The little fish of shame

I've been musing that maybe one of the reasons I haven't written much here this year is because nothing ridiculous like this or this has happened to me lately. The incidence rate of the bizarre seems to have declined appreciably since I left the tropics—or maybe I just don't get out enough anymore. But a recent, seemingly innocent trip to our local cheap and cheerful Portuguese BBQ managed to restore the normal abnormality for an evening and I haven't been able to shake off the experience.

We generally have a great time when we go to this little restaurant so I shan't reveal its name, but we seem to have settled into a default order whenever we go there, which is piri piri chicken for Charles and char-grilled squid for me. This particular evening I decided to mix it up a bit and ordered the char-grilled sardines, figuring they would be a bit of a house speciality. When they arrived they were enormous—so much bigger than I was expecting—and I was really impressed. Our waiter did a dump-and-run with our order, as they were typically busy. But when another stalwart, older-generation, career waiter whizzed by, I couldn't help but gleefully comment on my dish in my mangled Franglais. He screeched to a halt, turned on his heel and proceeded to launch into a bitter tirade about the decline of the once-mighty Portuguese sardine fishing industry, made all the harder to keep up with by a passionate peppering of Portuguese in amongst his Franglais. Ah, Montréal!

His argument bordered on the outright racist and factually questionable at times, but the basic gist of it was true and this: the sardines run up the west coast of Africa before entering traditional Portuguese fishing territory. Overfishing of sardines off the African coast has resulted in a burgeoning plankton population since there are not enough of the predatorial small fish to keep the plankton numbers in check. In turn, the plankton have died in great number, basically of old age, and a toxic combination of hydrogen sulphide and methane is released from the rotting remains when they fall to the ocean floor. This noxious mix then literally explodes to the surface, poisoning all the other sea life, including any remnant sardines, resulting in a catastrophic, multi-species mass die-off. The delicate balance of the ecosystem has been damaged by humanity's greediness. Again.

Now, while the waiter blamed starving African hordes dredging the coastline with hand-held nets for this situation, the reality is it seems to have been overfishing by international commercial fleets from the 1970s onwards that has tipped the balance. But since the sardine is such an iconic part of Portuguese food culture, the absence of it is being felt quite personally. The rant lasted close to 10 minutes in all—in fact, the waiter came back for a round two on his explanation after attending to other patrons. And the whole time he was talking at me my handsome, gigantic, piping hot and beautifully cooked sardines were sitting on my plate in front of me going cold. By the time he had finished part of me didn't even want to eat them anymore, I felt so guilty for my contribution to the problem. Another part of me wanted to jump up and screech, "Well, why are they still on the bloody menu then if this is such an issue?" But in the end, my pragmatic (and polite) side won out and I resolved to enjoy every last mouthful of my delicious, already-dead-and-nothing-could-be-done-about-that sardines, since they were going to be the last ones I would ever eat in my life.


PS On a related topic, there's one seemingly insignificant news story that I have come across recently that has absolutely enormous ramifications. I am not quite sure why this story is languishing here in ABC Australia's rural news section instead of being plastered all over the front page of every news site on the planet. In a nutshell, CSIRO scientists have developed a commercial prawn food that does not require the use of any wild-caught fish. Currently, wild-caught fish make up 25 percent of commercial prawn feeds and 40–50 percent of commercial fin fish feeds. It can even take 2.5 kg of wild-caught fish to produce one kg of farmed salmon. Where is the sense in that, I ask you? Now that the CSIRO has cracked the formula for prawn feed (entering production as I write), they are starting work on developing a similar product for fin fish. Go you good things!

It's a long way to the shop if you want a sausage roll...

Australian ex-pat trying valiantly to uphold national pride in -20C. Photo: Charles Cardinal

The title of this post is something probably only Australians of a certain age would get. It's a schoolyard twist on the lyrics to AC/DC's It's a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock 'n' Roll); just try singing it and you'll see what I mean...

Today is Australia Day, and despite all the broader political ramifications and my personal uneasiness in recognition of Invasion Day, as it is also known, I am a little more nostalgic than usual for my home country. I celebrated by listening to '80s Oz Rock and making a batch of lamingtons to share with my classmates tomorrow. Surprisingly, there are two other Australians in my class, so I am not as much of an exotic creature as usual. I also made a batch of sausage rolls for Charles and I, which turned out to be the best I've ever tasted, perhaps because I've been so deprived. Like any good immigrant, I have soulful longings for the unique tastes of the Old Country.

It's a curious thing, being an expatriate. There is all the excitement and novelty of a new country, culture, and—frequently—language to explore, but it is so often clouded with a few greying drops of homesickness, as well as the involuntary comparisons. I can't even imagine what it must be like for immigrants who have had to leave their home against their will or for the preservation of their lives.

As always, I remind myself that the purpose of this blog is to enforce a positive view of change on myself so, like a happily tipsy father of the bride, I take the view that I am not losing my own culture, but gaining a second. (Gosh, I just remembered having a jumbonormous fight with a German boyfriend in 1998, when he claimed Australia didn't have a culture. Oh, my goodness!) As I sit here, I've been contemplating just what it is that I'm invoking when I think of that mythical beast that is "Australia." In essence it seems to be wide, open spaces, a freshness of both spirit and produce, and a lack of taking anything or anyone, including oneself, too seriously. But mostly it is the wide, open spaces. Oh, and warmth!

For years I have celebrated drives through those wide, open spaces with a stop at a country bakery for a sausage roll and a Farmers' Union Iced Coffee. It was a little tradition that I made for myself somewhere along the line, to the point now when a long car trip will induce sausage roll cravings. I've managed to find a suitable iced coffee substitute here, at the ubiquitously Canadian Tim Horton's chain, but it looks like I'll be doing a little pre-trip baking from now on because there really is no suitable alternative to the sausage roll here, and 16,000km is indubitably a long trip "down the shops."

Back to school

"You sound like a French-from-France!"

To most English speakers this would be a compliment, right? Coming from my 11-year-old stepson it is a stab to my heart, a soul-crushing blow, the most scathing of put-downs. Around here the French-from-France don't speak the True French. They are fickle followers of fashion, blithe spirits who do not care for tradition, who do not know the Old Ways. Québécois is the True French. Except when it borrows from English. Or a First Nations language. Or it had to make up a word to describe something unique to the New World. Or it uses the informal "tu" form of address with wild abandon. But let's not get picky now!

To someone who has had exposure to French-from-France—moi, for example—it is also a terrifyingly daunting dialect. Similarly causing, I'm sure, the kind of fear that must strike an English learner when they encounter a Scots accent, a Deep Southern US accent, or a broader-than-broad, closed-mouth, Far North Queensland accent. But here I am in Montréal, having just braved the joual of Témiscamingue, and today I started niveau 3 (level 3) of my cours de francisation.

I'm now at the Centre Saint-Louis, much closer to home after three and a bit months at the Centre Lartigue. These classes are run and heavily subsidised by the Commission scolaire de Montréal, via the Ministry of Education. The Ministry of Immigration also offers classes, but after a spectacular fail at fulfilling their own KPIs, I wound up in the care of the Education Minister.

It's an incredible deal: a $70 administration fee per six months, plus $10 per level for the textbook. For that you get 20 hours per week of professional, immersion French classes. As I wrote: incredible!

I won't lie, I have found it very challenging going back to study almost full time. Twenty contact hours of foreign language learning by immersion leaves you pretty shattered for several extra hours on top of that per week. It's not the work per se; I'm doing very well. (Thank you home tutors!) But being a povvo student after years of full-time work is very challenging. My Aries moon is also always very impatient to just get on with things, and I want to master it all NOW, and I want to be back at work NOW! (I'm not saying these are attractive qualities I admire in myself, but it is a personality trait I am constantly battling to overcome.) I am continually taking stock and reminding myself that most of the known universe dreams of "taking a year off to learn French." Reason vs Wonder again!

So, now on my second institution, I am also on my fourth school venue. Some of the buildings have been beautiful—evocative and even anachronistic. Others have been coldly utilitarian. We've seen chalk dust and felt erasers, wall-mounted pencil sharpeners, wall charts and maps, linoleum, and even PCs running Windows XP.

It really feels like I am back at school.

 

On va vers hiver

It's here! For weeks the anticipation has been building. Will it or won't it snow tonight? This weekend? Before December?! And tonight here it is, the bright, white blanket putting all our childish fitfulness to rest. And again with the firsts—this is my first First Snow.

Two weeks ago as I walked home from class at lunchtime, the sky dusted down the tiniest of snowflakes that melted as they touched my jacket. This is it!, I thought. The next morning it tried again, and the more adventurous of my two black cats—tropically born and bred—came trotting into the kitchen after his morning garden survey with a sprinkle of white flakes across his back. Definitely it! And then...nothing.

Ice has slunk into the nooks and crannies, making my daily walk treacherous, with every puddle and pooling frozen on the footpaths and often hidden under piles of leaves. Between last Friday and today the lake in Parc La Fontaine has incrementally frozen, too. And now the late night revellers who want to challenge the ice have had to resort to bigger and bigger objects to throw at it to test their respective strengths. Drunken man vs ice. The ice has obviously remained resolute, and logs and rocks and garbage sit dejected on its surface.

In preparation for their trials ahead, the city's squirrels are as fat as they are going to get after early November's feast on Halloween's abandoned pumpkins. The sight of the mauled and maimed remains of jack-o'-lanterns strewn throughout the neighbourhood has been more gruesome and disturbing than most people's costumes!

But tonight I'm content to go to bed and dream of crisp, clean snow. And I hope to wake up tomorrow to a fresh new city that will charm me all over again. I will enjoy the novelty of my first First Snow while I can, at least until the relentless cold forces me inside and I begin to dream of summer.

Rediscovering the Forgotten

As predicted, I have managed to make myself pretty busy of late, but one of the things I am up to is 20 hours of French classes a week. My trip to class takes me through the beautiful Parc La Fontaine every morning and back again at lunchtime. I amuse myself with the squirrels' antics on the walk through the park, and I was quite amazed when I first saw the elusive champagne-coloured ones that live there. This morning as I wandered through, I realised that apart from a couple of days in Adelaide in May 2009, I haven't experienced an autumn for over a decade. A decade! Quel surprise! Maybe it's the novelty of it all, but I am finding this autumn in Montréal especially spectacular.

Last week, Amy, one of my oldest friends from my hometown, came to visit for five days. On her first day I took her for a walk up the Mont-Royal. It was yet another gloriously sunny day, and tiny yellow leaves were gently raining down through the sun's golden rays onto the wide, wide path. Oh, just stop it, you! We were both seriously impressed.

One of the great pleasures of a Northern autumn is harvest season, and the boys and I have been solid in our appreciation of that. The weekend before last we went apple picking at Vergers Philion, near Hemmingford, down by the U.S. border. Philion is an organic orchard and the air was filled with lady birds. I spent a busy five minutes trying to stop one or two from risking drowning in the port-a-loos on first arrival, only to realise there were 50 more banging on the door trying to get in. I just had to leave Mother Nature to deal with it in the end.

We picked about 7.5kg of apples and pears, and my great excitement of the day was Russet apples. I had never heard of them before: tough skinned, sweet and very firm in texture, they were once known as leatherjackets, and were hugely popular in Victorian times, though now fallen somewhat out of favour for anything other than cider production. What I was most fascinated to see were the 'cracked' ones on the first few trees we encountered. Cracking is technically a fault, caused by inconsistent water supply during the formation of the fruit, but it appealed to my Ugly can be beautiful too philosophy, and I picked a cheery armful, much to Lolo's bemusement. They were superb with cheese and bubbles the next day when we had visitors.

The other produce we couldn't help but see on our little road trip was pumpkin: totally ubiquitous around here at the moment! Strangely, though, Canadians don't eat that much pumpkin, certainly nothing like Australia's obsessive consumption from weaning to old folks' home. I'm having contraband thoughts of sneaking some seeds of my beloved Jap variety in from the Old Country to blow the minds of a few folks I know who think of them as only for making pie and as decorations. We've been busy eating pumpkin and peanut dip, pumpkin risotto, roast pumpkin, pumpkin in tagine, and roasted pumpkin seeds, peasants that we are! Interestingly, I encountered an article this week by a Paris-based writer, David Lebovitz, who noted that, despite the Légumes Oubliés movement in France, pumpkins still have too much of an association with war-time deprivation there to be commonly found in the markets. I also recall relatives of my former Italian bosses dismissing them as "pigs' food".

Autumn, pumpkins, Russets: forgotten, ignored or neglected all. When combined with a five-day visit from a beloved friend of over 20 years, it has been quite a pleasant couple of weeks of appreciating the Forgotten.

P.S. I've read no more of Proust than his infamous homage to the madeleine, but having been eating said cakelet for breakfast a bit lately, I can quite appreciate what all his fuss was about!

 Cracked Golden Russet apples:
hitting every branch on the way down as they fall out of the Ugly Tree!
 

Stop Press: Alien Mother Ship Saves Day

Previously on Reason and Wonder, I discussed the fact that you can see the Montréal Olympic Stadium from the corner of our street. Since we are moving apartment tomorrow (I know, again!), I thought I'd procrastinate a bit this morning and post some images of a recent trip we made to the stadium because, well, it's totally awesome!

I fell in love with the Olympic Stadium the very first time I came to Montréal, back in March 2011. It seriously looks like an alien mother ship has just plonked itself down in the inner suburbs north of Downtown. But until a few weeks ago I hadn't seen it up close.

A couple of Fridays ago, Charles decided to cash in some extra hours he'd accrued and take the day off work. It was a lovely sunny day, so we thought we'd go take a picnic to the Botanic Gardens and have a romantic wander around. It turns out that because of the giant topiary exhibition, half of the rest of Montréal had the same idea. It also cost twice as much as it usually does to get into the gardens, but there was still an hour-long queue to get to the ticket booth. We decided that we no longer wanted to share our romantic afternoon with so many people, so after I had sulked over our sushi for a bit, Charles suggested we go for a walk around the Olympic Stadium, just across the road, instead.

Wow, wow, wow!

I love the Olympic Stadium even more now: it totally turned the day around.

Thanks, Charles! xo

RIP Jeffrey Smart

Simplification

Well.
Here I am.
Montréal.
Permanently.
Finally!

Actually, I've been here for three and a half weeks now, but I have been suffering transplant shock and have barely been able to bring myself to write emails, let alone a blog post. Don't get me wrong, I love it here. I love it more every day, and Charles is just the best darn husband a girl could wish for. But I did recently give up at least 90% of my possessions, my house, my car, and a job of eight years, not to mention again all the goodbyes I've said to loved ones in the last couple of months. I've been vacillating between being emotionally exhausted and like a kid in a lolly shop as I've been exploring my new home in far greater depth than I've had a chance to previously.

I also find my life refreshingly simplified.

I haven't got a job - haven't even started looking yet to be honest - but settlement did come through on the sale of my house so I could hold out for a year if I was willing to fritter away my life's savings. Without the job and the house I am also released from some of the more mundane financial facts of life: the mortgage, house repairs, home and contents insurance, income protection insurance, car insurance etc. etc. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz... And to be honest I am not missing the stresses of my old job one bit. The woman who two months ago was ranting and raving about government funding cuts, AWOL project partners, interminable grant reporting procedures and budget adherence is now spending her days on the swing at the park, dreaming up what she's going to cook for dinner while she waits for her stepson to finish making new friends. Or spending three and a half hours walking to the Mont-Royal, up it, down it and back again before lunch. Or stumbling across super-cheap Chinese/Portuguese supermarkets in unexpected places. Or potting out a balcony herb garden. The only ranting and raving that's been going on has been at the squirrels for digging up my rocket seeds twice.

I still don't think I'm down to a baseline heart rate after the last few months, but I'm getting there. I'm making the time to look after myself and relaxing, eating well, exercising and enjoying life with my beloved after three years of being in a long-distance relationship. It's not often in a First World life that you get to untangle yourself so much. It always takes something drastic like an international relocation, or a number of much less pleasant scenarios. That or a conscious drop out. I'd be lying if I said I didn't occasionally hear a desperate voice in the back of my brain screeching, "Stalled superannuation contributions!!!!" But it's early days yet, eventually I'll get a bit bored and start looking for a challenge, or a complication, or a bit of stress.

But not just yet.

Resistance is useless

Image: BBC

When I was young, Doctor Who was on the ABC every weeknight before the news. I loved it, but like so many other children, it scared the bejesus out of me. I probably saw more of the palms of my hands than the television screen and, yes, I did resort to the cliché of hiding behind the couch. Looking at the hyper-realistic costumes above it is clear why I would have been so terrified!

My segue here is fear. Fear and the bizarre effect it can have on us.

This week has been enormous. On the weekend I realised that a recent Australian interest rate cut meant that renting my house was a viable Plan B if it didn't sell in the near future. Ergo: I no longer have to wait for the house to sell before moving to Canada. Tuesday night and Wednesday morning I booked my flights. Today I resigned from my job. The really fun part was finding a flight that allows for a stopover in Tokyo. The hardest part was pressing the button to commit to buying the first flight; I must have sat there for nearly ten minutes, aware that that one action would push me past the point of no return. On the flipside I know from bitter experience that an international flight can increase by hundreds of dollars in the course of a couple of hours, so I was also nervous that if I didn't commit this week - that day - I'd lose the one reasonably priced combination I'd been able to find for the month-long window of departure dates I'd been searching. Up until then all the one way flight connections I'd seen were more than my entire return ticket to Montréal in February.

Yet there I was, a woman with a fully formed, timed and costed-out plan and a husband to get to, hesitating. A whole new, exciting world of experiences and opportunities lies before me, with a gorgeous man to lie beside me, and yet the chatter in my brain, the resistance to letting go of my current life, the sheer physical difficulty in pressing-the-goddam-button-already, was astounding. I was paralysed with fear in the face of enormous change, despite the fact that the change is something I want so very badly. In the end, obviously, I gave myself a mental slap across the face, came to, and just pressed the bloody button!

Today I drove into work knowing that, again, an irrevocable action was about to take place. I feel a deep sense of loyalty to my organisation and I love my co-workers dearly, I feel bad about leaving them at a difficult time in the face of sector funding cuts and a tough art market. Telling my boss, in fact, was nowhere near as bad as telling my co-workers, even though we've all known this day would come for quite a while. Still, I had heart palpitations when I made an office-wide announcement.

But why? Why, with the prospect of moving to a major international city full of art and culture and good food, and where they speak both French and English, to be with the man you love, could there ever be a hesitation? I get to reboot my life completely, transferring across only those files I choose (though no doubt there'll be a few lurking Trojans!) Every time I get a heart pang at the thought of leaving my house, every time I fear that I'll be unemployed for the rest of my life, every time I see a Ulysses butterfly and wonder if that will be the last one I ever see, should and will be a time to get excited about all the new things that are to come and that could never happen here, will never happen if I stay. I won't be too hard on myself if I catch myself grieving, but I will reprimand myself if I find I am getting resentful of the reasons Charles can't come back here, or if I am clinging too hard to things that are ultimately of lesser importance – tin foil and pipe cleaners all of it, just like the costumes in the image above. Because resistance to change, fear of change, can make you hide behind the couch even when you are a grown up.


P.S. Unlike a number of my friends, I haven't been able to get into the latest incarnations of Doctor Who and its offshoots. I haven't watched a full episode since the fifth Doctor.

Happy Easter! Here's to celebrating (a) new life!

Things you might not have known about me, part 1: When I was a child I used to hoard my Easter eggs, whereas my brother had usually inhaled his by Easter Sunday evening. I would then slowly savour my stash over the following weeks, generally right in front of him to his great distress and my great amusement. I used to imagine that I was such a good girl, but really I was just as much of a little shit as the best of them!

I love Easter. It has always been my favourite of the seasonal holidays. It's much calmer and less loaded with expectation than the Christmas/New Year period. It's a good time to rest and recharge: for getting lost in a good book with a little pile of Easter eggs or buttered hot cross bun nearby; for going camping; or for doing what I'm up to this time around – pottering around the house doing some fix-its. Also, Charles and I started seeing each other over Easter three years ago, almost to the day, so that has further added to its charm.

Easter's metaphor of resurrection/rebirth/the-renewal-of-the-cycle-of-life gets a little confused here in the Southern Hemisphere, but I'm very happy to run with it this year because my Canadian permanent residency was approved this week.

Whoo.
Hoo!

It certainly feels very good to finally be able to put long-held plans into action. It's a little daunting, too, I'll admit. For the next few months I'll be sprucing up the house for a hopeful sale (yes, I made up my mind, here's hoping the market agrees with me), auditing all my possessions into keepers, sellers and those to be filed in the bin, squirreling cash, spending as much time as possible with friends, and winding up work, hopefully by the beginning of June. Phew!

I'm not much good at drawn out goodbyes, I prefer the Band-Aid method – walking out the gate and not looking back with absolutely no fuss or ceremony. But that's not necessarily fair on others, nor would it do justice to the incredibly curious time I have had in Cairns and all of the amazing things it has given me over the last nine years. This has been the most stable period of my life. I've worked for the same company for nearly eight years, worked in the same building for the entire nine years in fact, and I've only lived in two houses if you don't count the early months with the then-boyf's parents. Previously, I could look back every few years and the whole landscape had changed: different job, study, house, area, boyfriend, all completely changed every two to three years. Reminding myself that this kind of change used to be my norm is certainly helping in psyching myself up for the next few months. Before I go I'll find ways to honour all that has been and the natural beauty that is here, but I'll stave off sadness with the thought of all the potential lying in wait in Montréal, not to mention one rather dashing Québécois librarian.


P.S. For those of you who are curious about such things, I applied for Canadian permanent residency under the spouse category. My residency has been approved, but I still have to wait another couple of weeks to get the visa in my hot little hand. Canadian Immigration estimates that for Australians applying for this category from outside of Canada, processing should take nine months, but once my visa arrives it would have been about five months since we put in the application. Much faster than expected, but then, we are a very straightforward case ...

In contemplation of brown spirits

Goddammit, I'm sick! After walking about seven kilometres yesterday through the Plateau District, then on to Downtown and Chinatown, I've succumbed to a cold. Given that we received a nice dollop of snow last night, it's probably best I stay indoors rather than traipse around town as I was hoping to do, but when you want to be adventuring, being sick is a frustration.

One of my favourite home remedies for a cold is the old faithful: hot lemon and honey. Even if its benefits are purely psychological given the destruction of the lemon's vitamin C by the boiling water, I'll happily take that placebo effect. I usually add thin slices of fresh ginger if I have it handy, which is probably the most useful ingredient. And on the occasions when I have some joint pain (as I do today), well, then ... my secret ingredient is a generous shot of some variety of brown spirits. Joint pain? Gone!

Brown spirits—whisky, whiskey, bourbon, brandy, dark rum, etc.—are not, in general, a favourite of mine. I've just never been able to get into them. White spirits—gin, vodka, even white rum in a well-made cocktail—are fine by me, but brown spirits have either failed to appeal or drawn outright disgust. After hearing many a friend extol the virtues of a cheeky snifter in the hot lemon pot, though, I tried it and had to concede it was rather helpful. It is the only time I drink such stuff.

I am, however, exceptionally curious about whisky, particularly single malts. As a lover of food and wine, ever interested in regional variations and the impact of 'terroir', I'm intrigued by the range of flavours reported. I also love smoked foods; Lapsang Suchong tea; a properly made, smoky babaganough; smoky pinot noirs ... so the prospect of a peaty, smoky-flavoured spirit appeals greatly to me. I also have this curious fantasy: Hopefully in the northern Fall, when I have moved to Montréal permanently, Charles and I will take a road trip to the Gaspé region. There, in my mind, it will be blowing a gale and be suitably autumnal. We will stay in a B&B with lace curtains, eat lobster rolls and seafood chowder, wear cream Aran fisherman's sweaters, and I will enjoy drinking whisky as we laugh in the face of the cold. You see, my fantasies are pretty innocent, really. The only catch to this scheme is my current aversion to brown spirits.

Of course, I have a plan to overcome this. My friends Jane and Chedy are big lovers of Scotch, Laphroaig being their favourite. I am going to visit them at their Northern New South Wales multiple occupancy community (no, it's not a commune!) in April, so I shall take a bottle of Laphroaig with me and, by hook or by crook, I will enjoy the damn stuff by the time my long weekend stay is over.

For now though I see that it has passed the hopefully-acceptable time of 10am and it is still snowing in big, fat flakes. So I am off to make a pot of hot lemon and honey with a little dash of something extra. Santé!

Welcome to our Messier home

Our new apartment is in Rue Messier and we had been discussing it as an option and going through the tenancy application process for a couple of weeks before I looked at the street name with English language eyes and smiled to myself at how apt that was probably going to be. So, here I am and here I've been for almost the last two weeks: Montréal, my future home. I have found myself surprisingly busy, so is it a case of today I make much-needed time to write? Or does the day's bright sunshine belie the frosty conditions outside and I am wimping out on leaving the apartment? I'm pretty sure it is the latter. Today would be an excellent day to take photographs, but given that at 2pm the temperature had just clawed its way up to -9°C, I don't think I'm willing to suffer that much for my art! Even Charles says it's cold, and you've got to listen to the man when he says that.

From our street corner (above), in one direction you can see the Olympic Stadium, and in the other the Mont-Royal, the centre of the whole city. I have been having a great time exploring and I've done a lot more reading up since my last visit - wow! - nineteen months ago, so I have been crossing off a few places on my to-see list. I am also more familiar with the map of Montréal and where neighbourhoods and points of interest are in relation to each other so the whole experience is making much more sense. There is an interconnectedness, rather than simply a series of random, slightly bewildering stops. Last week I even helped a little old lady change buses and then get off at the stop she wanted, I felt proud as Punch!

I also caught up with a dear acquaintance whom I hope to one day be so bold as to call friend - Vera, an 84-year-old ceramicist who has lived in or near Montréal since 1949. She took me on a driving tour of her Montréal, which is chiefly the 'Anglo' areas on the west side that I haven't had much to do with previously. Not only did she show me what is here now, she also told me what used to be in certain places: gigantic bakeries that are now apartment blocks; the sites of many a wild party; shops, homes, theatres and restaurants that have given way to redevelopment. It was fascinating, if a little overwhelming.

And this capacity for change is what both excites and daunts me about the coming move: so much is happening here that my becoming a full-time wife, part-time step-mother, co-habiter, Francophone, changing career focus and dealing with that cold is but a small part of the change that will surround me. Here's hoping that helps me to keep things in perspective.

The rest of this week is forecast to be 'much' warmer - around about the 0°C mark. I never thought I would be able to differentiate between 0°C, -10°C and -20°C, but let's just say that belief has gone out the window in the last two weeks. However, the slightly warmer conditions mean I hope to have some more photos for you by the weekend as I get out of the house again, but for now I must prepare to rug up and go pick my dear step-son up from after-school activities. I need to leave in just over an hour, so if I start getting dressed now, I might just make it! I'll leave you with some fleeting images: a building at the corner of Rue Saint-André and Rue Cherrier, an apartment block on Ave Coloniale painted my favourite colour, and one of the kids' sweet treats - it's not even real maple spread, but gosh, what great packaging!

 

 

Montréal Calling

The last few weeks have been a bit odd. By day I have been going to work in Cairns, or cutting down bananas, and other very tropical things, and at night I have been roaming the streets of Montréal - virtually, at least. Charles has to move out of his apartment there and so, sooner than we'd hoped, we've been looking for an apartment together. We had expected that we'd at least get to do it in each other's physical presence, but no, from 16,000km apart it is. Thank God for that Internet thingy! I conservatively estimate we looked at about 150 apartments combined, with Charles doing the legwork to go see six in person after a process of elimination by committee.

I've also been trying to find a decently priced flight to visit my beloved husband in the not too distant future. It's quite a juggling act to book online and avoid the crappy airlines, multiple stop overs, long lay overs, too early departure times, too late arrival times, and some absolutely ridonkulous prices. Cairns to Montréal is about as far apart as you can get on this planet, and it doesn't seem to be that common a route.

But we've done it. Last Wednesday: flight secured. I'll be in Montréal for most of February, which will give me a taste of just how freakin' freezing it can get there. Friday: tenancy approved on an apartment we both love just off Mont-Royal in the eastern Plateau district. Phew! Hopefully I can get back to being mentally present where I am physically present for the next seven weeks.

To celebrate, this afternoon I went to see Monsieur Lazhar, a beautiful film despite some gaping holes in the plot. I have loved my time in the Tropics, but boy, oh, boy, I'm looking forward to moving to Montréal. There's only so long your body can bear to be separated from your heart.