There are no words...
Well, actually there were no words. I could think of not a single interesting thing to blog about in the last weeks of April.
Lynda was banging away, literally... her poor keyboard is treated like a 1972 Remington 666 typewriter!
Which might be appropriate, as I think it was the devil's work she was doing. Writing 30 page papers on, I know not what. Out they churned, as I slipped into the April blahs.
Then it all happened at once. Spring kicked into gear for longer than 12 hours, and I had the last weekend of Lynda's school year yawning in front of me, so I trundled out on my BIXI bike to the other side of the mountain, to discover here-to-fore undiscovered parts of Montreal.
Around the world on the first weekend of May, an amazing event occurs called "Jane's Walks". People go strolling, investigating unknown parts of the cities they live in. Making new friends and hearing stories about places they thought they knew everything about. Over 250 cities worldwide participate, so mark your calendars for next year!
I attended two walks. The first was "A Tale of 3 Cities". Surprises started right from the get-go. Although I knew the address was in another area of Montreal populated by a lot of the Jewish community, I wasn't expecting to start the tour in a synagogue. Or to receive a pat-down from a guard who looked like a bouncer from a St. Denis bar . Or to be the only person in the room under 65 years old!
The email confirming my attendance had advised that a "light breakfast" would be served at 9:30am, and the tour would start at 10am. I arrived at 9:31am to a room of 40 plus septuagenarians chowing down on mountains of bagels, cream cheese, scrambled eggs, and rugelach. And buckets of "caw-fee".
I overrode my introvert brain (that told me to run) and sat down at a table with four women in their 70's. After giving me the once over they asked, "Why don't you eat?!" I explained I had already had breakfast. "So did we", cackled a women who introduced herself as Ethel. Sheila and Edna then also said howdy, but still looked deeply suspicious of my lack of ability to eat two breakfasts. (I couldn't get into the fact that bagels and eggs and caw-fee would send me to the local Jewish hospital!)
Turns out these ladies, and the rest of the people in the room, were members of the Shaare Zion congregation, and not officially on the walk.
At 9:50am the actual walk-registered, back pack hauling, water bottle and granola bar carrying gentiles arrived, clueless to the culinary delicacies they had missed. (Most of the eggs and cheese were gone.) Where-upon Norman, our tour-guide, allowed a five minute delay so they could bring out more bagels and rugelach for them to enjoy.
Turns out it was more a lecture than a walk. The actual "walk" was only about 500 meters long, but took nearly an hour. It's easier to wrangle cats than herd the group of now 50 or more down MacDonald street in a timely fashion.
However I found out a lot about Lynda's ancestors - the Decaries & Hurtubises had been the earliest French settlers of the area. Norman said the Decaries had been given land in Cote St. Luc in the 1650's, as it was a raised area with a cliff, where they could essentially be lookouts to warn the new settlement of Ville Marie of impending attacks by Iroquois!
The whole point of the tour seemed to be to point out the idiosyncratic / idiotic set up of local cities in the area. Three cities intersect on MacDonald Street: Cote St. Luc, Hamstead and Montreal. Which means there are 3 sets of parking regulations, 3 parks boards, 3 garbage collections.
[Norman pointing out the "Park of 3 cities"- with 2 different parking regulations where is it split at the east end.]
In one part, the road is governed by Hampstead, the sidewalk and buildings by Cote St. Luc, and Hampstead wanted to make sure the snow was removed each winter on the roads leading through to their posh houses, so they leased that land. But they don't touch the sidewalks. The working class locals could slip slide their way along those.
There is a park the size of an Olympic swimming pool (above) that is 25% Montreal, 25% Hampstead and 50% Cote St. Luc. And yes, they all have the parks boards come out and maintain "their" section of it.
As luck would have it the tour ended right near a place I have been trying to get to for 6 months! DOUGHNATS!! Yes the mecca that has been taunting me all winter long was finally in my sights.
To make sure they didn't run out of my required "triple threat" gluten free, vegan nut free" morsels of glory, I pre-ordered them. And after watching everyone else eat all morning, as well as my BIXI exertions, I felt fully justified in chowing down on the two-bite glories.
Needless to say I will be buying more. It's worth the 12km roundtrip bike ride on a 3 geared BIXI to acquire them!
The other Jane's walk was more "traditional" in many senses: we actually walked quite a long way! It also highlighted how overplanning can result in a divided community. Both internally and from its neighbours.
Greene Streen exists in the largely Anglophone enclave city of Westmount. It is an oddly discordant collection of new and old. The best and worst architecture can be seen.
[1: "New" towers of Westmount Square built to much fanfare in 1960's, demolishing 100 classic houses. 2: What was "The Westmount"; now "Le Westmount".]
It might be that I have just finished reading "The Two Solitudes" by Hugh MacLennan, but it felt very English. No, BRITISH! Dare I say uptight? It's all very controlled. Everything and everyone has its place. There is even a bylaw restricting any "business" to only 3 streets in the area (Greene, Victoria and St Catherine), which means there is no "throughway" foot traffic from Montreal. Now long-established (80 years plus) businesses are struggling to survive when as foot traffic falls and people shop online.
This seems to have prevented the community feel you get in the city of Montreal's various boroughs, where corner stores (depanneurs) and flower shops proliferate, public parks are on every block and communal living seems at times chaotic, but harmonious.
There, I said it. The French win this battle. Down with uptight Brits, Vive La Chaos of France. (But don't tell mum, or the Queen; they might revoke my passport).
My excuse for not reporting on all this sooner was that for the last four days I have been lolling about on Lac Selby in the southern portion of the Eastern Townships.
Despite dire warnings of death by black fly, it was simply amazing. And wifi-free! The flies only started bothering us on the day we left, so we got in vast amounts of canoeing, pedelo-ing and napping. Oh, and reading... 2 books in 2 days! A personal record.
[Sunrise at Lac Selby]
I highly recommend The Two Solitudes to anyone interested in the French-English Quebec issue. MacLennan wrote it in 1945, and it is surprisingly insightful look (seeing as he was a Nova Scotian) into a dominant religion battling a modernizing nation, and the unending battle of love versus loyalty.
I also recommend reading it eating mini GF Vegan donuts and floating on a lake. But we all can't be as lucky as me.
Se pogner le beigne avec style mon ami.