Montréal

Those months were special. I undersold them a previous post: Québec is most definitely a moveable feast.

Visa: Everywhere You Want to Be

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That sheet of paper has been stapled in my passport since August. If you look closely, you can see that it expires on February 10. A small handful of close friends knew of my trepidation before coming to Montreal; after the debacle that England became, the idea of living abroad again felt like a nightmare's crushing weight upon my chest.

Not all of them understood just how important this move was to me, but that no longer concerns me. Montreal has given me what I wanted, which was the final closure on 2005 and 2006. It has been an incredible experience, including the fulfillment of a couple of dreams from early in my college days. Whatever happens next, I can look back on my time here and be glad.

Below is a steaming bowl of spaghetti I made for lunch today. When last in Paris, my mom made a lunch of spaghetti with an egg cracked into the sauce, turning it a reddish orange. The egg adds body, giving a simple jarred marinara sauce umami not usually found. Seeing the bowl of pasta steaming in the afternoon light, I again felt a strong longing for Chicago that has been more pronounced of late.

The Metro

I have a really good excuse for not posting here recently. First, I went to the US for Christmas. Second, when I returned, it was mad work. Now, I present a brief photo-essay of Montreal's metro stations. I pass through many of these every day.

First, we have the Verdun station on the Green line.



This is one of my favorite stations. The images do not capture the feeling of the place; it is HUGE. The platforms are so far underground, there is no staircase up, only escalators. I haven't been to all the stations, but from what I've seen, this is unique to Verdun.



You can see the platform stretching far into the distance. Actually, the roof slopes down towards the train tunnel at the far end, giving the place a greater sense of distance. It is a cool effect, and as is true in much of the metro system, it would be cooler if the city had the money to keep up maintenance (in this case, replacing the burnt-out bulbs).

From there, I take us to Place-Saint-Henri. I've never gotten off here, but I took a meandering stroll one night with a friend, and we ended up at the station. As you can see below, the station has a similarly huge sense of scale to Verdun.



There is no set Montreal style when it comes to the stations, with many of them having a unique artistic flair. One of my favorite building ornamentations is simple glazed brick, and whoever designed Place-Saint-Henri must have had a similar interest. I like the use of different shades of brick in each section, and the effect is understated, which is not something always associated with the stations in this city.



Station Villa-Maria is not a very attractive station, but I really appreciate the use of colors in the seating. The first time I saw this station, I thought, "Oh, that's kind of cool." That's still how I feel about it.



Côte-Sainte-Catherine is a great example of one of the defining features of Montreal architecture: a heavy reliance on cast concrete in artistic shapes. For whatever reason, a lot of the construction from the 1960s and 1970s uses this rather bland technique to add - what? - artistic merit or visual interest to what is essentially a cheaply constructed concrete structure. There is something about this affected nod towards art, but with absolutely no financial backing, which reminds me a lot of Eastern Europe. Vast tracts of this city are incredibly ugly, and a lady died just this past summer when some of the concrete ornamentation on a hotel downtown broke off and crushed her while she and her husband were dining. If any Montrealais or Québecois can explain how stations like Côte-Sainte-Catherine are not horribly ugly abominations, I am all ears.





Despite my rant, I do think this zig-zag effect is pretty cool. See how the pattern is on an angle (look at the second picture)? The station feels clean, too.

In the same vein as Villa-Maria, Plamondon has a seating design which, when I first saw it, I thought, "That's kind of cool." Unlike Villa-Maria, I no longer think Plamondon is nearly as cool as when I first saw it, though I do like the use of color. However, the illusion was ruined for me when I noticed the horribly chipped paint on most of the seats. I am not sure if it shows up in the picture below, so you will have to trust me.



This tour ends with another one of my favorites: Namur. First off, Namur is a city in Belgium, the capital of francophone Wallonie, and I spent a serene week there the spring of 2006. So, I was predisposed to like this station. The platform looks almost identical, brick for brick, as De la Savane, the next station along the line, and the one closest to my office. However, while De la Savane is rather bland and uninspiring from the platform on up to street level, Namur has the most amazing art installation I have seen anywhere in the world, in any metro station. Unless you are braindead, this light sculpture is dazzling and utterly breathtaking as you come up from the dark station platform.



Finally, there were new ads in the metro cars today. They are for the Polytechnique, Québec's (and one of Canada's) premier schools for science and engineering.



I was looking at it, wondering if they used models or real students. "That blonde in front is awfully good-looking to be studying at the Polytechnique," I thought. But then, I noticed the guy in the blue polo, centered in the close-up below.



So, yeah, I'm pretty sure they used at least one real student.

A Tale of Two Cities

I went on my first business trip this past week. I spent two exhilarating days in Bolton, outside of Toronto, inspecting the first run of silicone-overmolded parts for the product I have been working on since September. It has been great experience to work with the early prototype stage of a product, and to watch it go through design changes (partially from my input), through to having steel cut on the molds, and to actually get final working parts that reflect work I myself have done.

As much fun as that was, this essay is not about my job. This is an essay about two very different North Americas, the one found here in Montreal, Quebec, and the other exemplified by cities such as Toronto.

For readers of this blog, it should come as no great surprise that I hated Montreal when I first arrived. It was 35 degrees C, which in Fahrenheit translates to incredibly hot. The metro is not air conditioned, my house is not air conditioned, and the restaurant was not air conditioned, at least not effectively. I was having a lot of fun, to be sure, and there was a sense of freedom from expectations that I have not enjoyed since the summers of high school, but my impression of the city itself was negative. It was hot, dirty, and a lot of the architecture is unbelievably ugly (I am not alone in thinking this; it is often described as being Eastern Bloc-like by friends). Also, since I was working five days a week during the prime hours of the day, I had no chance to explore the neighborhoods. Not to mention, I was shocked, SHOCKED, that the St. Viateur bagels I ate were honestly not very good, and that I found poutine to be more disgusting than incredible* (even the poutine foie gras with frites fried in duck fat).

As the weather has grown colder and I have had more free time, I have gotten to know the city better and my opinion has changed for the better. Honestly, only parts of the city are incredibly ugly. The Plateau, especially around Parc Lafontaine and also along St. Joseph, is wonderful to stroll through, and even where I live (in working-class Verdun), the traditional urban fabric is very much intact. It is a wonderful city to live in, sometimes feeling European, but with the conveniences that North Americans love (like having shops open on Sundays).

Going, on the other hand, to Toronto was a shock to the system. First off, I have grown so accustomed to speaking in French, and to trying to understand the strange way Montréalais have of speaking it, that it was a little disconcerting to be able to speak only English. It was the first time I realized I might have some reverse culture shock when I go home. Secondly, Toronto felt like home, meaning Chicago, and it made me see Montreal in an entirely new light.

Toronto, the city, is almost exactly the same size as Chicago, although Chicagoland is nearly three times the Toronto Metropolitan Area. Chicago does feel bigger and busier, but Toronto has a lot of similarity in the grandeur of its downtown, the way the CBD sits on the waterfront (Lake Ontario stretching off to the south), the busy-ness of its public transit network. Both cities tend to overwhelm the human scale.

Montreal, on the other hand, has always felt small. If I were to run into someone I know in Chicago, unless it was near their home, I would be surprised. In Montreal, it has happened to me nearly every week, including just last night, but the number of people I know here is minute compared to back home. It is almost as if Montreal is a small town of 1.5 million people; it is not a metropolis.

Ultimately, Montreal is part of North America, but the trip to Toronto reminded me that this city is more like Madison than Milwaukee, even though it’s larger than both put together.



*I keep meaning to write an essay dedicated to poutine, and my contentious relationship with that food item, so you may be seeing that in the coming weeks. There is also another topic I need to cover, which if you think hard you can probably guess at, but I am not sure if it should be in a stand-alone essay, or included in a larger piece. Now you know more about what goes into writing these essays, and why I missed publishing a piece two weeks ago.

Busy Week of Thanks

I swore I would not do this again, but here I am, having spent another Thanksgiving outside of the US. Certainly, this year was nothing like 2005, but it is still an odd experience. I find that it focuses the feeling of being a foreigner, and I have found myself thinking it would be nice to be back home for the first time. But, this is still a great place, and the opportunities which I have had (and which continue to come around) are more than worth the momentary discomfort.

Then again, Christmas is just around the corner.

There will be no essay this week, as the time I usually spend writing the essay was taken up with two friends' visits to Montreal, as well as hosting a Thanksgiving party, for which I cooked. I do hope that seeing the city and Quebecois culture through my friends' eyes, both of whom are essentially newcomers to Quebec, will give me a couple avenues to pursue in the coming weeks. For now, though, I eagerly await the coming of winter.

January will be great.

This Is a Country and It Is Vast

To Canadian readers: what follows may at times be uncomfortably patronizing. My apologies for this, but it is an unfortunate element of the Americo-Canadian relationship. This short essay is an attempt to view Canada differently, as a country, and the American attitudes towards our oft-mocked neighbors.

When I lived in England, my sense of distance was horribly skewed from the local norms. I never understood why my classmates complained about going home for a weekend visit; they lived only two or three hours away from Nottingham. No one I knew lived even half as far as Gustavus is from Chicago, and Minnesota is fairly close to Illinois by American standards.

That was when the immensity of America’s sprawl worked its way to my core. We have been blessed (through numerous wars, shrewd land deals and broken treaties, as well as a fair amount of hubris) with a nation that makes the great states of Europe look miniscule: Great Britain is the same size as Illinois and Wisconsin combined.

The density of Britain also made an impression, because Illinois’ total population of 13 million is equal to London’s metro area. While Chicago’s metro makes up the vast majority the state’s population, England has an additional 37 million people crammed into an area 7,000 square miles smaller!

So, yes, my sense of perspective has been defined by my native country, and I will never fully lose my sense of claustrophobia in Old Europe (not that I do not enjoy that feeling). However, this American has been schooled by Canada. If I thought America was immense, this place is Brobdingnagian*.

Here is an example: I live an hour and a half from the US. If I were to drive 1000 miles south, I would be in South Carolina. If I were to drive 1000 miles north, I would, well, I would be in Québec, if I could drive 1000 miles, but the country is so vast that no one has ever built a road up there.

Here is another: If you leave from the Montana border with Canada and drive to the northern border of Alberta, you will have covered a distance nearly as great as driving from the border with Canada to the border with Mexico. However, you will only be halfway to the northern coast of Canada, deep in the middle of the vast boreal forests.

The realization that Canada dwarfs the US is just one of many ways in which this neighbor to our north is becoming a real place to me. I am not one to belittle foreign countries, but how many Americans follow with rapt attention the political machinations of Stephen Harper or the misfortunes of that lovable goof, Michael Ignatieff? The grand total could dance on the head of a pin, without disrupting the chorus line of angels.

I have realized in the three months since arriving that Canada, as much as I have loved the idea of this country for most of my life, has never really been more than the butt of jokes. That is harsh condemnation, and overstated, but therein lies more truth than I would have admitted in July. Have you heard the one about how they named Canada, eh? But have you heard about the Battle of Vimy Ridge?

Canada is a real nation, with a culture similar to, yet distinct from, its small southern neighbor. I was as surprised as you to learn this. Gosh, it is nearly impossible to write about Canada without falling into tried and true clichés and jokes based on their supposed goofiness and imitation-nation image. But that is completely opposite of what I am trying to convey.

I went to see a documentary the other night on the Alberta oil sands. It was produced by Canadians, and I was surprised to find that the filmmakers went beyond the customary anti-Americanism and actually expressed a clearly pro-Canadian stance, bordering on jingoism. That is not something I would expect from a slightly goofy nation of wanna-be American posers.


*Sometimes, a thesaurus is just what a writer needs.

Rue Duluth

I used to work on Duluth. Those were hard days of labor, and the conditions poor. In the early morning, when we got off, the staff would eat a meal together, and in those exhausted moments I was happy.

I work now on Mayrand. It is a great job, and I am much happier than I was at the restaurant, but I do feel that I have lost something precious. The grime and heat, the grueling hours and the horrible aches from my back and legs, despite all of that, I worked with Québecois and I spent my time immersed in the culture of la belle province. My French improved and I learned a lot about the incredible people of this nation within a nation.

My coworkers on Mayrand are Canadian, but they are not Québecois de souche. I get no long-winded explications on the proper method of making tourtière or expositions on Québecois nationalism. And I miss that, because anglophone culture is so similar to American culture that I feel like I went to a foreign country and then that foreign country was taken over by Americans.

Last week, the President who will remain unnamed visited Montréal. My boss took a full day off of work to go to the private, invitation-only luncheon to hear him speak. This same guy listens to Rush Limbaugh and watches every New York Giants game.

I have some ideas for reconnecting to the culture - mostly they involve bars and hockey - but I have yet to find the time or the will-power to step out of a full and comfortable life in English and delve into French headfirst.

I hope that even in my admittance of having nothing to write about, you can find something interesting. And, by “you,” I am referring to my mom, since I know she (and maybe no one else) will read this.