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Pigeons and pedestrians by KRISTIAN GRAVENOR
Whether you descend Mountain, Lucien L’Allier, Guy, Atwater or any other southbound walking route, you’ll be forced to walk under a CP Rail train viaduct before reaching St-Antoine. If you dare look up while crossing under the route, you will notice ridges overhead where for generations pigeons have been roosting above, happily unbothered as they aim their poop down upon unsuspecting heads. Look down you’ll find yourself kicking up disgusting, dried pigeon mess. Some people might not mind getting hit with bird shit. When my wife was en route to applying for her first job upon arriving here a decade back, a bird hit her purple raincoat with such a perfectly aimed shot that she interpreted it as a positive omen and, to her delight, was hired at the geriatric-care sweatshop. I, on the other hand, so dislike the idea of getting rained on by bird turds that I declined two sweet deals on apartments in the area near St-Antoine. CP Rail is in charge of protecting the ambulatory masses from the overhead poop threat and it’s a problem they’re either too lazy or dumb to solve. Now, CP Rail isn’t exactly the best friend of the Montreal pedestrian, as displayed since last year when the giant corporation started ticketing pedestrians who dared to walk their traditional route over the tracks through lower NDG, a custom that hadn’t caused any harm for decades. The CPR brass took a few minutes off from shining their jackboots to issue an order for pedestrians to walk through the filthy, urine-stained tunnel at Melrose. Meanwhile, they refused to offer any other solution. No surprise that for decades the old-money railway boys have shown the same consideration to the working-class pedestrians passing between downtown and Griffintown, St-Henri or Little Burgundy. But when the Molson Centre opened, hockey fans were deemed worthy of a higher standard, and authorities strung up wire mesh to keep the pigeons from perching overhead on Mountain. The barrier proved ineffective. The birds found their way in anyway, but couldn’t get out. Until recently, about a dozen dead pigeons could be seen stuck in the mesh, their corpses remnants of their twisted, painful deaths. In other news: Westmount residents oppose the proposed McDonald’s at the site of the old Murray’s restaurant at Claremont and Sherbrooke, but nearby shop assistants and bank tellers are doing cartwheels over the imminent arrival of the lunchtime burger option. So sniff the Marxist irony now cooking. Wealthy Westmounters want services available to them in the form of shops and banks, but they oppose services being made available to the people working at those places... Marc Gagnon, a gifted and devilishly handsome local singer-songwriter, entered a recent CBC talent search. After hundreds were eliminated, Gagnon stood at the gates of triumph as one of the final five. Then somebody realized that his sister works as a part-time Unimportant Worker somewhere in the Corpse, and Gagnon got the boot. A few days later, the poor guy was also kicked out of his home by repossessing landlords... Seen from my balcony: an Italian kid gets a parking ticket and angrily stuffs it in his pocket. A French guy gets a parking ticket and mutters a few words under his breath and storms away. A Caribbean guy gets a ticket, looks around and loudly shouts: “Damn racists! Damn Racists!”... Note to the Expos: steroids are legal in baseball. Would you please start popping some ASAP? I’d like to see an occasional victory. : Comments? kgravy@openface.ca |