Category Archives: Canada October 2013

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.