Montreal wins Prize for Coolest Cemeteries

Yeserday was a beautiful fall day here...crisp air, blue sky with puffy clouds. Annette has long wanted to wander around the twin cemeteries of Cote-des-Neiges (Catholic) and Mont Royal (everybody else) that lies atop Mont Royal in the heart of Montreal. Opened in the mid 1850s, Cote-des Neiges is the largest cemetery in Canada with 343-acres and over 900,000 buried souls and Mont Royal covers 165 acres. It is a popular place for strolls (especially in spring and autumn). It is a hilly area full of mature oaks, maples, pines, even fruit trees. Annette was in 7th heaven pondering the history engraved on tombstones and mausoleums and loving the fall foliage. She attempted a friendship with a graveyard cat who was much more interested in the sparrow on the hedgerow. The Catholic Cote-des-Neiges was a little more "rough" around the edges this visit as it is still recovering from the "neglect" of a 4 month cemetery caretaker/gravedigger strike this past summer. They are still trying to play catchup up with the overgrown grasses and overgrown shrubs.(I guess they had to first pay attention to burying the nearly 700 corpses that had been kept in cold storage for the months of the strikes!!!).