Love is like a friendship caught on fire: In the beginning a flame, very pretty, often hot and fierce, but still only light and flickering. As love grows older, our hearts mature and our love becomes as coals, deep-burning and unquenchable.
Archives For Living
Observations, lessons, and miscellany on living life.
13 years ago today I moved from Calgary to Montreal, and one month ago yesterday I returned. I figured I’d take this moment to reflect on this huge chapter of my life and offer some tips to the many other hopeless romantics drawn to la belle ville. 13 years, wow. It was quite a ride.
As the story goes, it started with a couple trips to Montreal for concerts – first in 1998 and then again in 2001 – as well as a summer roadtrip in 1999 from Toronto where I was interning at the time. Montreal is a charming city by default but it is an extra special place in the summer – and I fell in love with it. The diversity, multiple languages, ever-present festivals, delicious food, gorgeous girls, great music scene, stunning architecture, magnificent street art, history, vibrant street life, and, yes, a certain joie de vivre. It all captivated me and at some point during one of those trips I promised myself that I would spend one full summer of my life there.
This article by Christopher DeWolf was originally published in The Montreal Gazette on May 25, 2003.
“You’re another one!” Nicole Fowler exclaimed when I revealed my Western Canadian roots. “Since I moved to Montreal, I think I’ve met more people from Calgary than I have in the rest of my life.”
Fowler, 33, is part of a new batch of younger people on the move – to Montreal instead of away from it.
Although it may be tepid for now, it is not all that surprising a trend. My own life in Calgary was populated by people from Montreal. My dad lived here for almost a decade before leaving in the late ’70s. Our across-the-street neighbours in Calgary were ex-pat NDGers and my best friend’s mother was Hong Kong-born and Hampstead-raised. Friends came from Montreal when Canadian Pacific jumped ship and relocated to the prairie town it built a century before. My mom’s boss was from Outremont.
Fed up with language politics and a stagnant economy during the 1980s and ’90s, thousands of people scurried down the 401 or schlepped themselves west to Calgary or Vancouver.
But, slowly, people are moving here. Between 1996 and 2001, the pre-merger city actually gained 23,158 people (including those from beyond Canada’s borders) its first significant increase for at least 10 years. And, according to recently released data from Statistics Canada, 365 more Canadians from other provinces moved to Quebec between October and December 2002 than moved away – the first net gain in three decades.
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Before moving from Calgary to Montreal last year, the path appeared well-worn. It seemed everyone I encountered had a brother or six friends or an old roommate who had moved to Montreal. The trend was evident upon arrival, too; a quick survey of people I’ve met reveals a lot of eastward pioneers who are bucking the trends established late in the last century.
In fact, there are a lot of new people in Montreal who come from a variety of Canadian cities, even big, booming Toronto. What makes this somewhat perplexing is that, according to the National Post, the Calgary-Edmonton corridor is the second-wealthiest region in the world. Cities like Toronto and Vancouver certainly aren’t hurting when it comes to job prospects.
So why come here?
I recently finished reading Presence: An Exploration of Profound Change in People, Organizations, and Society in which one of my favourite business authors/thinkers Peter Senge is in conversation with three of his colleagues about how the natural concept of presence can apply to organizational learning. I’ve had it on my bookshelf for several years and am glad I finally got to reading it; good book.
In the epilogue they introduce the reader to the work of Japanese researcher and photographer Masaru Emoto. Fascinating. Emoto has taken photos of frozen water taken from numerous sources around the world and observed that they form different crystal patterns, with water from natural sources being more beautiful than from processed or polluted sources. What’s more is that water from the identical distilled (pure) source typically forms bland crystal structures but the same distilled water forms beautiful crystals after having been complimented, prayed for, or played music to.
I remember catching this video occasionally on MuchMusic back in ’94 when it came out (and when Much still played music videos). Loved it! Great track. And 20 years on, it’s aged quite well I think.
What surprises me though is how obscure it was then and still is now. How did such a good song not break out – even as a one-hit wonder? Where did The Troubleneck Brothers disappear to? And why – so many years after its release – is there still only a grainy, out-of-sync TV capture (with only 6-digit views since 2007!) of their excellently nostalgic video for Back to the Hip Hop on YouTube?
Anyways, always worth a re-listen.
I’ve been thinking a lot about friendship lately. It’s a well-worn topic and yet there are still some aspects of it that perhaps don’t get discussed much – especially in the context of how friendships evolve over time.