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05/27/2005: "New Toronto to Montreal"
It's been a busy few weeks but I think we've had some good experiences with the city lately. A few weeks ago our biggest group yet, some 24 people, met in New Toronto, at the spot where Islington meets Lake Ontario (it's called Seventh Avenue at that point - but Islington runs straight down from the farthest reaches of the 905 so I think it deserves to at least reach the lake as Islington). We walked around this bit of Toronto, getting some strange looks from people standing on their lawns. It's interesting that in near-suburban settings, groups of people seem threatening. At home, in Windsor, when people would group together in the park across from my house, I'd wonder what was up. Downtown, I don't think so much about it.
We wandered around the New Toronto area for a while (even waving to Todd's boss who lived nearby), a place I wrote about in eye Weekly recently. I quite like it out there. It reminds me of Windsor - in the way it feels like the underdog - always at the mercy of manufacturing up-and-down cycles. In Windsor there was always the feeling that the rug could be pulled from under our feet. That rug was gone one spring afternoon in 1993 when I came home from school and my dad was home early. Twenty-eight years at the distillery ended that day, with litte warning. It was the moment when all that tension and low-fidelity dread suddenly became very real and was sitting there, on the shag carpet. Unlike Toronto, there was very little personal agency in Windsor. Trying to control or steer something like a Ford or a Hiram Walker or Chrysler was like trying to steer a glacier. There was nothing you could do. And people rode it as best they could, buying houses, having kids, all the time thinking it could all disappear. That I got that feeling in New Toronto, even as it is being rapidly colonized by Torontonians seeking mortgages slightly lower than those found in the Annex and Cabbagetown, was remarkable. It's hard to ignore the power of a landscape that evokes working-class anxiety.
I think New Toronto will be fine because they've mixed it up pretty good. Our big group walked through some of the new-ish co-ops built on former Goodyear land. Subsidized housing exists next to market-rate townhouses. We walked through this huge arch in one of the co-ops. The scale of the place is impressive. It doesn't feel like suburbia. It's like the postmodern meets City Beautiful.
Nadia described the walk, and the subsequent end-up at the Mendoza Inn, on her fine blog . While passing through Mimico we noticed a Russian restaurant with this image in the window:
I bet they serve a lot of meat there - the greatness of this bear almost makes me want to eat meat again. Everybody should be this satisfied at some point. He reminds me of this Russian guy who goes to the Y - he's always sweating and grunting, and in the sauna he'll throw some weird herbal crap on the rocks that has some kind of Vics vapour rub effect on the sinuses while he discusses how good the heat is. This seems like something he'd say. Today I was computing in the Faema on Dupont at Chrstie, and the Russian guy walked in. I think he got some kind of coffee then left on his bike. Once he was yelling at the YMCA staff for turning the Sauna heat off too early.
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A few weeks ago I gave a talk about [murmur] at a symposium organized by the Mobile Digital Commons Network . I had time to wander around Montreal a bit. It was nice to be back after a little more than a year's absence. I do get sort of depressed there - I don't know why - some kind of inherent melancholy. I like that feeling, but I don't know if I could do it long-term. Montreal is harder than Toronto. The very concrete seems harder, with less give.
At one point we climbed Mount Royal on what was a lovely Sunday afternoon. It was the first hot feeling day when you can wear just a t-shirt - and even then feel too hot because the body hasn't yet been acclimatized to warm weather. After looking at the city we walked down the East side of the mountain towards the Plateau and the park. We wanted to go through the Tam Tam's , something I've never seen in full force. The east side of the mountain is terribly steep in some places. Enough so that going down on all fours on the rockly cliffs is sometimes required. I got vertigo a few times. The whole time the sound of the Tam Tam drumming drifted up through the trees at great volume. There was no escape. During the most dangerous moments I thought how awful it would be to tumble to my death to the dreadful hippy sounds of Tam Tam. When we reached the park we found what seemed like a few thousand people hanging out, include this guy sitting on the statue:
He reminds me of the eccentric French-Canadian people found in the NFB-style films they'd show us in grade school. I wondered what he did during the week. Maybe it was the novelty of being in Montreal again, but that city just seems to have a wider periphery - somehow those who seem like they are the marginalized are actually at the centre. We didn’t' spend more than a few minutes in the midst of Tam Tam though. The sound was too much and we feared a terrible hippy stink was about to hit us, so we walked to St. Laurent and went north to Mile End where we had some nice Americanos at the Esperanza Café while reading the Montreal Gazette.
The next day we walked around Jean Drapeau Park and looked for Expo-67 ruins. It's shocking that so few physical references to Expo exist there - it seems almost deliberate. The park is one of the most sacred places in Canada and there is nothing that celebrates it. The only remaining Expo buildings have been converted and all past glory or national importance erased. There are still a few chunks left though - but you can only find them if you're looking. Like this Maltese Cross sitting near one of the canals:
I don't know why it's there, but I'm happy it is. We sat on the bank of the St. Lawrence and looked at downtown Montreal for some time before getting on the Metro that took us back to the Island. Before I found a cab to take me to the (impossible to get to by public transit) Pierre Elliot Trudeau airport, we ate "vegetarian" poutine (I didn't believe it) at a place on St. Louis Square. I've never had poutine before, and I don't think I'll try it again. Those cheese chunks are disturbing.
What I like about Montreal is how much neat brutalism there is, mixed in with more contemporary stuff. I took this picture from the plastic booths at the poutine place:
Montreal's new library is great too. So light and green - ready to float away. We talked about it for some time on Sunday evening at a restaurant on St. Dennis - a conversation that MK recounted on her blog here .
Though I might get depressed in Montreal, is the sort of depression that feels good to suffer or even feed now and then, so I'll continue to visit whenever I can. I could handle a few weeks at a time there. Even if the fashions at Simon's are a little curious a times, and though somthings are just wrong , Montreal is able to pull off all kinds of cultural and architectural combinations that don't seem possible. I'm glad it's nearby, and still sort of mine, in a NFB sort of way.
