Present and past collide in Marc Plourde’s poems, which sketch out a multifaceted portrait of his home territory over a period of half a century. Set in rural Quebec and Montreal, Park Extension’s immigrant streets, College Notre Dame in the 1960s, McGill Ghetto’s bohemia of the 1970s and the city’s changing downtown core, they focus on family, neighbours, and strangers, seen through the eyes of a sometimes bemused but compassionate observer of the human drama.