Macabre Montreal with Mark Leslie

Montreal is more than just music festivals, street art and the St Laurence river. It also has a dark side. Mark Leslie is a Canadian horror writer with a passion for haunted places and, today, we’re talking about his book, Macabre Montreal. Show Notes * On the old world feel of Montreal and it’s history * The influence of the St. Lawrence river on Montreal’s feel * Interesting places to look for history in Montreal, including the cemeteries * Making connections to history through city ghost tours * Recommendations for good books based in Montreal * On the pleasure of walking through a new city You can find Mark at www.MarkLeslie.ca and on Twitter @MarkLeslie Joanna: Mark Leslie is a Canadian horror writer with a passion for haunted places and, today, we’re talking about his book, ‘Macabre Montreal.’ Hi, Mark. Mark: Hey, Jo. How are you doing today? Joanna: I’m good. Thanks for coming on. Where are you in the world right now? Mark: Right now, I am in Waterloo, Ontario and that’s in Canada. And for those people who aren’t familiar with where Waterloo, Ontario is, it’s about an hour and a half drive northwest of Toronto. We are near the Great Lakes of North America, just north of Lake Ontario. Waterloo is relatively flat. I mean, there’s a local ski hill, but it’s not very big. You have to drive a couple of hours to get to a really, really nice, big ski hill, Blue Mountain, or even many more hours, one of the best skiing in this part of Canada is near Montréal. We’re near the Niagara Escarpment; Niagara Falls is about a two-hour drive away from here and the Niagara Escarpment is beautiful, so the hiking here is impeccable. Great trails for running and taking the dogs for a walk etc. Joanna: Today, we’re talking about Montréal, so why are you writing about Montréal? Because I think people might not know about Québec. You’re not living there. What fascinates you about the city and what is different? Mark: Initially, my co-author for the book is Shayna Krishnasamy and we used to work together and Shayna knew that I had written ghost story books. This would be the sixth one I have either written or co-written. She lives in Montréal and she said, ‘Hey, would you ever want to co-author a book together?’ and that’s how some of the projects come about. She says, ‘Well, I live in Montréal,’ so she could go on the ghost walks and take pictures and then, myself, I could do a lot of the research through reading and books and stuff like that. Now, one of the beautiful things about Montréal is Québec City is probably the only city in Canada that has more of a European feel than Montréal. When you’re in Paris or you’re in Lille in France, you get that sense, this just beautiful, old architecture and the cobblestone streets and all of this beautiful history, and Montréal does have a beautiful sense of that history. Québec, in Canada, has a very, very strong French culture. It’s probably more primarily French than any other place in Canada. My actual last name is Lefebvre, if you want to try and give a bit of a French tang to it. I don’t speak French very, very well and most people can never spell or pronounce Lefebvre. However, if you go to Montréal and you look at the phone book, whereas the phone book in Toronto might have 10 or 20 Lefebvres in it, and if you go to the Montréal phonebook, there’ll be 20 or 30 pages of Lefebvres because it is a common name. Well, not as common as Smith,