(Message sent Sun, 22 Jun 2008 08:38:20 -0700)
Well, Montreal was a bit of a culture shock. I had no idea how French it was. I guess I was assuming that it was nominally French, maybe French by way of affectation. Maybe I was expecting another Akaroa. But no -they're full-on French. The first hint of this was when we crossed into Quebec - suddenly all the announcements on the train were in French first, then English.
Everyone speaks French all the time, and all the signs are in French only. Since my French begins and ends with, "Moi ouci cava bien merci," it was a bit of a struggle at first. Although I was delighted to find that French for "Order Here" is "Commander Ici". I shall have to write a book about the adventures of Commander Ici of the Star Patrol. It'll be the biggest hit since Dan Dare - Pilot of the Future!
But everyone speaks English as well, and they don't seem to mind monoglots like me, so it's not really a hassle.
I was feeling a bit little-boy-lost when I arrived, so I decided to treat myself to a better class of hotel than I've been using so far. So I am happily ensconced in Le Reine Elizabeth. This place is so flash that it has a mission statement. (It doesn't make much sense, even in English, but still.) It's so flash that you get bathrobes. It's so flash that they trust you not to nick their coat-hangers.
It's funny, when I first started traveling, doing the Youth Hostel circuit, I tended to look down on people who chose to stay in places like this, but, you know what? A guy could get used to this.
I spent the morning of my first full day in Montreal on "Mount" Royal, the fair-sized hillock at the top of the town from which the city gets its name. It's a pleasant, green, leafy park with a nice lookout (N 45 30.203 W 073 35.204). In a clearing near the lookout I came across a group of First Nations (the phrase Canadians use to describe the people we still call Indians) people singing and playing drums. The announcements were in French and the singing in a First Nations language, so I didn't understand much, but the primal drum beat needed no translation.
While wandering around I came across an extraordinarily butt-ugly contraption called the Cross of Montreal. They've tried to make a scaled-down cruciform Eiffel Tower. If they'd left it at that it might have worked, but they wrapped a nasty-looking security barrier around it, and edged the actual cross part with a perimeter of lights that a fairground impresario would be embarrassed by. What were they thinking?
I spent the afternoon wandering through Old Montreal, a charming area by the river with cobbled streets, small shops, and interesting buildings. The river area is really nice too. I think that it must have been a major industrial port once upon a time, but now it's a big playground for grown-ups, with lots of green spaces, a wide promenade for rollerblading, cycling, and walking, a small marina for very flash boats, and the piers given over to shops and cafes.
Downtown Montreal is quite nice too. Lots of old buildings still stand, and so quite often when you look down a street of skyscrapers you can spot a bit of an old stone building at the end.
The Montreal skyline from the river area is fascinating. First of all you have your bog-standard glass-fronted skyscrapers. Then you have an earlier generation of towers, stone-fronted with minimal window area, capped always with copper-green metal roofs. Then you have church bell-towers and steeples, and finally you have Art Deco buildings that look like they were transplanted from Gotham City. The effect is very striking.
There is an island in the river, and upon it is the strangest building I've ever seen. Imagine taking a thousand blocks about the size and shape of shipping containers, only painted brown, and stacking them. Not in an orderly fashion mind you, but all higgeldy-piggeldy, leaving gaps where blocks should be, sometimes creating gaps clear through the building. Apparently it's an apartment block called Habitat 67.
After all these years of longing, I finally got to see the church where Celine Dion got married. Actually, the interior of La Basilique Notre-Dame de Montreal is gorgeous, all done in browns and blues and golds. I went to a son et lumiere show there called "Et La Lumiere Fut". When I entered the church I was surprised to find that nearly all the interior was hidden from view. The chancel was completely hidden by a white curtain, in front of which sat a projection screen. Then much of the rest of the interior was hidden by a series of white triangular sheets. I couldn't fathom the intention - what was the point of hiding everything we had come to see? And the sheets couldn't be removed during the performance - it would be too tricky to get that working reliably and automatically. How wrong I was!
The first three quarters of the show was pretty average actually. They started by saying that what we were about to see wasn't a historical documentary, and then they showed a sequence of am-dram scenes showing what they imagined the motivations for the people who settled Montreal and built the first and subsequent churches to be.
But it was worth sitting through this to witness the reveal at the end. It was spectacular. The main projection screen sank slowly to the floor, and the curtain hiding the chancel dropped quickly as the lights came up. It was startling, and I wanted to cheer, only it was a church and all.
Then the triangular sheets detached themselves and were silently winched from view one-by-one as various other parts of the church were described and pointed-out. By the end the interior was entirely free of screens, and all the features of the church illuminated. It was very, very smartly done.
My strange encounters with the streetlife continue. I got caught in another of the sudden downpours that everyone assures me don't happen this time of year, and was waiting it out in a bus shelter. A young guy came past, with a begging bowl. He didn't look like he lived on the streets - if you saw him you'd probably think him a university student. He did this odd little routine where he would pop up in front of someone and rattle his begging bowl at them with an impish expression. When this elicited no response he'd crouch down and tip-toe to the next person and repeat. It was like something from a children's pantomime. I think he was just larking about, not suffering from some mental condition. About half an hour later I saw him again - being bundled into the back of a police car. And he wasn't going quietly. I couldn't understand what he was shouting, but it was clearly some variation on "What'd I do? It wasn't me!" Ah well, at least he got some where to sleep for the night.
It's pouring with rain at the moment, so I'm about to go and hit the museums. Hope you're all finding work challenging and fulfilling :-) Love Joff.
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