Category Archives: Paris postcards

The strange case of the disappearing hotel

Norman recently bought, sight unseen, a shoebox of French postcards from a man in Winnipeg. Among them was a series of images from a Paris hotel called the St-James and Albany. They set me off on a hunt that led … Continue reading

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Twenty questions

A happy Saint-Sylvestre to you all! A few of you may wonder what that means, but in France, New Year’s Eve is often called by the name of the saint whose day falls on December 31. That fact got us … Continue reading

Posted in Paris churches, Paris history, Paris popular culture, Paris postcards, Paris streets | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 14 Comments

Postcards: Little windows into a vanished Paris

Many of our blogs begin with a postcard. That is not a coincidence. When we are rummaging through the bins of 1- and 2-euro cards at flea markets, we are drawn to images that make us stop and wonder, “What … Continue reading

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The postcard collector

To her employers and patients, she was known as Nurse Pirie. But to Norman, she was simply Grandma Stevens. She lived with Grandpa Stevens in a house that his Grandpa had built, near enough to Norman’s family home in Hamilton, … Continue reading

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A city street, a lamppost

It was the photograph that caught my eye from a high shelf in a bookshop. A street with a lamppost and the corner of a building; two men walking in opposite directions. It was only later that I registered the … Continue reading

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Voutch and the evolution of a cartoon style

You know how it is: you notice something properly for the first time, and for the next while, you see it everywhere. So it was with us and the cartoons of Voutch (real name: Olivier Chapougnot). We had wandered along the … Continue reading

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A bird lover’s guide to Paris

This is one of my favourite photographs from Paris. I use it as the wallpaper on my desktop computer, so that every day, when I sit down to work, I feel for a second that I am taking my place … Continue reading

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The invention of the omnibus

Take a good look at this postcard. What do you see? I tend to gravitate to postcards like this because of the rich detail in the buildings – the names of businesses, the façades of the old houses, the advertisements, … Continue reading

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Paris in the First World War

It’s that time of year again. The poppy-sellers are out on the streets of Toronto, and soon, on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, we will stop what we are doing for a minute or … Continue reading

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Postcards of a Working River

We don’t often think of Paris as a port city. But the city handles about 20 million tonnes of cargo a year, and with more than 7 million people travelling on the river each year, Paris is the leading river … Continue reading

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