All That Jazz

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Position Position Position. I can visualise the real estate spin now had our Montreal apartment been up for sale. It even spells the same in French.

The apartment was advertised as "a 30 seconds walk from the festival de jazz". I timed it at closer to a minute, more if you include the locking and unlocking of the front door. "Homer Simpson, this is the worst case of false advertising since The Never Ending Story."

Get the picture? Montreal is Ground Zero for the jazz world this time of the year and we were headquartered within smelling distance of the prime action.

For lovers of music, the Montreal Jazz Festival is anything but the sole domain of bebop savants perched in their pseudo "too cool for school" ivory towers. Nor will you be rubbing shoulders with Otis talent scouts on the lookout for additions to their latest release of 20 elevator greats.

The organisers of this event are way too shrewd to cater solely for such narrow audiences. The Charlie Parker faithful will still have their appetites sated but a solid proportion of jazz pretentiousness has been siphoned off to satisfy fans of all "genres of the genre" and then some.

The toughest task is balancing venues, schedules, performers and pricetags to best suit your taste.

I attempted to formulate a rough itinerary but in the end the majority of hops were impromptu, bar a couple of cover charged indoor gigs. Jumping from one stage to the next, supping on a Heinekin or 3 and tuning in to the music, I felt like an Asian kid in an Apple Store. (Get the feeling the metaphors are going to be thick on the ground today?)

Away from the festival and Montreal is an enigma par excellence. Sure it's Francophile but hearing the residents casually shift from French to a North American accented English is unique.

Equally eclectic is the look and less tangible feel of the city. The architecture of its downtown follows suit with any modern city displaying the full panoply of glass, steel and concrete reaching for the sky. Nestled into a cosy corner of its port is the flip side of the coin.

Old Montreal has fought tooth and nail to stonewall the encroachment of modernity knocking on the front door. For the tourism industry, that's just as well.

Here the facades reek French colonial with all the mandatory chic. Behind those facades, vendors pedal any manner of tourist kitsch and the paying punters gravitate like elephants to a waterhole. I may be a cynic, OK, I am a cynic, but whilst the locals justifiably puff their chests over the style of this little nook of Canadian Paris, its raison d'être is equally rooted in the fact that there's a buck in it. Panache meets capitalism.

Old and new, a fair smattering of grit, grunge and liberal leanings (the oxygen at times has to compete with smell of weed) also mix into Montreal's DNA like a tea bag in hot water. This town can be a rough diamond.

Yes, an enigma, thats what Montreal is. Swing by for a few days in July during one of its festivals and it's an enigma that should tempt you to linger longer. A week after the jazz cools down, the town takes up laughing for its comedy festival. This city loves a party come summer.

In between, why not scoot up the road to Quebec City, Ottowa and Toronto, even if "up the road" is an entirely new dimension in a country the size of Canada. We didn't make it any further but that gives us a platinum reason to return to this corner of the planet, even of I'm going to need another life to return to all the places I'm threatening to.

Penny! Fresh bucket please. The list just expanded.

Yeatesy

Today the population of Greater Montréal is approximately 3.6 million, with 53%!o(MISSING)f its inhabitants bilingual (French and English) and 20%!u(MISSING)sing a third language (in addition to French and English). So that's almost the size of Sydney, and like Sydney every city block has a gathering of smokers out the front of the building enhancing the entrance. Even the pavements are covered with a confetti of cigarette butts. Is this a legacy from the French days !

Montreal is not in my top 5 of favourite cities, however it is easy to navigate, it's clean (apart from the cigarette butts) and tidy with very little graffiti, the food is good, the traffic is polite and there are loads of bikes to be hired all over the city and easy flat roads to ride on. It's also a university city with four universities, hence it being bike friendly. Most people would be pretty happy with such a destination. We found it a tad cheaper that Vancouver and with weather in the mid 20's everyday while we were here, you can see the attraction.


We came to Montreal especially for the Jazz festival and managed to fit in some fantastic acts over the four nights. The festival was extremely good, with plenty of venues to choose from, lots of talent and loads of artists to see for free. Even the venues we paid for "standing room" only tickets were great value. Particularly as we had the best seats in the house, directly in front of the stage, on a stool!!


One quirky thing I did quite like in Montreal was their "beach". I am a bit hesitant to call it a beach, but you pay $6.00 to enter and this entitles you to a beach umbrella and a beach chair on the sand. The sand has been shipped in and laid out on the pavement surrounding the marina. Swimming is strictly forbidden, you can sun bake and relax in the sun but you can not jump in the water. A day at the beach nonetheless.

So goodbye Montreal, and off to The Big Apple.

Penny

More images at:

www.colvinyeates.zenfolio.com

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Photos

So why the long face?
Trombone mirror.

Urban Quintet
Guess where

Montreal Old Port
Paddle boats for hire.

Shake that toosh
I had Penny's permission for that one