Monthly Archives: October 2013

We had a good time in Nova Scotia. I thought lots about my Papa. Cray pots everywhere and lobsters (live ones) sold in every shop, and even in the airport. I was slightly amused that I could buy my lobsters just before I boarded the plane. I had this vision of lobsters escaping at 35000 feet and clomping down the aisles of the plane. Apparently, in Nova Scotia, if you take lobster sandwiches to school it is a sign that you are quite poor – well, we quite enjoyed being impoverished.

Drove out to Peggy’s Cove past stunning Canadian scenery. Lost of lakes, spruce trees and small cabins. Peggy’s Cove is a windswept small fishing village on Saint Margaret’s Bay. The population is 35 and it is a wonderful collection of traditional fishing cabins. The local legend is that Peggy was a small child who was shipwrecked in the late 1700s. She was found by a fisherman and grew up as Peggy of the Cove. There is a wonderful lighthouse in the town and you could imagine a ship being caught in a massive Atlantic storm and being battered against the rocks. The village has major restrictions on who can live there, so even though it is spectacularly picturesque, it has retained a tiny village feel. Standing on the rocks, looking toward Casablanca, being blown about and chilled by the Atlantic winds called for serious warming measures – the hot mulled apple cider, with a decent nip of rum, went down a treat! 

Mimi’s house is in a quiet, reasonably ordinary neighbourhood and whilst it is an exceptionally comfortable house, we really are just part of the local community. Mind you, a community with fantastic restaurants. Rue Wellington is not a terribly exciting road. There is a river along the left hand side as we walk, but you can’t really see it. The houses are all double story, with the external iron staircases that we have become used to. I think most of them are two apartments, hence the outside stairs. It was slightly amusing yesterday watching the removalists trying to empty a house down a small winding set of stairs – no wonder they looked rather fit.

Our visit to Santropol Roulant was fantastic. We had a great lunch at their café and then visited the heart of their operations for a tour with the very charming Chad. A slightly edgy, industrial building, it was abuzz with young people in an open plan hive of activity. They are a great community organisation that connects people socially and this is all based around food. The fresh produce comes from their farms and they have a great agreement where their volunteers  (mainly young people from McGill University) will collect produce from growers all over the city. One third of what is picked goes to the volunteer, one third to Santropol and one third to the owner. This enables older people who love their garden to retain it, but with a volunteer who does the work. As we walked with Chad we say the kitchen where all meals are prepared, their great sustainability program, a fantastic roof top garden and their bike shop. Essentially, their core business is delivering really high quality food to older people all over the city as a true meals on wheels service – the young people carry purpose built back packs and head off on bikes throughout the city. I loved the container program where people can come in and pick up a container to grow vegetables and get guidance from the volunteers. For $15 per year community members can join the bike shop so every time there is any problem with your bike, you take it in and these great young people will fix it. They have cooking classes, environmentally sustainable focused programs and thousands of volunteers – it was fantastic.

I guess we are walking so much, so getting used to the Montreal restaurants, where the main courses all come with soup and a dessert. The food has been so fantastic, and even though it took me a little while to warm to the city, the restaurants and cafes have totally won me over.

I have eaten some pretty good food in my life and love to cook but our dinner at SU last night was right up there with the best I have ever eaten. An unassuming street, an unassuming but nice restaurant, but the most fantastic service and the food – sublime. It is Turkish, and the freshest most beautifully presented food – no sign of Turkish bread and kebabs! We ate our way through a gorgeous Mezze plate, wonderful pasta, aphrodisiac (its real name) chicken, lamb and wonderful sorbets. Thank goodness we needed to walk home. It was just amazing!

Tonight we headed off to the botanical gardens as Mimi had told us about the Jardins de lumiere – I thought we were going to see a few Chinese lanterns hanging around in some trees – check out the photos

October 20 2013

Well it has been all about the food but today I finally felt a connection with Montreal. It wasn’t as though I disliked it but just didn’t have that ‘oh I love it’ like I do in many places I visit. I think it was because I couldn’t figure out where the city was, what it actually looked like, couldn’t figure out the industrial city beside the beauty of Old Montreal. Today we climbed and climbed and climbed. Mont Royal sits between the Laurentians and the Appalachians. The meaning of Fall was right in front of us. The amazing colors of the trees – the red, orange and yellow. Standing looking down on Montreal – ah I finally understand this city.

The stalls of the Marche Atwater were completely blocked out by the mounds of pumpkins as far as we could see. People of all nationalities struggling out lugging  them home to be carved and sat on their doorstep. The market reminded me of the markets of the South West in France. Our bags filled with the most wonderful Roquefort, brie, baguettes and tomatoes. Our picnic at Mimi’s was fantastic. Yes the day was all about food – Kim arrived and we wandered up Rue Wellington to the Les Isle en Ville. It was like visiting raucous family for dinner. The live music was provided by the waiter, the chef, the woman on the desk, the customers and occasionally the country singer. We had boot scooting locals, lots of noise and stunning soup, cod cakes and small pies – it was totally amazing – the  seafood from the small island of Madeleine sent by the family. We sat crowded in to a small unassuming café and stuffed our mouths with fantastic food, singing along to John Denver in French – well our French was pretty crap but it was so damn noisy no-one noticed. We couldn’t hear ourselves, but felt like we were locals for a night – our singing relatives had as good a time as us and the bill was miniscule.

October 19 2013

Old Montreal is located in the borough of Ville-Marie and is one of the oldest metropolitan areas in North America. Notre Dame Basilica towers over the Place d’Armes and whilst the Seine is missing, the voices around you tell you it is France. The signs of the Metro de Paris, the boulangerie, and the fromagerie are reminders –  this is the largest French speaking city in the world outside Paris. We wandered up the long street to Le Plateau, past the small children having fire safety lessons from the Montreal fireman – tiny tots speaking fluent French but then, without changing pitch, switching to chatter excitedly in English. To old Montreal, with cobbled stoned streets and stone buildings. The weather not incredibly cold yet but still a feeling that winter is coming. Past a gorgeous Christmas shop opposite Notre Dame, with the exquisite St Nicholas figurines clashing with the skeletons, pumpkins, witches and danger signs draped over shops and houses. A lovely, leisurely lunch at Olive and Gourmando and a totally fantastic Panini with raw milk cheese. A very long walk back along the river past Montreal’s port and through the industrial area. Definitely not pretty. I haven’t really connected with this city but hopefully soon.

October 18 2013

 

Our first evening in Montreal was lovely, thanks to our great hostess Mimi. Her beautiful house is in the borough of Verduna. Mimi is a very lovely French designer and stylist and her house has been filled with treasures from each continent – although maybe not collected from Antartica – one of the rooms in her house. I am in Asia, a sumptuous collection of South East Asian artifacts organised as only the French can do in a deep red room with a stencilled orange ceiling. Her sitting room is very comfortable and as I sit typing amongst the art work, I could be in France as there is a spread of amazing cheese in front of me.

Montreal, I think, is more French than France. There are no English signs and the people who live in this interesting city swing effortlessly from English to French. Trusty Google tells me that about 70% of the population are English/French bilingual, with the remainder bilingual in another language – so apart from time differences, compasses that are misaligned and jet lag this city keeps telling me I am in France.

October 17

Pretty surreal when you think it took Amelia 28 days to fly from Miami to New Guinea in 1937 and I can fly from Melbourne to LA in under 15 hours and can be in the oh so French city of Montreal in four hours. A great flight across. Oh I do love the A380 – I really couldn’t get my head around how something that big with that many people on board could actually stay in the sky but honestly it is like sitting in my lounge room at home. I have to keep taking my headphones off to make sure the thing is actually still going! I find flying to the US slightly disconcerting – the time changes do my head in. We arrived in LA a few hours before we left Melbourne and then we leave LAX in the morning, fly for four hours and arrive in Montreal in the dark in the evening – then to totally confuse me, in Montreal they have decided that North is not really North but actually North West – the streets are skewed to the compass which means essentially that the map makes no sense at all … quite disconcerting when you are not sure what country you are in, which time zone it is, what day it is and now North isn’t really North.