My 13 Year Summer

March 1, 2015 — Leave a comment

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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.

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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.

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Meanwhile, I’d graduated university – just as the dot-com bubble burst – and I’d started work at an agency in Calgary. Now, at the time I was all about the ad biz, so to get a sweet gig at an agency was a dream – and I really loved it. After a couple years, however, office billings were on the downturn and it was clear that layoffs were coming. As a junior, I had no interest in the office politics that were emerging, so I chose to keep that promise to myself and somewhat spontaneously moved cross-country. I resigned and probably spared a colleague a pink slip.

But I must admit that there was one other impetus to me moving to someplace where I had no family, friends, job, French, or even a place to stay. I had the TV on one evening in my comfortable apartment (with a killer view of the Rockies). During a commercial break the network’s news anchor had a plug for the top stories to come on that evening’s newscast. “New study out. The best place in Canada for single women: Calgary. The best place for single men: Montreal.” OK then, let’s do this!

So I packed up my stuff, had a moving company pick it up, and I hopped a flight to YUL. I’d tried to find a place to rent remotely – it was still the days of classifieds – but nobody would rent to a young, Albertan, anglophone male sight unseen. That didn’t stop me. I just had to find a place within days of landing and then call the van line with a destination address before they rolled into the city. It took a couple days of cold non-stop wandering and a louer sign hunting but I found a place. A little castle (or so it seemed to me) on Mackay.

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My plan once in Montreal was to take some time to: a) explore the city taking pictures, and b) study French. I figured I would add “c) start looking for a job” in the spring. But primarily I was a resident-tourist.

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I enrolled in daily morning classes at the International Language School and met a whole range of non-Montrealers; mostly students from Japan and South America. I did several weeks there – even getting to the point of dreaming in French! – but classes were expensive and I gradually switched to night classes at the YMCA. There, I met some other Canadians who like me had decided that Montreal was on their bucket list for some reason.

As for exploring, yeah, I explored a lot. I roamed all corners of the city with my camera – so much so that I’d experienced more of the city than many born-and-raised Montrealers I would later meet had. The locals took their birthplace for granted.

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Some things I remember loving about my new city:

  • Languages. Walking down Ste-Catherine and trying to identify which languages I was overhearing.
  • Multilinguals. It’s humbling to encounter so many trilingual, quadrilingual, and quintilingual people.
  • Music. Wandering the massive Jazz Fest downtown for the first time and encountering so many great sounds, including many that were not what I would define as jazz.
  • Bagels. I still don’t quite understand how this can be so location-specific but it is.

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  • Cafes being busy all day and restaurants full all night – meaning that people had non-traditional jobs and they made a point to go out.
  • Walking. The city was highly walkable – and enjoyably so. It was also fairly safe (especially for women) at all hours because people were out at all hours.
  • Talent. Between the arts, game design, aviation, pharma, fashion, academia, and other clusters, it was very easy to bump into creative and brilliant – often casually so – people. Diversity indeed breeds curiosity and interestingness.
  • The Mountain (Mont-Royal). Hilarious that this hill is called a mountain. Awesome that it’s a big beautiful park in the middle of the city. Even more awesome is tam-tams, the massively chill gathering each summer Sunday at the side of the Mountain (parc Jeanne-Mance) of drummers, dancers, artisanal vendors, circus performers, LARPers, picnicers, sunbathers, and loungers. Pot smokers next to police cadets – both keeping the peace.

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  • Fashion sense. People dressed up – and well – to go out. (I remember my brother visiting once, wanting to hit the clubs but not having packed anything more than jeans and t-shirts. We went to one of the city’s many fine dive bars instead.)
  • Sexiness. Just pointing out the obvious. And what’s cool is that Montrealers seem to have found a good balance between adult-oriented and kid-friendly lifestyles; they co-exist just fine.
  • Parades. The loudness of the Carifiesta parade, the extravagance of the Gay Pride parade, and the patriotism of the Canada Day parade. I did not expect the latter, expressed in droves by families originally from other places in the world.

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  • St-Jean Baptiste Day. I remember feeling quite nervous about being an Albertan in Quebec on this separatist holiday but I was put at ease when introduced to the big block party around St-Viateur in Mile End. It was such a celebratory, non-political, and diverse gathering (which unfortunately disappeared years ago due to noise complaints from neighbours).
  • Fireworks. All the time. For years I was blown away with both the frequency and duration of the International Fireworks Competition shows. They’ve trimmed back a bit over the past few years because, I suppose, launching 30 minutes worth of explosives timed to music twice a week all summer long (plus holidays) must be a bit expensive. But impressive.
  • Concert listings. Every single band made a stop in Montreal. So spoiled.

I moved there in 2002 and the city was very clearly still in a funk following the very divisive 1995 referendum. There were still numerous shuttered storefronts, vacancy signs, and glorious buildings like the Gaudi-esque one on the corner of Sherbrooke and St-Laurent (“The Main”) – now a hotel – left neglected.

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As a local tourist I was struck by how large the metro stations were compared to Toronto’s or New York’s – an obvious indication that the city hadn’t yet (and may never) grown into the grandeur envisioned back in the heydays around Expo ’67 and the Olympics of 1976.

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Over the years, I would learn more about the many frustrating and ultimately self-defeating aspects of Quebec politics. The high taxes, the language debate, the student protests, the addiction to white elephant projects, the xenophobia. Some of it was to be expected but much of it was simply witnessing a government repeatedly closing its eyes to the realities of the wider world and shooting itself in the foot. One tries to ignore it.

What bothered me the most was the blatant corruption. Beyond the pettiness of borough politics and population drain to the north and south shore suburbs, the city was (and is) obviously influenced by an active construction mafia and a careless labour force. Watching sidewalk snow plows run over recently planted street-side trees or the repeated overly-long destruction of commercial strips on St-Laurent, du Parc, and others was maddening. That Montreal is such an attractive place despite all of the above is remarkable and it’s a testament to the abnormally high passions and creative resilience of its core residents and merchants.

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In 2007 I moved from my place around Concordia University to a place along the pedestrian street Prince-Arthur in the Plateau, bringing me to within blocks of both the city’s traditional cultural epicentre, The Main (boulevard St-Laurent), and the beautiful little park (Carré St-Louis) that charmed me so much on those initial visits.

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By the way, this was the sound from my window last summer…

That Montreal is a hot music scene is no secret. But it’s also a great fashion scene, and food scene, and game design scene, and… well, you name it. Arcade Fire, Cirque du Soleil, Moment Factory, Just for Laughs, Drawn and Quarterly – these are just the big names headlining an otherwise hyper-charged creative community. I was fortunate during my Maisonneuve days to be at a hub of sorts for numerous brilliant writers, designers, artists, musicians, and more. I feel immensely privileged to have caught performances at Tangente (dance), Montreal Improv, Fringe, Mainline, Upstairs, Comedyworks, SAT, Blue Met, Osheaga, the Segal, Place des arts / OSM, Under Pressure / MURAL, and many more.

Likewise, it was great to experience an Expos game firsthand in the drab Big O, a handful of raucous Habs games in the Molson/Bell Centre, some Matrix (of the defunct American Basketball Association) and Impact (MLS) games, the Grands Prix Cyclistes, and to participate in the Tour de l’Île bike circuit, the huge Marathon/half-Marathon, City Chase, and a range of salsa classes and basketball/soccer/dodgeball rec leagues over the years.

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And then there’s what’s outside the city. Hiking in the picturesque Eastern Townships (or Tremblant or Gatineau), mountain biking in Vermont at Kingdom Trails, canoeing around Shawinigan, skiiing at Jay Peak, or taking in Carnaval (toe kick!) in historic Quebec City. Past the soulless suburbs and industrial areas, there’s some very pretty countryside around the Island.

If I can offer any advice to those wanting to immerse themselves in Montreal, it would be this:

  • Learn French. And I mean really learn French. I went with the goal of becoming fluent but fell off the wagon when I began working long days. It’s surprisingly easy to get by in English. Don’t do it – learn French. (I just wish the Quebec government would take the approach of championing French and making lessons easy and cheap rather than punishing anything non-French à la Pastagate).
  • Work virtually. Even if you do learn French, it may not be proficient working grade French. And even still, the regional economy is doomed to perpetual mediocrity. The successful Montrealers – including francophones – are those with strong business/project ties with non-Quebec markets.
  • Ignore stereotypes. Most Canadians, and especially those who have never passed through the province, know Quebec only from the petulant politics they see of it in the news. It has that in spades and it is indeed a distinct society, but don’t let that prejudice you. People are people. As I’ve told many friends, you’d be surprised at how many parallels there are between Calgary-Red Deer-Edmonton and Montreal-Trois Rivieres-Quebec City.
  • Do everything. You won’t succeed but you’ll have fun trying. It’s ridiculous how many wonderful things there are to do in Montreal. Restaurants, shows, green spaces, you name it. There are very few cities – especially in North America – in which you can truly savour city living. It’s no NYC but Montreal is most definitely up there as one of best.
  • Make friends. It’s a very different experience being an “ex-pat” in your own country but the thing is that in Montreal many people are in the exact same position, wanting to meet others and do fun things together. Expect a lot of transient friendships though. Montreal is great at attracting outsiders but not so good at keeping them. Case in point.

So long, Montreal. You had my heart for a time. It’s hard to believe it was 13 years.

(All of the photos featured in this post were taken in 2002.)

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