Mysteries of Montreal

As previously mentioned, I had planned to go to more panels this year, making the most of this side of the convention. In previous years, I had indeed managed quite a few, but mostly on the gaming side. It turns out that was mostly the case this year again, but I tried. There was talk that more of the panels would be recorded and made available in some format, probably on Youtube once they've been edited. Once I hear where and how to access these, I will be sure to post that on the blog. Writing this out and reading it back, I seem to be more down on the panels than I thought I would be going in. In a way, this is just me working through what I think. Take these reviews with a pinch of salt. Literary Panels I made it to two solely literary panels. The first being: The Poetry of Edgar Allen Poe and its Long Shadow Michael Cisco, Christa Carmen, Frank Coffman, F. Brett Cox (M), Levi Leland, Sean Moreland. This was an early morning session, and one of the first of the Con. Four academ...

The Cthonians are on the move again .

I'm a day late with this post, as this post pertains to the happenings of the night of the 31st of March, but I only learned of it today, and it was too cool a story to pass on, or indeed wait another year. Vintage Wings of Canada is an organisation that is involved in many aspects of vintage aviation, and they are funding the search for a lesser known part of Canadian history, the lost dirigible, the HMCD Samuel de Champlain .  In her purpose built hangar in Cape Breton I'll not recount the whole story here, go read it for yourself. What I will do here is to expand upon the completely wonderful gaming opportunities for gaming the crew members of the RCNRAS (Royal Canadian Navy Rigid Airship Service), and the missions that they and they alone could accomplish, whether it is search and rescue missions in the Great White North , or on missions to destroy enemy submarines in North American shipping lanes. Both types of missions that will take the crew off the beaten trac...

The Canadian maple leaf flag (or l'unifolié apparently) is 50 years old (well, it was yesterday, but really, who's counting). Famous for being carried proudly around the world by Canadian backpackers (and Americans claiming to be Canadians, to avoid getting shit). I find it completely weird that the maple leaf flag is only 50 years old. I guess it's just one of those things you take for granted in Europe, that your flag's history is pretty old. I mean, 50 years isn't that much older than me, at least in flag years! Take, for example, the Scottish Saltire . That thing has been around in Scotland in various official ways since 1180s, with the Union Flag being a modern addition to the flag world, being introduced in it's current form in 1801. So, for all those running a game based in Canada, during non-modern eras, beware of anachronistic flag usage. Make note of the flag that would be used during the time you base your game . Out of interest, the flag ...

Today's Google Doodle is to celebrate the 16th Birthday of Henrietta Edwards , a Montreal native who went on to have a huge impact on Canadian Politics, and Woman's Suffrage in general. Not to steal the thunder of the Watch House , who usually takes the Google Doodle as a starting point for gaming inspiration, but I felt I could not allow this one to pass, due to direct link of this personage to Montreal, and the 1920s. Henrietta came to be known around Canada as one of the Famous Five . For those outside Canada, that is not from the books by Enid Blyton, but a group of 5 women who fought for, and won, the right of Canadian women to be considered as persons in 1929. Amongst her other life works, she was also an author, and the founder member of the Victorian Order of Nurses . She was born in Montreal in 1849, and lived there until she moved with her family to Saskatchewan in 1883. From there she lived in various parts of Canada (the Famous Five all met and worked in...

We took a bit of a last minute decision to go and visit Quebec City this week, so I went and looked out the travel books I have for the city: I'll stick them both in my bag to take with me, but even though I have just finished my last book (One Summer by Bill Bryson, but more on that later) I doubt I'll actually get through reading HPL's travelogue of Quebec City , which is apparently the longest written work he ever produced, and the trip to Quebec was the only time he ever came to Canada. However, there are some nice little observations in there, and some great drawings the man himself drew to accompany the work, so I will at least skim through it, and compare my trip to his. Unfortunately, we're only going for the weekend, so I won't be able to visit all the places he did, but fingers crossed I'll find some of them.

Upworthy has a lot to answer for in the way it has influenced internet article headlines. The number of superlatives used is extraordinary and unbelievable. You'll never read another headline like it again! Sorry, I got a little carried away. Still, these fabulous pictures of places in Canada are more than a little cool, and Investigators to the great Canadian outdoors in any era can come across these places whilst trekking North to explore the unknown and unexplained. Or indeed, they may be the end point, and place of interest they are out to explore/investigate. Two of the places mentioned are in Quebec, and I intend to write more about them at some point. Indeed, both the places pictured in Quebec are of craters. One, the Manicouagan crater , is of particular interest, as I had never heard much about it, till I was on Google maps one day, and it struck me as somethign of interest, and wondered why I had never heard more about it. I plan to do a whole post dedica...

Two years after the Titanic was sunk, the Empress of Ireand sunk in the St Lawrence river (29th of May 1914). 1,012 people were killed, as the ship went down in just 14 minutes, after colliding with a Norwegian freighter, the SS Sorstad Near Rimouski . 465 of the original 1477 people on board survived. It seems the story of the Empress has been lost, as it's death-toll was overshadowed by that of the Titanic two years earlier, and the story in international news at the time was pushed aside weeks later by the outbreak of the Great War. Not to lessen the tragedy of such a wreck, but to ignore it's gaming potential, especially for Call of Cthulhu, would be to deny the reason for this blog's existence. My first thought on this, was to use the Titanic as a starting point. As a more famous wreck, in the same time frame and with a very similar passenger list, it would be foolish not to see what was already out there. Pelgrane Press's RMS Titanic: The Millionaire’s Sp...

Tiny octopus-like microorganisms named after science fiction monsters The subheading says it all. Some researchers at UBC (University of British Columbia) found some new micro organisms in the saliva of termites. They named them  Cthulhu macrofasciculumque and Cthylla microfasciculumque. They were named so after they were though to swim in an octopus like fashion, although that seems a little bit of a stretch, my instinct is someone in that lab has been itching to name something after Cthulhu since he started grad school, and you don't get to name new species often these days. This is, however, the first time I have ever heard mention of Cthylla . Maybe I'm not so well versed in the mythos as I would like to think (although she is one of Lumley's, and Source Original Paper .

Camillien Houde As of today, in 1929, all married Montreal women, who pay municipal taxes, gained the right to vote (in municipal matters). The then Montreal mayor, Camillien Houde was not too happy about this law passing, even though a subset of women had had the right to vote in federal elections since 1918, full sufferage for the women of Quebec dd not come about until 1940 ( source ).

From the Internet Archive, via the Californai Digital Library (by way of the Yog-Sothoth forums, as per usual) I bring to you The Dominion of Canada, with Newfoundland and an excursion to Alaska. Handbook for travellers (1922)  by the Karl Baedeker of the Baedeker company who then, as now, specialise on travel books. All major formats are available, including, the most useful for me, pdfs and kindle files. There are detailed inventories and travel routes to reach Montreal from both New York, and Boston, both the main east coast U.S. headquatrers for PCs. Also, there are travel options from both New York and Boston to Quebec City, and Portland Oregan to Montreal and Quebec. There are also possible routes mentioned from Europe, with entry to the ports of Montreal and Quebec. The section on Quebec runs to about 50 pages, but most of the details included are how to get from one place to another within the province. The pages on Montreal and it's env...

On this day in 1922, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks came to Montreal. Whilst here, these two holiwood stars visited the City Hall, and signed the 'livre d'or', which I assume to some kind of visitor book for the city. Whilst the couple were here, they stayed at the Ritz Carlton where: When Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks booked rooms at the Ritz-Carlton, crowds thronged outside to see them. Fairbanks would climb out onto the hotel’s balcony above the sidewalk to acknowledge the ardent admirers. ( Source ) Pickford and Fairbanks at the newly built CKAC studio in Montreal ( Source )

" Behind the raging horseshoe falls of Niagara there lies a secret like no other, a century old redbrick tunnel painstakingly laid. There is no recorded tally of its human cost but in 1906 it would be the biggest tunnel of its type in the world. The entry cost is a dangerous rappel through the bowels of a decrepit powerstation into this supervillain stronghold behind the crashing waterfall ." From here . The link goes to an urban exploration site where three guys braved this site. It's quite a read, and that's quite some feat of engineering for being built in 1906. Worth a read.