Stories and celebrations
- elainebac1
- 12 hours ago
- 4 min read
Chanukah - Evening of Sun, Dec 14, 2025 – Mon, Dec 22, 2025.
Chanukah Celebration - December 15, 2025, 5 p.m., at Westmount City Hall (Sherbrooke near Redfern).
Music playlist and stories for Chanukah from NPR:
The brass menorah will be found on envelopes across the country this holiday season. It's the second year in a row that Canada Post has selected one of Temple Emanu-El Beth Sholom's historic candelabras for its annual Hanukkah stamp. Rabbi Lisa Gruschow and community member Louis Charbonneau join Daybreak's Shawn Lyons.
New stamp celebrating Chanukah 2025:
On CBC GEM – Love, Lights, and Hanukkah.
As Christina prepares her restaurant for Christmas, a DNA reveals that she's Jewish. The discovery leads her to a family she never knew, and a new romance over eight crazy nights.
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Canada Post has issued stamps celebrating graphic novelists, with recent issues in 2024 and 2025 honoring prominent Canadian creators like Chester Brown, Seth, Mariko Tamaki & Jillian Tamaki, Kate Beaton, Jimmy Beaulieu, Guy Delisle, Julie Doucet, Bryan Lee O'Malley, and Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas, featuring their iconic characters and works on these collectible stamps and first day covers.
Canada Post has launched a stamp series in collaboration with notable Canadian graphic novelists Kate Beaton, Jimmy Beaulieu, Guy Delisle, Julie Doucet, Bryan Lee O’Malley and Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas (Morgan Murray, Lëa-Kim Châteauneuf, Pierre Duffour, Kate Mada, Superfan Promotions, Douglas & McIntyre)
More details here:
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Stories about trees:
Annapolis Royal ginkgo tree reveals smelly secret.
Foul-smelling ginkgo seeds wreak havoc after city plants female tree in error. Saint-Léonard resident says he has to rake up hundreds of rotting, putrid ginkgo seeds every fall.
During the fall months, Dino Delisi says he can be outside for nearly two hours raking up the ginkgo seeds that fall on his lawn. (Claude Lamontagne/CBC)
Yes, there is a known female ginkgo tree (or trees) in the vicinity of Westmount High School that produces foul-smelling seeds in the fall. The odor, often described as akin to vomit, rancid butter, or dog excrement due to the presence of butyric acid, is a common issue with female ginkgos in urban areas. The specific tree near Westmount High School is noted for causing a strong, unpleasant smell in the autumn, particularly in areas like the 30s wing of the school, as the seeds drop onto the pavement and are crushed. Reports indicate the odor is powerful enough to be a distraction for staff and students in nearby classrooms. While many municipalities and landscapers now only plant male ginkgo clones to avoid this issue, some female trees exist due to past planting errors or simply as heritage trees. The city of Montreal, for instance, has acknowledged having nearly 100 female ginkgos planted by mistake in the past. The presence of the tree in Westmount Park is also noted in local publications, described as a "living fossil tree". The seeds, though stinky when the fleshy outer covering is crushed, contain a valuable nut used in East Asian cuisine when properly prepared.
Other trees of note in Westmount:
Why was 'incredible' giant cedar cut down, despite B.C.'s big-tree protection law? Yellow cedar's diameter measured 2.79 metres — a size that should have ensured protection, buffer around it.
When the tree was still standing, like in this picture in June 2024 with moss covering its silvery bark, Wright measured its diameter at 2.79 metres. (Handout by Joshua Wright/The Canadian Press)
"The Golden Spruce" by John Vaillant
A must read:
Bronwyn Chester wrote a weekly column on trees for the Montreal Gazette. After writing numerous articles related to trees for the McGill Reporter, where she worked as associate editor, she created the first campus tree walk from which evolved her first tree publication, A Leafy Legacy: The Trees of McGill University [McGill-Queens University Press, 2009]. She gave numerous tree walks in Montreal parks and neighbourhoods. Bronwyn Chester died in Montreal in 2012.
Watch this - A tribute to Bronwyn Chester – photography and video created by Elaine Bacal (once on this page, scroll down and click on “La Mémoire de l’humain”)
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If you had one day to pack up your life in a suitcase, what would you bring? That’s the question at the heart of Kayla Isomura's powerful photography series The Suitcase Project.
Photographer and exhibition curator Kayla Isomura’s self-portrait will be part of The Suitcase Project at the Museum of Vancouver starting Nov. 20, 2025 and running till Nov. 2026. (Kayla Isomura, The Suitcase Project)
Kayla’s website: https://kaylaisomura.com/
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Food and dance:
Italy’s gastronomic mastery and rituals proclaimed ‘intangible’ cultural heritage by UNESCO.
A chef prepares a traditional pasta Carbonara dish at Da Sabatino restaurant in Rome, Italy. Remo Casilli/Reuters
© Giacomo Bretzel Photography, 2009
HISTORIC MOMENT: Meloni Reacts as Italian Cuisine Joins UNESCO Cultural Heritage List | AC1Z.
100 Layer Sfogliatella: the Most Difficult Italian Dessert Made by Pastry Master Sabatino Sirica.
Another cultural entity designated as a UNESCO cultural heritage - UN recognizes compas, a Haitian music and dance genre that has marked generations and brought joy.
FILE - Andre "Dadou" Pasquet, left, sings and plays guitar with the Magnum compas band during a practice session in North Miami, Fla. Thursday, May 8, 2008. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky, File)
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People we lost:
Entrevue avec le photojournaliste Jacques Nadeau pour la sortie de son nouveau livre «Vénérables». PHOTO: Radio-Canada / Janic Tremblay
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Sophie Kinsella, best-selling author of the Confessions of a Shopaholic book series, has died from brain cancer at the age of 55. Francesca Best was one of Kinsella’s U.K. editors, and one of her biggest fans. She spoke to As It Happens host Nil Köksal about what a pleasure it was to work with Kinsella.
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