Dreamscapes Travel & Lifestyle Magazine
Issue link: http://read.dreamscapes.ca/i/821088
Meadows. But don't drive through Buchans too quickly. Every summer the town salutes its long mining history during the Lucky Strike Festival, and every five years, including 2017, countless sons and daugh- ters show up for the lively Come Home Year reunion. NewfoundlandLabrador.com MONTRÉAL, QUÉBEC As inspired by Leonard Cohen His body and mind did indeed wander far and wide, but it was only Montréal, he said, that could give him the deepest feelings of home. For Leonard Cohen, Montréal was "the city of his birth and the cradle of his longings," observes feature writer, Robert Everett-Green. His longings? Take a look at the manhood-building escapades in Cohen's first novel, The Favourite Game. And, his family home was on Avenue Belmont not far from the park on old Murray Hill where a short walk connected him each weekend to the core of his Jewish faith at Congregation Shaar Hashomayim. That, however, likely clashed with his weekdays as a teenager at the all-faith Westmount High School where varying Christian rituals must have toyed with Leonard Cohen's questioning con- sciousness. "The Stranger Song" is one vivid example of that, and so is "Suzanne." Women were a longing too, it would appear. We understand his girlfriend Marianne spent time at the Belmont home, and when it comes to "Suzanne," insiders have always known that her place near the river was exactly where the boats go by in the harbour of Old Montréal. tourisme-montreal.org WOLFE ISLAND, ONTARIO As inspired by J.D. Reid Anyone who reads The Girl on the Ferry before visiting Wolfe Island in the water- ways of southeastern Ontario may easily fall into dreamy reminders of the novel's three main characters, their riveting conversa- tions, their puzzling triangle—and you will definitely think about it on the 20-minute ferry crossing from Kingston. In the story (which also takes us to Niagara-on-the- Lake), Freya had been hiding her romantic feelings for her best friend Leslie until one particular ferry crossing when this strident fellow Marshall appeared and could not take his eyes off Leslie. Those few minutes rocked all three of their lives. The 29-kilo- metre-long Wolfe Island—with three marked bicycle trails—is one of the 1000 Islands, an eye-popping archipelago in Lake Ontario where the St. Lawrence River begins. With his clear esteem for the great outdoors, J.D. Reid takes us sailing with his characters from Marysville, out into Barrett Bay and then eastward on the glistening river past so many islands of complete serenity, one could easily get the craving to swim from one to the next. So what about that girl on the ferry? Of all nature's mys- teries, the author does hint that he finds the human mind and heart to be the most inter- esting, but the most perplexing of all. visit1000islands.com SPRING/SUMMER 2017 DREAMSCAPES 55