Ape Rifle

Yesterday evening I was out on one of my pretty regular photo-taking strolls around town, taking advantage of the nice weather and some gorgeous fading daylight of the kind that makes everything glow. After wandering about photographing the usual street scenes, graffiti and frayed North American industrial landscapes, I was a block north of my place on my way home when several firetrucks came blaring towards me. As I saw they were turning down my street, my first thoughts were quite obviously “Oh s–t!” (this is a neighbourhood where many old, low-rise buildings are tightly packed together on each block). I soon noticed, however, that they were merely using the entrance to my street to turn around- looking up, it was then I noticed the plume of smoke pouring into the sky a block over to the east on one of the city’s main arteries, rue St-Denis. Oh s–t indeed.

So I walked a block over to the intersection of Rachel and St-Denis, and with a rapidly growing crowd of onlookers- bike commuters, shoppers, diners, people attracted by the commotion - watched rather uneasily as a corner cluster of shops, restaurants and bars was engulfed in smoke. Given that it was the tail end of rush hour in the heart of the city, the street cluttered up rather quickly. Emergency vehicles of all shapes, sizes and service streamed onto the scene, jockeying for space as police officers yelled at onlookers to get out of the way. For a while us bystanders were left to our own devices directly across the street- remarkably close - while the firemen rushed to the rooftops rather than worry about crowd control. Eventually, the yellow police tape made an appearance accompanied by officers telling the crowd to disperse and I figured it was probably time to be on my way and let the fire department do their job in peace. In the end, 150 firemen battled the five-alarm fire well into the night and it gutted a restaurant, a bar and the apartments above.

As I had my camera with me from the walk, I managed to get quite a few pictures of the scene. And I certainly wasn’t alone- in accordance with the abundance of digital gadgetry in our time, hundreds of cell phones and cameras were dutifully clicking away. It’s not exactly everyday that you come across this sort of scene- thankfully!