All Roads Engineers Should

Be required to spend at least a month relying on a chair on wheels for mobility in order to qualify as road and pavement designers.

If you haven't done it, you have no idea.

I can walk but not comfortably, gracefully or far. I can get about in the house.. Even do some gardening on a bench. I have to make sure the bench is strategically placed so that, in a tilt, I will come to no harm.

Earlier in the summer. I was attacking deep-rooted weeds with a long handled cultivator. Back I went into the cedar hedge. My daughter responded to my harrumph. She laughed. You look like Scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz with your hands dangling over the handles she said.
While she laughed, I got myself out.

It's forty years since I visited Montreal. They were peeling asphalt off the cobblestones. How nice, I thought. How authentic! It was like a trip back in time . Like the small stores and tall houses steps up from the sidewalks in St. John's Newfoundland.

Last week my sentiments were different. Cobblestones are a rough ride. Steeply sloping streets and sidewalks are disconcerting. Still the scooter gave me mobility I have not enjoyed for twenty years. I loved it.

Modern Montreal streets have lanes for bicycles, roller blades and skateboards.In Ottawa. the bicycle reigns supreme.In Aurora, we need lanes for bicycles, roller blades, skateboards and mobility scooters.

I saw many people in both cities walking with obvious discomfort, in the heat, who would have benefited from wheels beneath them.

Most definitely design of streets and sidewalks need to be re-thought.

Montreal has bicycles to rent. All over the city, they sit in racks, with meters to release and rent them. You can take in one location ,leave in another and use for only part of an hour.

If a bone rattling experience is what turns you on ,Old Montreal has the best.

Slopes and inclines are reminiscent of Glasgow .The instinct when crossing is to lean away from the slope. I was never confident it was the right move but I got back in one piece .

The city's flag has four M's and floral emblems: Fleur De Lis, Rose, Thistle and a Shamrock.We took a three hour bus tour. The driver was our guide and proud of his city's heritage. There's no better way to get the sense of a place.

We spent a couple of hours in the Ramezay House, absorbing the feeling of life in the sixteen and seventeen hundreds in "the finest" house ever built. Steps are the entry but they had an aluminum ramp to put in place and inside was completely accessible.

We were at the Holiday Inn in the Chinese quarter. The city has more than four. All with distinct identities. I think next time we'll try Italian.