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Published: July 27th 2005
Here are some memorable moments from Montreal...
....A reel of film is rolling behind me. On a giant screen ahead, one of Montreal's cathedrals is holding mass for the local Quebecois. We are at the height of the quiet revolution.
A young man looks across the aisle at an aging woman. She is silently plucking a tune in the air with her lips. The young man studies her carefully through his thick, dangling hair. He nods and motions the people down the row to follow the unspoken lyrics.
Meanwhile, I shift in my seat, and lift popcorn into my mouth.
By the time I refocus my eyes on the screen, something happens.
The assembly stops singing its traditional hyms. Everyone -- including the boys choir in the background -- starts lipsynching the "oohh-ooohs" of the popular tune, as the original sound-track fills the movie theatre at full blast.
Something happens.
Everything becomes brighter and crisper. The screen becomes an intriguing spectacle -- a hyper-real stage of pop and pastiche.
All eyes fall on the young man with the thick, long hair.
Something happens.
To the rythm of song and dance, the guy starts to levitate above the pews, then above the alter, and then above the clear-storey windows of the cathedral. The pop song blends perfectly with the images, the gestures, the lighting, the motion of the steady-cam, the sway of skirts and shoulders below.
The film had just reached its highest point. It was not the "climax" of the story, but the creative crescendo that waits to burst out of every masterpiece. It was the point in the film where the director becomes an artist, when a complicated metaphor becomes reality, when a symbolic phrase becomes a tangible image, and when cinema defies the laws of gravity: rising above the alter, soaring above the sky.
!Wow! There was enough art in this 2-hour flick to put goose bumps on my neck....
I stepped out onto Rue Ste Urbain. I had just finished watching C.R.A.Z.Y. at a Cineplex Odeon in Montreal. I understood every word of it in French. I can peel back several layers of references and sub-texts in this rich film from Quebec, although I am still processing most of it. As a coming of age story that was set in the 60s and 70s, one layer or element of the film dealt with the clash between "the old" and "the new" in Quebec society. To my surprise, however, the collision between past and present-- between the worldviews of the older and younger generations -- was not violent and destructive in the end. The main character, a boy who becomes a young man by the end of the movie, meets everyone half-way.
Nevertheless, I saw a fine piece of French cinema. "Les Quebecois" definitely know how to tell their own stories. We probably need more of this in English Canada.
***
I arrived in Montreal without a plan, other than to experience the city in under 10 hours, before my train would leave for Halifax. Between 8:00AM and 6:00PM, I went on a walking expedition through l'Ile de Quebec. I started on Rue Ste. Catherine, and let my senses guide me up a road through McGill University. I continued up the hill to a wealthy neigborhood where I found amazing views of the city's skyline.
Once the street started to narrow into a private driveway, I knew that it was time to turn around, and descend back to the circus of steel and glass below.
$1.75 + a $1.75 buys you two Cafe au laits (lattes) at "Le Pain D'Or" in the heart of Montreal's prestigious shopping district. What an amazing deal. I thought that Vancouver was in charge of serving European-style coffees in Canada. Maybe the staff were being extra kind, because I was an Anglophone-Calgarian who spoke French with a Quebec accent. (Yes. A Parisian-French accent is as foreign to me as it is for many Quebecois).
Buried in the "La Press" newspaper, I found a map and advertisement for the "Just Pour Rire" festival. I scrambled out the door, and jogged to the periphery of downtown to see if I could find the site. I did; but the comedy and laugther was only scheduled for the evening.
My journey was worthwhile though. I had a camera with me; so I started my photographic essay for Montreal. I emptied a role and a half of 35mm film. In my opinion, a traditional SLR camera -- rather than a digital device -- forces the amateur photographer (i.e. me!) to consider his subject carefully. Here are some memorable sights that captured both the humour and diversity of Montreal's urban spirit:
- hotel workers were picketing in front of the Marriott hotel.
- Demonstrators marched through downtown to protest attrocities in Haiti.
- A public works officer used a blow torch to burn signs and stickers off the parking meters.
- A 'hanged' voodoo doll was swinging from the window of a make-shift shack on Rue St Denis.
- A provocative, anti-drug poster of a man trapped inside a syringe was placed next to one of the 'half-baked' -- stream of consciousness -- advertisements for Five Alive.
- At one intersection, all arrows (including street signs) point to a dentist chair that rests conspicuously on the balcony of a tattoo parlour.
***
Grandma says that I walk with an identifiable gait. She can find me in any crowd, she says -- because I move like I am on a high-speed chase with my heels. I wonder if she would be able to find me on Rue Ste. Urbain, just as I entered the Cineplex Odeon in Montreal's film district? I would probably look like someone heading on a mission, but going nowhere in particular.
That I might have missed the "Bio-Dome," the "Cosmo-Dome," or this and that "must-see-location" does not matter to me.
If you only have ten hours to see a city, skip the spoon-fed narratives of the museum, and experience some local, (pop) culture instead. Take in a local film; read the local papers. If the curators know what they are doing, the precious artefacts of the museum will be waiting for you when you have more time to appreciate them. But, cherish the city-beat sections of the free dailies and 'zines; they might not be the same tomorrow. You might stumble across a politically charged debate on traffic, on the quality of public transportation, on the closing of a popular watering hole or on the (non)performance of a local, eccentric figure.
In a large city, start small. Start on any street corner, and let the senses guide you. Leave the map in your backpack. Walk with the rythm of pedestrian traffic, and wave goodbye to the taxi drivers. Pick a direction, any direction, and walk the entire distance. Move through and around the places and spaces that you meet. Begin and end your urban journey with the satisfaction that you may never make the same trip again -- and that you will have a story to tell in the end.
"Where did you go in Montreal?" asked the lady next to me as we boarded the Ocean train to Halifax.
"I really don't know; but I enjoyed every second of it," I replied.
That is my travel philosophy, in a nutshell.
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Robert (dad)
non-member comment
1970
I would say you saw more than I did when I went to Montreal in 1970 to a Job interview. The interviewer bought me lunch: He had a Salad as I recall. I probably had something less healthy. Spent the evening in the down town near the hotel I was in. I got the job: It took me to Guyana South America.