The Old Man and the Iron Lady.

I met this man while waiting for a friend at the subway station. I was taking pictures of the statue when he approached me to talk about this very sculpture of Émilie Gamelin, a Canadian social worker and Roman Catholic religious sister, best known as the founder of the Sisters of Providence of Montreal. We had a wonderful conversation about his life in the neighborhood, his childhood as an altar boy, and his later years working as a mortician in the '70s and '80s—where he enjoyed playing pranks on people ! OH - MY - GOSH, he had so many interesting things to say ! Listening to his stories was like reading a page of history. Before I left, he told me he had a brain cancer and that his days were counted, but that he really enjoyed our conversation. We shook hands, just like he did with the statue earlier. Later, I wrote a short novel about our encounter.