A Lucky Escape

From May to December (isn't that a song?) I lived in an apartment on the corner of St. Mathieu and Ste. Catherine, in the heart of downtown Montreal.

The other day, I ran into my brother on the steet:

"Good thing you moved", he said to me.

"Tell me something I don't know", I thought (it's a long story). "What do you mean?", I said.

"There was a fire there. I saw the outside windows of your apartment boarded up."

I went to investigate, and sure enough, what he said was true. My apartment was right next to the next door building, which had been gutted. What damage had been done to the apartment itself wasn't clear from the outside, but the windows being boarded up boded ill.

Turns out it was even in the news, and I didn't know:

http://www.montrealmirror.com/2007/022207/news2.html

http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/story.html?id=3bbd8333-4607-47af-9370-c6c35edc0706