on the South side you have "Boulevard LaSalle" which merges with "de La Vérendrye" via 75th and continues as "LaSalle" until you get into Lachine where it merges again with "Boulevard Saint Joseph" until you reach Dorval where it becomes "Lakeshore" again.

I am skronked out and not exactly sure why I wrote that, except that I was perhaps getting it straight in my head.