MONTREAL- This is the day where Tin Lont Chan ponders one of life’s great quandaries: what do you get for Mother’s Day when your mom is a florist?
“That’s a really hard question,” he said, outside his mother’s Mile End flower shop. “For my mom it would be helping her.”
Chan’s mother, Tamuy Leu, watched the insides of her flower shop go up in smoke in a destructive fire that gutted her business. Her business continued, and was buzzing feverishly Sunday afternoon, as people shopped for last-minute Mother’s Day gifts, searching for a more elaborate way to say ‘thanks, mom.’
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“I went with my kids to breakfast and I had a great time,” said Ettie Robshitz, who was at the shop with her daughter, Debbie Geltner. “Now I’m just in the process of choosing my flowers.”
She said that in her native country of Israel, mothers are revered by their children, although the tradition of Mother’s Day has not quite caught on.
For Frédérique Guertin, the holiday is an especially important one to remember; she was raised by a single mother.
“She has done a lot of things for me, I’m glad to have my mom,” she said while shopping for flowers at Jean-Talon Market. She held a cardboard box tied with white string. “Those are cannolis from an Italian bakery. My mom really likes them.”
Mother’s Day is often derided as existing only in the mind of greeting card companies and others looking to make a quick buck. But for some people, none of that seems to matter.
“I guess all holidays are ‘Hallmark holidays,’ there are always gimmicks and things,” said Brianne Coglon, a Calgary native who sent her mother in Alberta a package of movies. “But moms are great. It’s great to have a day to celebrate them.”
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