Montreal is beyond gorgeous. We could have bi-passed the city on our way to the east coast, but a huge piece of my heart belongs to Leonard Cohen and it was important to me to visit his grave and pay my respects.


The Shaar Hashomayim Cemetery is in a beautiful residential area where palatial old homes stand proudly on heavily treed streets, where poetry whispers through the leaves, and stone walls hold long histories.

We parked against the curb just outside the gates, shadows casting warm shapes across Pearl. Leonard's grave is just inside and easy to spot. I was moved to see the tributes left by others, and I laid my own small stone on his grave, following the old Jewish custom like so many before me had done.


On the day his death was made public, I cried at my dining room table. I tried to explain to my children why he was so precious to me. I tried to share the reason his words have power; how when I read them I feel like I’m being seen - not just to my soul, but right to my guts. How I curled myself around his final album - the one he recorded from his death bed - the one where he was too weak to even fully sit up - and I let his pain leaks over me and I accepted it as his final love letter to me. But the thing is, there is no final. Because he is forever. Heaven may have brought his soul a beam to travel on, but I’ll stand in his stead, daring the boldness of joy in the face of mortality.

This detour added hours to our day of travel, further exacerbated by own trip downtime to see the 9-storey Cohen mural painted on the side of a Crescent Street building. Little did we know, but the Montreal Pride Parade was happening at 1pm that day. We tried to get out of town at 12:30 only to discover the street we needed to cross was blocked off for the parade. We were sent on a massive detour.

In short, our seven hour travel day turned into eleven. ELEVEN! 😳

And the roads! Oh, the roads in Montreal! Pearl worked hard there! Not only are there many hills and valleys, but the ruttyness and bumps wreaked havoc on our poor girl! Cupboard boards kept flying open, things were falling, and finally one door ripped right off the hinges - YIKES! Thankfully no one get hit in the head, but it did mean we had to make an emergency hardware store stop for some eye-hooks to try and keep the remaining doors intact.


"Vanlife!" Zander would say, every time somethings new crashed open. We kept a good sense of humour about it all. And now we're having conversations about rebuilding all the storage inside. But that's a story for another time.

Would we go back to Montreal again? OH YES! Our few hours within the city limits proved that it's a beautiful city worth a much longer perusal.

For the past five(?), six(?), seven(?) years, we've been part of the Stayner Camp worship team. Meaning we play music sets during morning and evening services for however long they book us for. It's crazy fun and it's become an important tradition for our family. We aren't paid to do this; instead, we're given free accommodations (a cabin) and free meals. It's a pretty sweet deal. This year we decided it would be the perfect opportunity to "break in the van" before hitting the road for eastern Canada.

We still took the cabin so the kids would have lots of space to spread out - plus, they'd each get their own room which has NEVER happened at camp before. We're going to be traveling pretty tight on our road trip, so there was no reason to rush that inevitability.

We got permission to park the van right by our cabin and we created a little camplife dream set up with our awning.

I never sleep well the first night away from home, but once that was under our belt I slept like a baby. We don't have fans or AC set up in the van, but all the windows can open, creating a beautiful cross breeze.

The nice thing about staying parked in the same spot for a number of days means you don't have to set up and tear down the bed every day. I know we'll have to do that when we hit the road for the east coast, but for now, we're enjoying the lazy bliss of relaxation!

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Pearl came blessed with her original 1981 orange shag carpet. We knew we couldn't keep it clean. Sure, the red sands of PEI would blend in perfectly and Michael Kelso would think it was EVERYTHING, but...just no.

While Liam worked on cutting out the door panels with the skill saw, the others pulled up the carpet and scraped down the floor. Then, while I worked on covering the panels, they laid the new floor.

Originally we thought we'd just purchase a roll of thin vinyl, use the carpet as a template, cut one big piece of flooring, and call it done. But. When we went into our local flooring store, the shop girl convinced us what a horrible idea that was and took us into the back storeroom where we found one box of plank vinyl that we really liked the colour of.

We took her out to the van and she helped us do a quick measurement. She assured us the one box would do the job. But it would take every single piece. And we could not make a mistake because they didn't have more of that colour in stock. 😬

She gave us a quick lesson in how to apply the glue and sent us on our way with fingers crossed.

Turns out she was right. We used every single piece in that box. 37.2 square feet to be exact. Thank goodness we'd decided to keep the shag up at the front (you know, just in case Michael Kelso does ever get to see this thing 😜) or else we would never have had enough.

Flooring: Twelve Oaks-Endure Collection "Driftwood"

Adhesive: Henry 640 Vinyl Lock

Transition Piece (for where the vinyl meets the shag)

Stair Nosing (for where the vinyl butts up to the door)

$55.80 — Flooring

$10.00 — Transition piece and stair nosing

$27.04 — Adhesive

$3.59 — Spreader