Monday, June 01, 2009

mark and yoko and john

Last month, well, actually two months ago now, in April, I promised Mark that we'd travel to Montreal to see "imagine: the peace ballad of john & yoko" as a birthday gift. Finally, on Friday, in the fog and through the rain, we made it to the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts to see Yoko's wonderful exhibit.

After learning about the exhibit earlier in the year, I deliberately avoided reading about it or seeing photos of it. I wanted to be able to experience it on my own. I think because the message is peace and so much of what was on display is widely available to the public, Yoko wanted folks to bring their cameras and document their own "bed in" experience. Much of the show is interactive and it was encouraging to see children participating, either by hammering nails into a painting, or playing on one of the white chess sets or hanging their wishes in the trees.

It was refreshing, in a world seemingly full of stories of war and pain, to participate in celebration of peace and to take a few moments to reflect upon the simple brilliance of "giving peace a chance." Ironically, when we exited the exhibit, the other big show on the 3rd floor of the museum was about Napoleon.

The rest of the day was spent doing Montreal type errands. We had lunch (at the counter) at Schwartz's, wandered around on St-Laurent (in the middle of a street festival - the whole street was closed to cars), visited IKEA and Marche Central for some shopping. En route back to Kingston, we stopped at our favourite Glengarry County truck stop for dinner. Not everything we did went exactly as planned but it all happened the way it was supposed to. I'd say it was pretty close to a perfect day, rain and all.

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