Tag Archives: Montreal

La Belle Province: Montréal in July

I just spent a few weeks in Montreal and, as usual in summer, it was stunning. Clear, sunny, with just enough rain showers and thunderstorms passing through to keep the flowers and grass lush and green. Although it was hot and humid, Montreal mercifully escaped most of the brutal heatwave that much of the United States has been experiencing.

Since Montreal is my home base, I simply did not have the chance to play tourist in my own city and instead spent most of the time running errands and unpacking and re-packing for my next adventure. (By time you will read this, I’ll be in Nova Scotia for a few weeks, where I hope to have at least a little bit of time to be a tourist in this cool and rainy Atlantic province, which I have never visited before!)

Despite having very little down time, I still managed to appreciate summer in the city in my local neighbourhood. I visited the lovely Atwater market, where all of the summer fruits and vegetables are ahead of schedule thanks to a warm spring. (Last year, I missed peach, nectarine and blueberry season because I went to Chile right when they were starting to be available; last week, I could finally enjoy them all!)

I took advantage of the market’s outdoor food court and had a traditional French Canadian crepe, prepared in with sarrasin (buckwheat) flour. The delicate crepes are brushed with a thin layer of your choice of topping: I had fresh lemon juice with a sprinkle of sugar. For those who know me well and are wondering, yes, I have had plenty of coffee (and I have some of my favourite beans to accompany me to Nova Scotia).

After traveling literally thousands of miles, I always notice something new upon arriving back home. This time, I noticed what a Latin American influence there is in my very own neighbourhood. Montreal is first and foremost a French Canadian city. However, my neighbourhood was at one time (about 100 years or so ago) settled by mostly Italian, Irish, Scottish and English immigrants. But now, it reflects an increasingly diverse Canadian culture.

Latin America is certainly represented here. While I was gone, a coffee shop transformed into a mate cafe (complete with the same Argentinean brand mate I buy in Chile!), a studio specializing in Argentinean tango lessons, and empanadas are very easy to come by in pretty much every other cafe. At least I know I will not be “reverse homesick” when finally settling back here someday!

…then again, the French culture is definitely still here, too!

Home Sweet Home

 

I have been back in Canada for a few weeks, and as it is winter, I have often been inside with the television on at night. Flipping through my cable channels, I noticed that the darling of HGTV seems to be House Hunters International. I have sat through a couple of (okay, many,) episodes and determined that they don’t exactly give a full-fledged realistic account of what it is like to move to another country. In their defense, that is hard to do in a 20 minute tv show. In my experience, six months of blogging about it doesn’t really achieve that, either. Nonetheless, I see the appeal of the show. It provides a glimpse into what it’s like to shop for perhaps the most important thing you can shop for: a home… and in an unfamiliar, exciting new international location to boot.

I also think the fascination is also that it provides a look at how people live (sort of) in other countries. Travel shows have traditionally focused on the sights and attractions (or in the case of Anthony Bourdain, unusual gastronomic experiences that only someone with an iron stomach should attempt) of a location. House Hunters International gives you a peek into a very fundamental side of life in foreign places.

During my (now well-known) walks in Chile and Canada (and the short walks I enjoyed during my brief stay in Buenos Aires), I have spent a lot of time thinking about what the architecture of homes says about a place.

Montreal, Canada

Montreal is my adopted home. I have lived here for nearly a decade. One of the initial things that originally attracted me to this city was its architecture. While I find many American cities and towns have neglected their older buildings and architecture in favour of new construction, Montreal embraces the old.

Part of that is out of necessity: the city is an island and has only so much room to expand in, so naturally it is easier and more common to remodel rather than try to build something new in the little space there is available.

Part of it, though, I think is a mentality that embraces its past French, English, Scottish, Irish and its own “North American” heritage – with a healthy sprinkling of cultural influences from around the world. To disregard the architecture that reflects this treasured heritage would be to shuffle an important facet of Montreal’s history and identity to the side.

Antofagasta, Chile

A city with many residents who work in the mining industry, the population seems to favour modern, sleek apartments (built in the 1980s onward). What could be a boring skyline of cookie-cutter box-shaped apartment buildings is salvaged by the bright, hot paint colours chosen to adorn many of the buildings.

What caught my attention when I first arrived, however, was the sprinkling of Spanish Colonial style buildings throughout the city. Then, I noticed a few other styles. I started to see Italian influences and even British influences in a few of the older buildings. One of my expat friends told me that she was told there used to be more Spanish colonial and old mansions in the central Parque Brasil part of the city. Unfortunately, at some point, it seems many were demolished in favour of tall apartment buildings.

San Pedro de Atacama & villages in the Atacama desert, Chile

When we went to the interior of northern Chile in the general area of San Pedro in the Atacama desert, we drove through a few tiny villages scattered throughout the desert.

Some of their houses were focused on the essentials: a cool, cozy place to rest away from the afternoon heat.

Buenos Aires, Argentina

And then there was Buenos Aires. It reminded me of Montreal in a sense because of its willingness to embrace its past styles of architecture and incorporation of many, many architectural influences: Spanish, Italian, French and everything in between, they were all there…

…all tied together with their own romantic Argentine flair.

I am determined to go back, in large part simply to focus on wandering around and looking at all of the buildings.

The splendid and at times tumultuous history of this city – and all cities – is written on the very walls in which its residents reside.

*Note: Thank you all for visiting and leaving so many kind comments last week. I am glad you are enjoying the blog, seeing as I certainly enjoy writing it. I will be back in Chile soon with more new stories of my adventures in a much warmer climate than where I am now!

Learning to walk at a Chilean pace

Morning walk in San Pedro de Atacama

I learn a lot from taking walks in different locations. I think taking a walk is the most immediate way to connect not only with a place itself, but also with its people.

Through quiet, ordinary moments on the sidewalk, I have learned a lot about that elusive thing that all travellers seem to crave experience with: culture.  Culture is such an intangiable thing that you must be immersed, over time, in a variety of activities in a myriad of settings in the host culture, and even then you’ll never really get it.

During my brief return to Montreal over the past few weeks, I have noticed that walking around the Canadian city is a staggeringly different experience than walking around the city of Antofagasta. Sure, it’s cold and icy, which certainly affects how life is conducted on the sidewalk. But there is more than just frostbite that is different.

Montreal in the snow

Slow and steady wins the race might very well be the motto in Antofagasta. I have tried “keeping up” (or should it be, “keeping down?!”), walking behind groups of people on the sidewalks, trying their relaxed pace and have somehow been physically incapable of strolling at such a drowsy rate.

If you’re a fast walker, you’re out of luck. Pedestrians in Antofagasta will never let you pass them on the sidewalk. If North Americans sense that someone is rapidly approaching behind them on the sidewalk, it’s second nature to move aside and let the other person pass. Whether this occurrence is not noticed, not anticipated or simply not tolerated in Chile, I am not sure. But from my experience, no accommodation is ever made for speedy walkers by slower pedestrians. I can’t help but wonder if this is intentionally orchestrated. Maybe it’s their way of telling me, the hare, to slow down to a more tortoise-like pace.

Almost no one walks alone. On weekends, entire families – including extended families, cousins, grandparents, great-aunts – all go out for a stroll. Antofagasta has a lovely ocean-front walk, where Children can ride their bikes or roller skate and parents can push babies in strollers. During the week, coworkers walk to work together. Parents and children walk to school. Friends walk to lunch. Couples walk, sometimes with other couples.

Walking on the beach

Walks call for frequent breaks. In all fairness, this must be a more common occurrence where the climate is nice. If you take frequent breaks during a walk in Montreal, you’re likely to get rained, snowed, hailed, or sleeted on. In Chile, under a clear, near-perfect sky, pedestrians stop to talk on their phones, to enjoy a cigarette or a piece of candy or some ice cream. They stop when they run into their friend or neighbour. They stop to enjoy a sunset. Couples of all ages stop to enjoy each other.

If you are one of those rare creatures without a walking companion, you will soon get a walking companion. The first few times I took walks I often became disconcerted when, at stop lights, someone would step up to the curb, literally almost brushing my shoulder, despite the fact there was plenty of room and no one else around in our way. The person was often another woman. As someone who was raised to know how to be street smart and safe in big American cities like Chicago or New York, I would instantly become paranoid. Yet, the other pedestrian would never be a cause for concern: usually the woman would usually be well dressed, often my age or maybe older, serious, purposeful, calm, in the middle of her daily routine. I would tuck my purse more securely under my arm.

After about 5 months of Chilean women breaching my “comfort zone” on the sidewalks, I did a little experiment. I stopped stepping away when they would step up to me at corners. I stopped walking fast to get well ahead of them as soon as the light turned green.

And I realized they wanted to walk with me. Finally surrendering to them, I discovered I was supposed to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with them at lights, walk with them along sidewalks, each of us falling into the other’s pace. We crossed the streets together, passed strange men cleaning the sidewalks or watering the flowers, until we had to finally break away and go our separate ways. Without looking at each other or saying a word, we became temporary walking partners.

It was like a secret code. If I was walking alone, and they were walking alone, we were to walk together.

It wasn’t until I returned to Montreal, expecting to be relieved to have my personal space back, when I was walking downtown one afternoon and a woman stopped near me on a corner during a red light. She kept a respectable distance from me, at least a foot or two. As soon as the light turned green, she power-walked ahead of me, disappearing far down the sidewalk.

I was left, to my surprise, feeling slightly lonely and just a touch insulted.

Walking in Quebec

Home Sweet Home: the good, the bad, the cold

There’s something that few realize about the overall travel experience, and that is that one of the best parts about travelling is actually returning home.

When I return home (even just for a visit, which is what I am doing at the moment,) I find my senses are always heightened. Things look, taste, sound and even smell significant. There are some wonderful things about being home, like tasting my favourite foods or settling into my own sheets and linens at the end of the day.

Of course, such a drastic change can also be one of the most difficult parts of travel, too. I find that when I visit a new place, I learn about something new or see something in a new perspective that will then make me more critical of my home country or hometown upon return.

The first thing I noticed when I landed in the United States (en route to Canada) was the smell. The industrial floor cleaners used in airports have drastically different smells depending on the country. So do the airport foods. Even fast food or fried food, which you would think might smell the same everywhere, smells different country-by-country. I could close my eyes and walk out of a plane and tell you exactly whether we had landed in Chile or the U.S. I suppose this is an inconsequential detail, but even the less-than-appealing airport smells can be oddly comforting when they are familiar and specific to “home” after a 12 hour flight.

Once we arrived in Montreal, I was surprised by how dim the sunlight is here in Quebec. You would think that I would be used to faint sunlight, since I have always (until recently) lived in northern climates. The sheer bright white intense light in northern Chile was one of the hardest things for me to adjust to when we first arrived. But after that, the sun up here in the north seems drastically further away and, especially in winter, is incredibly dim.

Surprisingly, I had forgotten about how dark it really is up here. I feel as though I am walking around with my eyes half-shut in this dim blue light. Of course, it is a bit relaxing not having to worry about putting on sunscreen every time I step out and I certainly haven’t gotten any headaches from the light. Still, the lack of sunshine can certainly affect my mood. Not to mention the cold. Again, you would think I’d be used to it, but it’s surprising how quickly you forget about it when living in a tropical environment for a few months. It was easy for me to underestimate how difficult it would be to re-adjust to a frigid climate!

One of my biggest complaints about life in Northern Chile was the food, which tends to have little flavour and no spices and generously incorporates salt, cream and fattening meats like pork and beef. I ate at home a lot in Chile, trying to make dishes that were familiar to me, mostly from scratch, and hunting down as many spices as I could find. Out of necessity, I became creative with my recipes, often substituting for locally-available ingredients, as seasonal produce was difficult – if not impossible – to find, and in general the variety and availability of pre-packaged foods was slim.

Montreal is a cultural mecca for food thanks to the waves of immigration from all over the world over the past few decades. Even though I knew I would find a lot of variety here, I still couldn’t help but be overwhelmed by the choices and wide selection. And while I was excited to finally get some great, fresh coffee beans and have access to fresh sourdough baguettes, the famous sesame Montreal bagels cooked in wood-fired ovens and packaged hummus, after living in Chile, some of the pre-packaged options that are available here do seem a bit senseless. Do we really need chicken broth ($3.99 a liter)? It’s so easy to make my own. I used to be obsessed with flavoured coffee creamers, but when I was in Chile I substituted with homemade vanilla sugar (from this recipe) and ended up liking it a lot more than the artificial flavourings in a prepackaged creamer. How many varieties and brands of spaghetti sauce, salsa, sea salt and cereal do we really need? I also find the array of health foods, such quinoa, slightly amusing. Northern Chile, Peru and Bolivia are the original sources of the healthy grain, but it seems the entire selection of quinoa grown in those regions is shipped up here. There’s black quinoa, white quinoa, baby quinoa, organic quinoa… Then there are the fruits and vegetables. You can get any fruit and veggie at any time from any part of the world. The other day, I saw some sort of root vegetable imported from Africa, summery pints of blueberries from Chile and beautiful bunches of bright green, fresh cilantro at the local grocery.

I’m not criticizing people who love specialty foods or enjoy watermelon in winter. Ultimately I like having such a staggering selection as much as anyone else. But living in Chile taught me that I can manage with one kind of sea salt to cook with, one brand of peppermint herbal tea, and seasonal produce just fine. So while it is nice to have the variety again, I’m not as tempted to buy into it as I used to be.

Since we’re on the topic of food, here are some of my Montreal favourites:

  • Santropol coffee beans (available online and throughout town)
  • Lattes from Shaika cafe or Grand Cafe (both on Sherbrooke St. in NDG)
  • Straight-out-of-the-wood-fired oven sesame bagels from St. Viateur (throughout town) or Dad’s (NDG neighbourhood)
  • Kosher sourdough and challah bread (local grocery stores); also baguettes from Premiere Moisson (throughout town)
  • Fresh Italian biscotti from NDG bakery (two locations, NDG)
  • Hummus, dates from specialty Mediterranean grocery stores (throughout town)

La vie en rose: Montreal comes alive in summer

I have not yet left for my hiatus in Chile, and will be in Montreal for just over one more week. It will be the first time in almost a decade that I actually leave the city to live somewhere else, which is still a daunting thought to wrap my mind around. But before I leave the city, I am once again acting as a tourist. I had a small group of friends fly in from all over the U.S. and Europe to visit the city for the first time and am enjoying showing them the sights of the city.

It never ceases to amaze me how much there is to do here in the summer.Just wandering around the lively downtown, it’s easy to understand why it was recently ranked the third best city in the world in summer by a Lonely Planet poll. Restaurants and cafes come alive, opening up outdoor terraces and sidewalks so patrons can dine al fresco, festivals and shows take over the streets of downtown, shops welcome patrons, the McGill campus is cool, green, and inviting to those wishing for some respite from the hot downtown concrete jungle. There is simply so much to do, see and enjoy.

I eased my guests into the unfamiliar environment (it is the second-largest Francophone city in the world and can be quite jarring to American and English Canadian visitors who are not used to being so immersed in a foreign language and unique culture so close to home) by wandering downtown. We admired the historic buildings of the McGill University campus, then headed down to Simons, a trendy Quebec department store with a fabulous selection of clothes, particularly their beautifully styled and warm winter sweaters and coats which are, of course, more or less available year round (we’re never a long time away from winter or cold weather in this city). A simple Montreal downtown outing can be capped off with an artisan sandwich at one of the cafes on Stanley between Maisonneuve and St. Catherine.

The next day, we headed over to the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts to see the Jean Paul Gaultier exhibit. The past few years, the special exhibits that this museum has presented have been simply stunning. I have never seen so much creativity and attention to detail in the presentations themselves in any museum in the world (and I’ve hit up quite a few museums, trust me). The exhibit itself is sometimes as fascinating and thoughtful as the art it highlights. The Jean Paul Gaultier show was no exception. I will not say too much about it for fear of giving away any of the elements of surprise, but it truly highlighted the point that the work of this designer is a “living art.”

That evening, we headed down to the Old Port where a massive tent had been erected for the summer to house Cirque du soleil. This world-famous institution was the brainchild of Quebecer Guy Laliberté. The show is truly an extraordinary experience. Not quite a circus per se, not quite an acrobatics or theater show, not quite a concert…it is an otherworldly event, the evolution of performance, theater, and show. You will never see so much talent in the same place. Extraordinary acrobats, magicians, actors, artists, musicians spend nearly three hours performing on a one-of-a-kind stage to the sounds of almost ethereal live music.

Our adventure continued over three more days, but I will just have to save that for another post!