La Presse and O Canada

It was my Christmas gift, signed by the author, and La Presse journalist! Part of the gift was also to take a tour of the La Presse office in downtown, arranged by my best friend, in person, with Éric Clément the writer of the book who is also a La Presse journalist. It was a super cold, windy and snowy, but sunny, day in Montréal and we stood their waiting for the late bus, me not willing to wear my tuc, because I wanted my hair in place - so my ears were freezing. We did arrive just in time though. When we went there he was of course so happy to receive us and recognized my boyfriend and addressed him by his name - ah to have the PR skills of a journalist! He took us to the main news room, a collection of cubicles, most with those unmistakable half eaten apple's backlit on the back of their computers. It was a Friday, and hence a calm day we were told, and maybe that's why but everyone seemed happy to see us and had we asked, would have shared some tidbits with us. We also went to the old press rooms and the old printing room - these days the printing is outsourced.

It turned out for 20years of his life Éric Clément was a geo-physicist. So if that didn't sparkle my eyes I don't know what did.

Him and the photographer of the book took a personal loan of $20k just so they can print this book, of which special editions are available only at the La Presse office - the book is a bilingual one, in the sense somethings are written in English, some in French - so not everything is written in one of those languages. You truly have to be bilingual to read and understand this. What a great thought, specially for a bilingual country, but more for the really bilingual city of Montréal. But it turns out this is a drawback to the bookstores, no one wants to take this book since they predict it won't sell that much. One of those times when business, science and their models prevent our human race from advancing forward in a moral sense. Anyway I was quite impressed at their passion - when I thought how I would never take a personal loan to do something in physics...

What a great morning? Every day in which I re-kindle one of my dreams, is a great day: this time the journalism one!