A Column Made of Stone and Humilitation

The heat of my first week here has abated, and Montréal is better for it.

For some cities, Chicago being a prime example, hot weather makes them sing. There are few places I would rather be than Chicago in the summertime. During the steamy days of my first week in Montréal, the city seemed disjointed, as though nothing was quite working right. Fewer places have air conditioning here than in the US, including my apartment and the subway, so perhaps my impressions of those days are a bit jaded.

Still, my impression of the life on the streets, and in the restaurant, and among my coworkers, was that the Québecois did not know what to do with themselves when the mercury hit 90. I find that funny, similar to the residents of Nottingham who balked at less than an inch of snow. In both cases, people found the weather entertaining, but in a novel way, and they did not move through their activities with the ease of familiarity.

Now that the city has cooled off to a very comfortable 20 Celsius, the beauty of this place is almost unbelievable. It is so French, yet so American, and that paradox is a lovely thing to behold.

For instance, I was walking through Vieux Montréal, the old neighborhood dating from the time of colonization, which is composed of beautiful stone buildings and slightly less than straight streets. I walked by a square and, looking up, saw a column. I thought, “Naaaah! There’s no freaking way!” So, of course, I walked up to it, and sure enough, in the second largest francophone city in the world, stands a column dedicated to Admiral Lord Nelson, great defender of the British crown at the Battle of Trafalgar, against the naval forces of France.

Think about that for a moment. How are the Québecois all right with that column standing there? Of course, by the time Napoleon came to power, the Québecois had been a part of the British Empire for 40 years, but even so there has to be some sense of alienation or betrayal or something.

The only answer I can come up with is that the Québecois culture is defined enough, and is old enough, that they truly feel they are their own nationality. I suppose the same thing has happened in the US, and has happened to a lesser extent in the rest of the English-speaking world. But it is still shocking for me, a rather ignorant outsider, to come to Montréal and see a column erected to Lord Nelson.

So, maybe these paradoxes are not paradoxical at all; they only appear so because I am looking at this culture through filters that were developed elsewhere and which do not apply here. I have my European filter, developed in France, Belgium, and England. I bring my North American filter, developed on the highways of the US and anywhere I have ever lived or visited. I bring my Canadian filter, developed in conversations with friends in England and through jokes back home (eh), but none of these are right for Québec. Because I am decidedly not in Europe, and I am decidedly not in the US, and I am in a part of Canada that only passively wants to remain a part of Canada.

And that is going to be a hard thing to adjust my mind to.