"Remembering F. Clarke Fraser"

8am, June 29th, 2015.  Hotel Bonaventure, Montreal.

With the five speakers (left to right) - Patrick McLeod (Victoria), Diana Juriloff (UBC), Rick Finnell (Austin, TX), Jacquetta Trasler (McGill), and Michel Vekemans (Paris) - we had a really good hour-long tribute to our graduate supervisor at McGill, F. Clarke Fraser.

Here are the five, after their talks.  Diana and Michel were two of Clarke's last PhD students.  At age 94, Clarke was still sharp, still interested in what we were doing on the genetics of cleft lip and neural tube defects, and still able to come up with the key questions.

Diana, while reminding us all that it was only 5am Vancouver time and that she is NOT a morning person, gave a splendid talk.  "Oral Clefts" (cleft palate, cleft lip, and the multifactorial model) - Clarke's work and its impact, and our own work, including her current analysis of the role of methylation in the maternal effect on cleft lip risk.  I was so glad to be there.

Daphne Trasler (third from left), who did the early developmental work on cleft lip in the mouse and was a career-long close McGill colleague and friend of Clarke's, joined us for a 2-hour tea-visit ...

... from the left: Jacquetta Trasler (Daphne's genetics-prof daughter), Daphne, Rick, me, Susanna Finnell, Carolyn Kapron, Diana

Rodin

At the 'Musee des Beaux-Artes de Montreal'.

Skipping out of the meeting on Sunday, Diana and I headed for Rodin.  A good walk on a pleasant breezy afternoon, from our hotel up to Sherbrooke Street, with a stop for lunch at 'Vego', a vegetarian buffet that Flor introduced us to at the 2011 Human Genetics conference.  Many meals this trip!

The Museum was a bit of a puzzle.  I guess I haven't been for several years.  The old museum says RODIN, but we couldn't find a way in.  Then we turned around and spotted the new museum - also RODIN - across Sherbrooke Street.

the old ...

… and the new

The Rodin exhibit is huge (171 pieces) and so are many of the sculptures.  I much preferred the big ones, especially the 'patinated' plaster versions like "the Thinker" and "Eve", ready for bronze casting.  Not sure I have the processes entirely sorted - needed a clear stepwise demonstration.

the Thinker (in patinated plaster)

Eve (in patinated plaster)

Adam (in bronze) - controversially pointing to earth rather than to heaven

All interesting, but both of us had had enough of classical bodies and wished for some normal variation.

at rue Fabre

A few moments in late June.  Since age 14, I have loved these curving-stepped Montreal scapes, and never dreamt of being at home in one!

The apartment building itself, featuring the long turquoise snouts of two of its inhabitants ...

… and the annual duties of a Montreal landlord ...

… not to mention the backyard 'duties' of a Montreal (visiting) grand-mere.  "Twister"!

A leisurely breakfast of waffles in the back garden ...

… and planning the future (or at least the next few days)

A bit of scurry (Meo 'helping'), and the family is off for a week with Jane Anna Chapman and family on the island of Vinal Haven in Maine - guitar, bicycles and all.  I am the last out, en route next to the Hotel Bonaventure and the Clarke Fraser symposium.

Meo's BIXI ride

I have been dying to do this for ages and today I had my first-ever BIXI-bicycle ride.  Actually four rides.  It works like this.  You pay $5 and can take as many rides as you like in 24 hours, as long as each ride is less than half an hour.  First, find a bike (a challenge 'uptown' at 11 am on Thursday - all the bikes have been ridden 'downtown', to work).  No bikes left at stand#1.  At stand#2, the last bike was just disappearing.  Aargh.  Rachel's iPhone BIXI-app showed 0 bikes at stand#3, but as we got there (Parc-Laurier), the BIXI truck had just brought 12 bikes back uptown - and I only needed one.

Bike found, we rode off to the 'Bibliotheque Marc-Garneau' - a new glass-and-living-green-wall library that Lily loves, just a bit north of the train tracks.  Really good bicycle paths and I lumbered along behind the three.  Only one hill.  Maybe 20 minutes.  We parked the BIXI, then found that the library was closed till 1pm.  All fine.  Still lots of BIXIs to choose from.  We would continue on to the Jean Talon Market (15 minutes) and return for books and a good read between BIXI rides on our way back.

 
Strawberries here too - biologique, straight from the farm.  Just about as good as Doco's.  Rachel had brought their bicycle 'chariot' to carry berries home for winter.   Now chopped and frozen.

made it!

a sustaining berry drink

a BIT bigger than the Oak Street Farmers' Market

So, now that I've done it once ...

to Montreal

Here I find myself in Montreal!  Three days with Rachel and family before the Teratology Society meeting, June 28-July 1.  (I have come for a symposium in honour of Clarke Fraser, Diana's and my graduate supervisor at McGill, who died in December at age 94.)

June 23, 6am.  View from the porch of the old ranch house, shortly before Doco drove me to Castlegar and the plane.  Sun on the mountain, after the deluge.

June 24.  St. Jean-Baptiste Day.  Lily and Alice (with a friend each) and Rachel and I celebrated with a swim in the nearby Parc-Laurier outdoor pool - to my surprise, I liked it .  Next, a visit to their favourite Bo-Bec (yummy ice creams).  Later, back home at rue Fabre - Lily at her piano practice with Alice "helping".

Doco's grass

Crazy hens.  Doco has been working hard to repair the parts of the lawn munched by the snow-plow.  His last step before seeding was to bring multiple wheelbarrow-loads of rich wormy earth from Mick's garden.  No sooner had he up-ended the barrow than the foraging hens converged on the pile with their scratch scratch scratch.  By the time I got there with my camera, the pile was largely dispersed.  Farmer's helpers.  'Red' was in there too, but has just stalked off pretending he's not interested.

And then there are the vines ...

… actually Norbert's - delicious green eating-grapes.  They were growing so madly in all directions that Doco made slats to tie them to and tamed them, a little.  I think Doco just likes working up there in the orchard.  

Produce coming everywhere!  Buckets of strawberries.  Cherries and gooseberries a day or two from ripe.   I have been taming the raspberries in Chris's garden, just beginning to show red.   And of course there are piles of Chris's greens.  Where are all the eaters?

thrush (and lazuli bunting) song

At 6:30 yesterday morning, the Swainson's thrush sang its spring song, loud and clear, just across the creek from my bedroom window in the Old Ranch House.  My favourite birdsong - I hear it only in June, only in the tall forest, and mostly at dawn and dusk.  I thought the thrushes were not here this year, maybe because of the clearcut just above.  But, no.  Here it was!  So, how to post its song??  I took a photo out the window.  Somewhere there is a bird, but even I couldn't see it.  One seldom does, and then it is a rather plain brown bird.  Its song is its glory.  But I guess you can't hear it.

6:30 am

Today I had a bright idea(?)  My camera takes videos!  Not much to see, but I thought that if you closed your eyes you could hear the trill - something like: do-fa, re-so, mi-ti, fa-do (or C-F, D-G, E-A, F-C).  Up and up and up.  Susan Smith tells me that they actually keep singing higher and higher, above our range, and then start over at the bottom.  Helpful?

This evening, Doco and I walked up to Loch Colin where we could hear two thrushes singing their dusk song, up in the forest.  I pointed my camera at Loch Colin (where else?) and pressed record.  Four lovely songs.  Done, I noticed that the resident female Golden-eye duck was swimming on the pond and, it turns out, was swimming right through my 12-second video!  So, now you can see video of duck (rather small) and hear audio of thrush (a bit faint).
[or you could if I could figure out how to upload the video!?@*!  Stay tuned.]
………………………………..
June 26.  With Rachel's help, I seem to have got the thrush 'video'.  Listen hard. The thrush sings four times.

Then, having got this far, here is the much clearer song of a lazuli bunting - small, blue head, rosy breast, white belly, grey back.  He sang all day for two days all around the old ranch house.  Probably nesting nearby.  A treat.

to Denver Canyon

A morning walk with Julia and Norbert up the road from their house, into the forest meadow where Rayan was grazing the goats (and 'studying' for his Math 11 exam).  Vicky with her three: Zoe, Zebra and Z…?  Xiao Xiao with her two: Zeal and Zack (three males, two females in all.)  They do all look similar, though I am sure the goat-lovers in the family (when they get here) will have no trouble telling them apart!

Rayan had to hold onto Vicky's rope to keep them from following us (Norbert) along the path.  Up Carpenter Creek, through patches of twin-flower on the forest floor, through piles of boulders that have slid down from the cliff above (more to come), and past some reportedly-good fishing spots (Diana?).  This 'lower Galena trail' ends in the spectacular Denver Canyon, where there are still concrete remnants on the vertical rock-face of a flume for Uncle Sandy's hydro project.  Who could have worked up there?

a Denver Canyon mermaid (Julia) ...

… and forest gnome (Norbert)

to Porter's Lake

… otherwise known to the Harris family as 'the third Bosun Lake' and to Chris and family as 'the stump ranch'.  A Sunday afternoon walk with the Duerichen family (minus Rayan who is on the 'Info' desk at the 'Silvery Slocan Museum' in New Denver for the summer) ...

shadows of a fern, for Julia

two pals

something to see in the creek - Devil's Club?

a bright-eyed Doco

ground-dogwood (bunch-berry), one of my favourites