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.