Spaziergang in Montreal

As someone who is (relatively) new to Montreal and enjoys a good walk, I'm expecting great things from this one:

Marcher à Montréal et ses environs
SÉGUIN, Yves
Ulysse
22 April 2009
$22.99

192 pages (with 20 maps)

Voici un guide indispensable pour quiconque cherche à s'évader, ne serait-ce que quelques heures. Il met de l'avant près de 95 lieux de randonnée situés à Montréal et ses environs. Tous des endroits accessibles en transport en commun, situés à moins d’une soixantaine de kilomètres de la métropole. Entre la rue Sainte-Catherine et l’avenue du Mont-Royal, les parcs-nature et les Grands parcs de Montréal, les collines montérégiennes et les nombreux sentiers que l’on retrouve sur la Rive-Nord... la région de Montréal offre un vaste choix pour qui veut prendre une marche de santé sans avoir à parcourir de longues distances.

I wonder which cover design they'll end up using...

Stereo Total Returning to Montréal!

After a year-and-a-half's absence, the Berlin-based, Franco-German duo Stereo Total, a.k.a. The Best Pop Group in the World, will be returning to Montreal. The details are as follows:

Zoo-Prod présente
STEREO TOTAL
with Leslie & The Ly’s + Donzelle
LE NATIONAL - 1220 Ste-Catherine Est
Vendredi le 20 mars 09,21h*Portes20h*
Infos 514.845.2014
Admission générale

From Françoise and Bretzel :

Put the Martini into the shaker and the burger on the grill! We're going back to USA & Canada.
[...]
We are coming on tour next spring (March-April) and are just recording a tour-single called "Anti Love Song", in which all numbers are sung in really bad English, but they are negatively lovely.

I've been a huge fan of this band since I first stumbled upon Musique Automatique in the new releases at Music Trader back in 2002, attracted as I was by all the French and German (my two favourite foreign languages!) sillyness on the front and back of the packaging. It's quite thrilling all these years later to be living in a city where I can actually see them in concert; with the closure of Le Parisien cinemas, and the impending reconversion of Ex-Centris, at least there are still some upsides to living in Montreal.

So we shall tanzen im 4-eck to the Moderne Musik, and a good time will be had by all...

Toronto Book Fair

Well, they've done it again. It wasn't enough for them to rip off the Nuit Blanche from Montreal (via Paris), now Toronto is going to have a go at a salon du livre. As an alternative to the nearly defunct Book Expo Canada, a Toronto Book Fair has been proposed for 2-4 October 2009. This is, of course, nothing more than a salon du livre, the likes of which have existed in the francophone world for many decades (Montreal since 1978, and Paris since 1981).

According to Publishers Weekly, Book Expo Canada — also known as the Dullest Literary Event in the History of the World™ — is on its last legs, as most of the publishers and distributors, including HarperCollins, Random House, Penguin, Scholastic, H.B. Fenn and ‘a handful of other Canadian houses’, have all decided not to attend. In its place, Reed Exhibitions (who, incidentally, are also the people behind Publishers Weekly, the Salon du livre de Paris and Book Expo Canada) are going to try to put on an English-language salon du livre in Toronto.

As these events are wildly popular in the francophone world — the six-day event ($8 admission charge per day) in Montreal attracts about 125,000 visitors every year — and as Reed know how to put on such an event through their experience with the Salon du livre de Paris, I would expect them to do a good job with a similar event in Toronto, even if the concept of a salon du livre doesn't exist in the anglophone world and even if the demand for books is considerably greater in Paris than it is in Toronto.

All of this begs the question: why does Toronto keep copying everything done in Montreal and/or Paris? If Paris is a first-rate city, and Montreal following them in almost everything they do (see Vélib' v. Bixi for the latest example) makes us a second-rate city, does that make Toronto a third-rate city?

I'm back with scars to show

I haven't posted here in almost a month, but I have lots of good excuses:

1. I'm never sick, but was sick three times during the month of April. Feeling better now, fortunately.


2. Tax returns. Yes, tax returns plural. In Quebec you have to file a completely separate provincial return too. Killer.
   


3. I really enjoy listening to podcasts (MP3 over RSS), especially French and British ones, but my MiniDisc setup just hasn't been letting me enjoy them in the way I want to. I'm so tired of Sony and SonicStage and all that they've done to cripple the MiniDisc format. Consequently, I've been thinking about getting an MP3 player for a couple of years now. While I was ill and feeling depressed a couple of weeks ago, I finally caved in and bought my first iPod (6th generation iPod Classic, 160 GB), not because I think it's particularly hip or well designed, but because of the seamless podcast integration in iTunes. I can no longer deal with all of the complications of transferring files via SonicStage, nor the inconvenience of swapping MDs when I want to listen to different music or different podcasts. So I've been happily busying myself with adding podcast subscriptions and transferring all of my music. The thing is already half-full!
   


4. In turns out that in Quebec, if you don't give your landlord three months' notice that you're moving, your lease is automatically renewed for another year. I find it a bit odd to provide this kind of protection to property owners at the expense of poor, impoverished renters, given that this is supposed to be the paradise for progressive social policy (in North America at any rate). After all, in Manitoba there was always a form to sign every year, and none of this implied renewal business. Anyway, what I'm getting at is that my current lease expires on 31 July 2008, so I had until the end of this month to tell the landlord that I want out of this overpriced trou pourri that passes for an apartment. Consequently, I spent most of the past month desperately searching for something better, with the April 30th deadline hanging over me the whole time.
   
   I signed the lease on much better place last Tuesday, so I can finally breathe easy. I'll be moving from being right next to Université-de-Montréal Métro Station, to being right next to Mount Royal Train Station. I'll be a bit further away from downtown, but only a nine minute train ride from Gare Centrale, versus the 20 minutes it currently takes me to reach essentially the same destination on the Métro (including transfer from the Blue Line to the Orange Line). Technically speaking, my new apartment is not actually in Montreal proprement dit, but in the independent Town of Mount Royal which is located in the centre of the Island of Montreal. This is neat because Mount Royal was designed and built by the old Canadian Northern Railway, the same company that built the inland freshwater resort at Grand Beach in my home province of Manitoba, a favourite childhood destination of mine.


5. I'm now on Twitter (see sidebar for live updates).


6. The 2008 edition of the Blue Metropolis Literary Festival is happening this week, and I'm running the English-language section of the festival bookshop. Stress, stress, stress!!! Tomorrow we're bringing all of the stock downtown (several trips with the van) and setting up, then the festival runs from Wednesday to Sunday, and Monday we're returning the unsold stock to the publishers. Lots of twelve-hour days in perspective. On the bright side, I'm hoping to meet Nora Young, a favourite CBC personality and adolescent radio crush of mine, who will be hosting an event on Saturday night.
   

Don't expect too many posts anytime soon, as it won't be long until I start to stress about the move, and that should keep me occupied until well into July.

Damn You, Cineplex Entertainment (An ONEX Corporation)

So, according to Le Devoir, Cineplex Entertainment is blackmailing art house film distributors into helping kill off the network of independent salles parallèles cinemas in rural Quebec. Basically, because K-Films Amérique, a local distributor of foreign and domestic art house fare, has decided to show the forthcoming French film Un baiser s'il vous plaît (which, by the way, is supposed to be quite good) in salles parallèles in Rimouski, Victoriaville and Sept-Îles, in addition to Cineplex locations in Montreal and Quebec City, Cineplex has decided to pull the film. Never mind the fact that they were never going to show this film in those towns anyway (art house films weren't even being shown in towns like that at all until the salles parallèles came about), they just for whatever reason feel they should have exclusive, Quebec-wide rights to any film that they screen in Montreal, even when they themselves do not have any intention of presenting them across Quebec. In the past few months they've also pulled 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days (last year's Palme d'or at Cannes), as well Up the Yangtze.

Cineplex, and the other mainstream commerical cinemas represented by the Association des propriétaires de salles de cinéma du Québec, claim that the salles parallèles represent unfair competition, because they are partially subsidised by the SODEC. But these are the same mainstream commercial cinemas that refuse to show art house films outside of the major metropolitan areas, and whose refusal to do so led to the creation of the salles parallèles in the first place! When it comes right down to it, the salles parallèles do $600,000 of business a year, versus $450,000,000 for commercial cinemas in Quebec. This competition argument hasn't got a leg to stand on. They just want to kill off all cinéma d'auteur so that the only option remaining for people is to go and see the same Hollywood rubbish they've been forcing down our throats since long before I was born. When I was just on the cusp of my twenties, I graduated from this to this, and there's no way I'm going back now!

What is wrong with this company, anyway? Notice how they renamed the Paramount Cinema in downtown Montreal the Scotia Bank Cinema? What has Scotia Bank got to do with cinema? No doubt this has more to do with Gerry being on the board of both Scotia Bank and Cineplex (via ONEX) than anything else. He may be a fellow Winnipegger and University of Manitioba old boy, but I'm afraid he's trying to do to the culture of cinema in this country what his wife is doing the culture of books.

Let's just boycott the whole thing, shall we? Independent cinemas like the Cinémathèque, the Globe Cinema and the Park Theatre in Winnipeg, as well as Ex-Centris, Cinéma du Parc, Cinéma Beaubien and the Cinémathèque Québécoise in Montreal are definitely the way to go. Stay away from Chapters/Indigo while you're at it too.

By the way, ridiculous commercial practices such as this give rise to the following comments that find their way into Le Devoir

«Cela veut-il dire que c'est à Toronto qu'on décidera si le cinéma d'auteur pourra être vu en région au Québec?», dénonce M. Dussault.

«C'est Toronto qui applique sa loi, et c'est le public francophone qui écope», a tonné Michel Gagnon.

«Il faut que Québec s'en mêle pour remettre un peu d'ordre dans tout ça. Ce n'est pas Toronto qui doit décider de ce qui va se diffuser au Québec», ajoute M. Gagnon.

which in turn continues to give the rest of Canada (as represented by Toronto) a bad name in Quebec. Thanks a lot Gerry. Well done!

Things They Don't Got Here

Over the past few years, as I've extolled the virtues of Montreal while languishing in Winnipeg, exasperated interlocutors have often exlaimed 'what don't they have in Montreal?!'. Now that I've been here for a few months, I can start to answer that question. Rapid transit, film festivals, bike lanes and a general European feel are all well and good, but there are a few things missing:

1. Old Dutch Potato Chips. This is the obvious one. It's fairly well-known on the Prairies that when you move out East, you sacrifice easy access to perhaps the world's best crisps, made with loving care in Winnipeg and Calgary. When I was a lad my cousin moved to Ottawa and would always stock up on Old Dutch whenever she was back in Winnipeg, and I suspect I'll be no different. In all Canadian cities, especially in the big ones like Montreal, there are specialty food shops catering to ethnic groups from almost every country in the world, but nothing for us folks from the West. I can easily find obscure brands of Caribbean hot sauce, but no potato chips made two provinces over. Just another Canadian paradox.


2. Mandarin Oranges, a.k.a. Christmas Oranges. I don't what it's like in the rest country, but in Winnipeg, between November and January, the shops are full of those tasty little oranges imported from China, Japan and (possibly) Korea. Here, all you find are Clementine Oranges from Morocco, or clementines as they are known. Whenever I ask about mandarines, people either haven't heard of them or tell me they only come canned, not fresh. Clementines are apparently a variant of the Mandarin Orange, and people have told me that they're exactly the same and that my preference for Mandarins is purely psychological, but I'm not convinced. Although Mandarins are everywhere in Winnipeg at this time of year, you can still find Clementines here and there. I remember trying some a few years back and it just wasn't the same. My local open air fruit market has temporarily turned into a Christmas tree stand for a few weeks, and my local specialty fruit vendor has no Manadrins, so I'll be out at the giant, year-round open air market at Jean-Talon to see if I can find some Mandarins. If they don't got'em, no one does, and I'll have to give in to this Clementine business. Until then, there's still hope.


3. 4-litre jugs of milk. You simply cannot purchase them here. It might even be an environmental regulation. You can get one and two litre cartons like everywhere else in North America, but no plastic 4-litre jugs. Instead, you buy your four litres of milk in bags. I seem to recall there being bags of milk in Winnipeg when I was really young, but they have not been around since I've been old enough to buy milk (what is the legal age for that here, by the way?). For a while I was buying two-litre cartons while wondering what one would do with one of these bags, but I've since figured out that you have to buy a separate jug for the bag. Except the bags are huge and the jugs are tiny. It turns out that each bag contains three smaller bags, each one containing 1 1/3 litres of milk. Anyway, it's been a journey of dairy discovery, but everything is now under control.


4. Winter. They don't seem to have that here. Everyone's telling me that it's not usually like this, but I think they're having me on. There is simply no winter here. The first of December is only a few hours away, and today's high temperature at noon was 17°C. Contrast that with Winnipeg where it was -17°C at the same hour. Most people in this country, suffering as they do from the Northern Latitudes, Southern Attitudes syndrome, would be thrilled to move to a winter climate that is a full 34 degrees celsius warmer, but I am one of the few Canadians who actually like winter. What I can't deal with is the constant rain that has accompanied this mild weather. Worse than bloody Vancouver! I need sunshine. It can be 30°C or -30°C (as it often is over the course of the year in Winnipeg), I don't care as long as the sun is shining. Since I moved here I've heard that Winnipeg has more sunny days than most, if not all, other Canadian cities. Now you tell me...

Notwithstanding, I am still thrilled to be here; all of the postive aspects of life here more than counterbalance the few lacunes outlined above.

From Winnipeg to Montreal in Three Months Flat

Well, here we are once again. After an absence of almost four months, I've decided to come back and do some blogging again. While I wasn't blogging I was moving my life 2000km east, and am now comfortably installed in Montreal, the land of film festivals, bike lanes, bookshops and rapid transit. Having been born and raised in Winnipeg, it was not an easy decision to leave, but after nearly 25 years I was ready to try something new. Since my first visit in 1999, I always thought in the back of my mind that I might want to try and make a go of it out here, and now seemed as good a time as any. Better to have a go now while I'm still young. If I don't like it after five years, I can always go back (or move on), and I still won't even be 30 years old.

In the coming days, weeks and months I'll be writing quite a bit about what it's like living here, especially about how it differs from life back home (as I still refer to it... for now). At this point, it's officially the longest time in my life that I have ever spent away from Winnipeg. In 2001 I did a 13-week internship with the Government of Quebec in Quebec City, but it's now over 14 weeks since I moved here.

Another young Winnipegger flees the city of his birth. It's that same, depressing, oft-repeated scenario, but at least I didn't move to Calgary or Toronto...