After more than six weeks in the rest of North America, getting to Quebec and to Montreal was a little bit strange. It just feels very different here to the rest of the continent, both in terms of the cityscape and the people.
Obviously, Quebec is French-speaking, and you'll rarely see a word of English on signage anywhere in Montreal. The Francophone world is of course well known for being very protective of its language. I'm reliably told that in Quebec this is actually reinforced by laws which make it compulsory for shop staff to greet you in French first, and which specify (this does slightly beggar belief) what percentage smaller the text of any English translation on a sign must be than the original French. The recorded announcements on the Metro pronounce every station name French-style, even the substantial number of names that are obviously of English language origin such as "Monk" and "Atwater". (That does distract you a little from how strangely juddery the Metro is, on the trains which all have, er, rubber tyres.)
And start to wander round the old city in Montreal and you'll be almost immediately struck by just how, well, European it is. There are narrow, pedestrianised alleyways with cafe tables outside the pretty period, very un-North American buildings. Not to mention far more people smoking than anywhere else in Canada (apparently Quebec has been dubbed "Canada's smoking section"). To be fair, downtown does feel much more like the other big Canadian cities in terms of architecture and vibe though, although there are far fewer tall skyscrapers.
Montreal seems to have a fairly extraordinary number of festivals, which seem to be a fairly defining feature of city life. With the help of my local friends old and new (made through Couchsurfing), I was able to sample three of them. L'International des Feux Loto-Québec is a fireworks festival that runs throughout the summer - actually not just a festival, but an international competition. A fireworks competition was a new concept to me, but seemingly companies which stage fireworks displays are only too keen to compete against each other. They compete as countries, a different one each Saturday night, and it was the turn of Canada when I was there. As I mentioned in my New York musings, I'm no connoisseur of big fireworks displays, but it was breathtaking, not to mention surely hugely expensive (I didn't work out who was paying), with crowds of many thousands watching from various vantage points - seemingly summer Saturday nights out in Montreal often start by watching the fireworks. And how cool is that??
The Piknic Électronique is another weekly happening through the summer. Like the name suggests, it's a giant Sunday afternoon picnic on one of Montreal's rather attractive islands, with music provided by a string of big-name electro DJs, often from Europe. There is a charge to get in, but you're allowed to bring picnic food in with you. There's a lively, very relaxed and friendly and rather cool vibe (and yes for once, when I mention 'music' and 'cool' approvingly in the same sentence I'm not being tongue-in-cheek or deluded) with a range of electro music from the poppy to the fairly hardcore. Slightly disturbingly, the festival had been temporarily shunted from its usual location in favour of a one-off heavy metal festival on the other island which was being given higher billing (what were they thinking of??), but apparently in its usual larger location there's a designated gay area, and as you'd perhaps expect with electronic music there was definitely a polysexual crowd. It was a great thing to experience and I found myself very impressed with a city that can put things like these on every single weekend through the summer.
The third festival was the month-long Juste Pour Rire Festival, apparently the largest street comedy festival in the world. I saw the huge finale evening, featuring more fireworks, children singing songs from The Sound of Music in French ("Doh Ray Me" translated into French sounds more than a little peculiar...), incredible displays by an acrobatic company dangling high in the air suspended by a huge crane, jugglers on stilts, and a 15-foot tall inflatable green monster with red horns, and his pink girlfriend (I'm afraid their names escape me). It was all a bit peculiar at times but once again huge with a crowd to match, fun and deeply impressive. Seriously, this city knows how to enjoy itself.
One daytime I took a trip out to the Olympic Park used for the 1976 summer games, and did the guided tour. Although the park covers a substantial area with lots of grass, the structures are very, er, concrete - if you didn't know when it was all designed and built you'd probably guess right to within about 5 years. Well, I say "all built", but actually due to drawn-out industrial action during preparation for the Games, they didn't manage to complete the roof or tower until... 1987. This is glossed over somewhat in the official tour! The tower is the most impressive feature, being the tallest angled tower in the world. I found seeing the stadium itself a little underwhelming, since there were two major changes which make it somewhat difficult to imagine as an athletics stadium: (a) it now has a permanent, non-retractable roof, and (b) all the seats were removed from one side of the stadium sometime after the Games to accommodate the belated building of the tower. But still, it's the third Olympic stadium I've seen the inside of (after Helsinki and the old Wembley... Stratford next no doubt) and I can see it becoming a bit of a mission to see more if and when I go to other Olympic host cities. Outside the stadium is a circle of flags honouring all the countries which won gold medals at the Games. Sadly this didn't include Canada (oops... can you just imagine if GB wins nothing in 2012??), but it did include East Germany and the USSR - so there's at least one place in the world where those two flags will continue to fly in perpetuity. It's well known that financially the Montreal Games were a bit of a disaster, with the city only managing to finally pay off its debts in 2006 - better late than never! In trying to plug the financial black hole, someone in the provincial government clearly had a sense of humour, since the main method of raising the revenue was a tax on... tobacco. I found the idea of a sporting event being paid for mostly by smokers quite amusing.
The gay scene in Montreal is concentrated on a long (and I mean long) stretch of a single street, Rue Ste-Catherine. The Metro station on this stretch has a rainbow-coloured entrance. That's only the start of the unsubtleness of the area - I think it's the first place I've seen where a number of bathhouses (i.e. gay saunas) are on the main gay strip just dotted around the bars and clubs, and where the signage and pictures on the front of the bathhouses makes extremely clear exactly what they are. Nonetheless the general feel of the area was definitely both lively and friendly. However I was pretty underwhelmed by the club, called Sky, that my host David and his friends took me to on Saturday night, but there are at least three big clubs and word of mouth suggested the others might be better - I got to one of the others, Parking, on the Monday night but it was too empty to make much of a judgment.
My overriding impression of the three major cities in Canada is of cities that have fantastic nature on their doorsteps. I think it's something that I'll now always find a little frustrating about London, the fact that there's very little real nature available in, or anywhere close to, the city. In Montreal there is Mont-Royal, more a hill than a mountain really, but it's a reasonably energetic walk - starting virtually in downtown - up secluded tree-lined paths to get to the top. From the top you get a fairly impressive view over part of the city. Just outside the city, within walking distance from the place of my Couchsurfing host David, are the very attractive Lachine Rapids (Montreal is actually situated on a smallish island) on the St Lawrence River - I could easily have spent at least half a day relaxing in this beautiful, totally secluded area in the hot summer sunshine, and not for the first time I found myself distinctly jealous of city-dwellers who have easy access to such attractive unspoilt nature.
Really, I didn't entirely want to leave Canada. That's high praise indeed coming from me considering that I was heading straight from there to Stockholm for Pride week there. I was feeling a strong attachment towards Canada and vowing to myself that I'll be back when resources permit. Lonely Planet says that it's an impossible country to dislike, and I'd have to agree with that. If you've ever been tempted to go, please please do it.
Photos: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2393841&id=61207375&l=288b820acd
Obviously, Quebec is French-speaking, and you'll rarely see a word of English on signage anywhere in Montreal. The Francophone world is of course well known for being very protective of its language. I'm reliably told that in Quebec this is actually reinforced by laws which make it compulsory for shop staff to greet you in French first, and which specify (this does slightly beggar belief) what percentage smaller the text of any English translation on a sign must be than the original French. The recorded announcements on the Metro pronounce every station name French-style, even the substantial number of names that are obviously of English language origin such as "Monk" and "Atwater". (That does distract you a little from how strangely juddery the Metro is, on the trains which all have, er, rubber tyres.)
And start to wander round the old city in Montreal and you'll be almost immediately struck by just how, well, European it is. There are narrow, pedestrianised alleyways with cafe tables outside the pretty period, very un-North American buildings. Not to mention far more people smoking than anywhere else in Canada (apparently Quebec has been dubbed "Canada's smoking section"). To be fair, downtown does feel much more like the other big Canadian cities in terms of architecture and vibe though, although there are far fewer tall skyscrapers.
Which continent??
The Piknic Électronique is another weekly happening through the summer. Like the name suggests, it's a giant Sunday afternoon picnic on one of Montreal's rather attractive islands, with music provided by a string of big-name electro DJs, often from Europe. There is a charge to get in, but you're allowed to bring picnic food in with you. There's a lively, very relaxed and friendly and rather cool vibe (and yes for once, when I mention 'music' and 'cool' approvingly in the same sentence I'm not being tongue-in-cheek or deluded) with a range of electro music from the poppy to the fairly hardcore. Slightly disturbingly, the festival had been temporarily shunted from its usual location in favour of a one-off heavy metal festival on the other island which was being given higher billing (what were they thinking of??), but apparently in its usual larger location there's a designated gay area, and as you'd perhaps expect with electronic music there was definitely a polysexual crowd. It was a great thing to experience and I found myself very impressed with a city that can put things like these on every single weekend through the summer.
The third festival was the month-long Juste Pour Rire Festival, apparently the largest street comedy festival in the world. I saw the huge finale evening, featuring more fireworks, children singing songs from The Sound of Music in French ("Doh Ray Me" translated into French sounds more than a little peculiar...), incredible displays by an acrobatic company dangling high in the air suspended by a huge crane, jugglers on stilts, and a 15-foot tall inflatable green monster with red horns, and his pink girlfriend (I'm afraid their names escape me). It was all a bit peculiar at times but once again huge with a crowd to match, fun and deeply impressive. Seriously, this city knows how to enjoy itself.
One daytime I took a trip out to the Olympic Park used for the 1976 summer games, and did the guided tour. Although the park covers a substantial area with lots of grass, the structures are very, er, concrete - if you didn't know when it was all designed and built you'd probably guess right to within about 5 years. Well, I say "all built", but actually due to drawn-out industrial action during preparation for the Games, they didn't manage to complete the roof or tower until... 1987. This is glossed over somewhat in the official tour! The tower is the most impressive feature, being the tallest angled tower in the world. I found seeing the stadium itself a little underwhelming, since there were two major changes which make it somewhat difficult to imagine as an athletics stadium: (a) it now has a permanent, non-retractable roof, and (b) all the seats were removed from one side of the stadium sometime after the Games to accommodate the belated building of the tower. But still, it's the third Olympic stadium I've seen the inside of (after Helsinki and the old Wembley... Stratford next no doubt) and I can see it becoming a bit of a mission to see more if and when I go to other Olympic host cities. Outside the stadium is a circle of flags honouring all the countries which won gold medals at the Games. Sadly this didn't include Canada (oops... can you just imagine if GB wins nothing in 2012??), but it did include East Germany and the USSR - so there's at least one place in the world where those two flags will continue to fly in perpetuity. It's well known that financially the Montreal Games were a bit of a disaster, with the city only managing to finally pay off its debts in 2006 - better late than never! In trying to plug the financial black hole, someone in the provincial government clearly had a sense of humour, since the main method of raising the revenue was a tax on... tobacco. I found the idea of a sporting event being paid for mostly by smokers quite amusing.
The Olympic Stadium and Tower
The gay scene in Montreal is concentrated on a long (and I mean long) stretch of a single street, Rue Ste-Catherine. The Metro station on this stretch has a rainbow-coloured entrance. That's only the start of the unsubtleness of the area - I think it's the first place I've seen where a number of bathhouses (i.e. gay saunas) are on the main gay strip just dotted around the bars and clubs, and where the signage and pictures on the front of the bathhouses makes extremely clear exactly what they are. Nonetheless the general feel of the area was definitely both lively and friendly. However I was pretty underwhelmed by the club, called Sky, that my host David and his friends took me to on Saturday night, but there are at least three big clubs and word of mouth suggested the others might be better - I got to one of the others, Parking, on the Monday night but it was too empty to make much of a judgment.
My overriding impression of the three major cities in Canada is of cities that have fantastic nature on their doorsteps. I think it's something that I'll now always find a little frustrating about London, the fact that there's very little real nature available in, or anywhere close to, the city. In Montreal there is Mont-Royal, more a hill than a mountain really, but it's a reasonably energetic walk - starting virtually in downtown - up secluded tree-lined paths to get to the top. From the top you get a fairly impressive view over part of the city. Just outside the city, within walking distance from the place of my Couchsurfing host David, are the very attractive Lachine Rapids (Montreal is actually situated on a smallish island) on the St Lawrence River - I could easily have spent at least half a day relaxing in this beautiful, totally secluded area in the hot summer sunshine, and not for the first time I found myself distinctly jealous of city-dwellers who have easy access to such attractive unspoilt nature.
Mont-Royal
Really, I didn't entirely want to leave Canada. That's high praise indeed coming from me considering that I was heading straight from there to Stockholm for Pride week there. I was feeling a strong attachment towards Canada and vowing to myself that I'll be back when resources permit. Lonely Planet says that it's an impossible country to dislike, and I'd have to agree with that. If you've ever been tempted to go, please please do it.
Photos: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2393841&id=61207375&l=288b820acd
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