Beau loved it. He
particularly liked the cultural richness.
He spoke fondly of the Friday night we were walking through Loyola when
he got ahead of his humans and went down the stairs and in through the open
doors of a building to attend a concert which was set to begin shortly. Unfortunately, the humans did not seem to
share his enthusiasm for the event and ushered him out pronto.
Montreal offered a
magnificent life – trips to Franklin Centre to pick apples in the fall. There was one place he particularly liked
with a small menagerie of animals that he would chase and try to coax into the
herd. He could go out to the Wight’s
house in Pointe Claire and look for Fuzzball, the cat he had terrified when we
had visited there about six years earlier.
On that occasion
Eleanor, Glen and Beau had been sleeping in the spare bedroom in the
basement. Fuzzball was upstairs with the
Wights. At some juncture during the
evening Fuzzball came downstairs. When
Beau went out to patrol the basement he discovered the feline interloper and
give chase. Fuzzball took off with Beau
in hot pursuit. We heard the shrill
mewing and the hot barking and stirred from slumber as the cat clambered over
our faces, followed a couple of seconds later by the pounding paws of the
dog. Over the bed they went and down the
other side against the wall. We barely
had time to check our bruised faces before they returned – cat on the face
followed by the pursuing dog. The cat fled
and hid in the furnace room, the dog patrolled restlessly and threateningly as
we tried to figure out what had hit us.
On those occasions in the future when we visited Pointe Claire, Fuzzball
was careful to give Beau a wide berth.
At the first opportunity, Fuzzball escaped to the porch across the
street, under which she hid until two days after Beau’s departure.
Montreal is a land
of fierce winters – any native can testify to that. Beau had not been acclimatized, given his
life in France and Toronto, both with their somewhat milder winters. As a result, when he awoke one morning in mid-January
to find two and a half feet of freshly fallen snow, he turned around in disgust
before setting a paw outside the back porch for his usual morning pee. Glen, being the only one awake enough to
function at Beau’s speed, kindly took it upon himself to dig a series of
trenches, with the sophistication of a war vet, in order for Beau to proceed
with his duties in the yard. It worked
out beautifully for the two of them – ensuring Beau kept out floors dry, and providing
Glen with a cardio workout (that he wasn’t necessarily seeking). It was, no doubt, one of the longer winters
for Glen, given the numerous snowfalls….
Occasionally Beau actually used the paths that had been so carefully
carved out for him.
Beau loved junkets to the Salvation Army camp at Lac l’Achigan where
he could run and rummage around in the forest, thought he never did develop a
flair for swimming in the lake. We think
that his fear of water arose as a result of being trained not to bark, by being
sprayed with water.
Unfortunately, our stint in Montreal was all too brief. After only
eight months we left for France again.
Elizabeth and John would stay in Montreal and Beau went to live with
Elizabeth. After eleven years it was time for Eleanor and Glen to bid Beau
farewell. Eleanor drove Beau over to
stay with the Pearos who were going to look after him until Elizabeth had moved
into an apartment that could accommodate the dog. Glen didn’t come, he could not stand to say
good-bye to the pooch; such was the dog’s hold on his heart.
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| Word Guild Award 2011 |
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| Word Guild Award 2009 |
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