You may remember me from the small-press Canadian poetry titles Sugar Shack Parson and Midnight Call to Petawawa.

Bilingualism in Quebec is fine

but Montreal suit sellers don’t know English

well enough to avoid certain sad-making

euphemisms for fat. They say big and fat.

The French translation of The Clockmaker

is called Le Tic Toc. In Nova Scotia,

sales of Le Tic Toc came with a warning:

Adult-Orientated French Language Style.

In Nova Scotia (Saskatchewan too),

Beauchemin’s Le Matou is The Alley Cat,

and the cat wants to be Maurice Richard

but Timothy Eaton was really mean.

The Eaton Centre in Toronto (note

bizarre Canadian spelling of center)

is still my favourite Eaton Centre of all,

a setting in my novel, La Bière Perdue.