Monday, June 6, 2011 Montreal

5:30 am

The temperature is +14 C, with a high predicted of +24 C.

From the Environment Canada website:

Today Sunny with cloudy periods. 30 percent chance of showers this afternoon. High 24. UV index 8 or very high. Tonight Cloudy periods. 30 percent chance of showers early this evening. Low 16. Normals Max: 23°C Min: 12°C

Today we rent a car and drive to Granby, Quebec. The main priority for the coming week will be centered around genealogy in the Eastern Townships of Quebec. And tonight is game 3 of the Stanley Cup playoffs. Vancouver Canucks lead the Boston Bruins 2 - 0, with the next 2 games in Boston.

9:00 PM

We took a taxi to the P. E. Trudeau airport where we picked up the rental car, a small Kia. We waited until the GPS unit was working and then headed back to Montreal and across the Champlain bridge. Our first stop was a cemetery in a small village on the way to Granby. While we were taking photos a fellow pulled up in a truck and asked what we were doing. He was very friendly and was soon giving us all sorts of history of the area and of many of the people in the cemetery. It turns out that his grandmother was a sister of my grandmother! What a great way to begin our search for genealogy information. He also showed us into the church where we saw a drum-organ, one of only 2 of that kind in existence (the other is in California).

We then continued on to Granby where we checked into the motel and then found a nearby brasserie where we had a delicious pizza. Our French is very weak but we were able to work our way through the order as their English was a little better than our French. Lots of laughter all around. We then stocked up on provisions at a nearby grocery and returned briefly to the motel to put everything away.

Then we drove to a nearby cemetery where a number of my relatives are buried. Once we had taken photos of all the stones in that cemetery (that is 2 cemeteries that we now have photos for) we drove along a country road and found another cemetery that we will return to later in the week.

We were pretty tired when we returned to the motel but the food and refreshments soon energized us enough to begin watching the hockey game. Early in the second period Boston scored 2 quick goals so we turned the tv off and fell asleep.

[next morning] The final score was Boston 8, Vancouver 1. Vancouver still leads the series, 2 games to 1.