Last weekend, as I wandered around NDG covering Porchfest (my report will be up tomorrow), I noticed election signs up. It took me a minute, but then I remembered that there was a Federal byelection in the Notre-Dame-de-Grâce–Westmount riding scheduled for June 19th.

You can't get what you don't ask for. Well, you can, but it would be an improbable flukish thing, akin to winning a prize without entering the contest.

Living in a climate of extremes, the winter months test our resolve. So many days, upon leaving home before the sunrise, I'm reminded that without modern amenities, the weather would kill me. It would kill every one of us.

As I arrived at Girouard Park in NDG, I already felt a bit overdressed. It was a beautiful sunny Saturday afternoon in early May, something that doesn’t happen every year. It felt appropriate that I was meeting Aurora Robinson and Sarah Ring, the two founders and current organizers of Porchfest NDG, an event that benefitted from unseasonable warmth like this for its very first edition in 2015. This bit of good fortune was not lost on the pair, though they decided to play it safer with future iterations.

I met Silka in the yoga community years ago. The whole scene was a weird fit for me: here were all these "spiritual", "open" people, but there was a stringency to that too, and not all of myself could cram into that box.

My daughter and I almost saw Lizzo last week. It was going to be our first real concert together, not counting the time I took a tiny Shaina to the Jazz Festival (she hated how loud it was and we bailed).

I arrived for the matinee showing of KIN at Agora Danse to a humming crowd of families, impeccably well-dressed people, and a small group of what I can only presume are young dancers milling near the bathrooms (I see you sweatpants-and-barefeet – as one dancer to another, I can smell the marks of post-rehearsal on you.)

Blue Metropolis has loomed large for me, if also just outside my comfort zone. The words "literary festival" roll around in my head, different intonations and speeds, savouring the musicality and the concept. It's a gathering of the heavy hitters, and people I have yet to learn about.

The Mile End has bagels, thrift stores and hipsters, Vieux Montreal has outstanding architecture, history and every tourist over the age of 42. Not many people who visit Montreal would think to head to NDG, which is exactly one of the reasons that Walter Lyng calls it his home.