Fred 呉怡龍

Demolition in progress
Originally uploaded by Quan Nguyen.

This is very sad. My favourite grocery store in Chinatown, Sun Hing, burned down Friday night.

I noticed something was amiss on Saturday as I approached Chinatown to rendezvous with madamewoo, diluvienne, and scjody for Dim-Sum. "How odd," I thought, "that St. Laurent should be closed and dozens of police vehicles are about."

As I was running late, I didn't stop to investigate. It was only after lunch that the four of us wandered closer to the scene of the fire and the full scope of the tragedy finally hit us.

After some minutes of gawking, madamewoo, diluvienne, and scjody left and I searched for a way to get closer to the scene. I stopped to ask a CTV reporter about what happened, and she turned around and interviewed me on the spot on TV (which I was not expecting). I mentioned that Sun Hing was my favourite grocery store and I hope that nobody was hurt.

Soon after I ran into one of the ladies who worked at the Sun Hing and I found out that everybody was okay, which is a good thing. She told me that "they'll be back."

Crazy, man.

Here is the story of the fire from the Montreal Gazette.