Délices de l’île Maurice

Seventeen years ago today I was in Montréal, and brother Steve and I found ours way to Délices de l’île Maurice for supper.

Partially due coincidence, and partially due my love of leveraging coincidence for whimsy, today for lunch I cycled out to the equine district of town to lunch at The Dodo, the Mauritian takeout joint that opened three weeks ago.

My order was ready for pickup when I arrived, and it neatly fit in my cycle carrier. I took advantage of my proximity to J. Frank MacAulay Park to scootch down Bills Lane and in the back door of the park, where I enjoyed my tasty lunch of spring roll, shrimp curry, basmati rice, and sparkling water under a gazebo beside the swale.

Lunch presented two mysteries: why The Dodo, and who was J. Frank MacAulay?

The first was easily answered in Wikipedia: the now-extinct dodo was native to Mauritius (its extinction seems to have been more due to humans introducing predators, and destroying habitat, than hunting the dodo itself).

The answer to the second question remains elusive: just who was J. Frank MacAulay (and why is there nothing in the park that bears his name to tell us)?