Last Tuesday we moved from the Air B&B in Lachine to our apartment that will be our home for the rest of our time in Montréal. Unlike the apartment in Lachine, this place feels like home; there are even pictures on the wall, and cooking/baking supplies. We can't believe that our host church is willing to sacrifice this source of revenue to house us! Plus, we're finally in the neighbourhood we work, study, and worship in. While Lachine has its own beauty, being in town is just so much more convenient! Whereas everything was an hour away before (and up to 90 minutes for Jae coming home from work on the night bus) everything now is so much closer since we are on a métro line. Tomorrow we welcome our first guests from BC, and are thrilled to have them here, in town, in our place that's "really" home.
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There seems to never be a dull day here in Montréal. You can always find something interesting when you are exploring the streets, a historic bagel shop, an F1 store (for Tom, of course), a world class string quartet giving a free lunchtime concert, a street with an art installation by local artists, or a 500,000 people strong march for the environment. It seems that striking or protesting is in the genes of the Québécois. My first day of school, I was greeted in the metro station by a cacophony of people who were support staff of UQAM. They were on strike and making some noise about it, crowding every possible entrance to the university…which is quite a few, as the buildings of UQAM are spread throughout several blocks of downtown Montréal. There is no separate campus like UBC or UVic. A week and a half into school, our class was interrupted by some students who spoke very quickly to us French learners that classes were cancelled and teachers were not allowed to teach us further that day. None of us really understood the reason or what was happening. A few days later we were told, in advance this time, that our following week class would be cancelled and our morning class would end early due to a student strike for the environment. It wasn’t until we looked at media a little more that we realized the magnitude of what was going to happen. This brings us to yesterday, Friday September 27th, 2019. We arrived at class only to discover that classes for the entire day had now been cancelled. We decided to check out what was going on. We’re here to experience culture, right? As we headed to the meeting point, we joined the UQAM group that was marching loudly down the street with police escort, signs raised, chants and cheering, and horns blowing. The crowd grew as people from the side streets converged on our group so that by the time we reached the park, our group had grown to a more than a few city blocks long. We could hear the roar of the crowd and music playing as we neared the park. We jostled through the crowd to get closer to the front of the action, squeezing into any small space available that would move us forward, or stepping into a single-lined stream of others trying to do the same. Even an hour or so after we had been there, people were still arriving in droves from the adjoining streets. It was mind boggling. We were unsure if the march was just to this location, but we were baffled as to how this many people could be marched anywhere else. However, as we circled the outskirts of the masses, we observed the shift in the crowd as those on the actual road began to stream through the greater crowd like the slow-moving current of a great river. We became part of the side streams that overflowed into the side streets until we found our way to a less busy place to rest our tired feet. We heard later that the crowd was so long that when the front of the line reached the end point, part of the crowd still had not left the beginning. Politicians, such as Justin Trudeau, and Elizabeth May, as well as young Swedish activist, Greta Thunberg, had been amongst the marchers. To compare the size of the crowd, I looked online to see what other events have attracted in terms of numbers. Disneyland has an average of 44,000 people per day and closes their gates at around 80,000. The Circuit of Americas Grand Prix has had 100,000 people on a race day, and it’s a similar amount for those who line the streets for a royal wedding. OK, the U.S. has this crowd beat with their inaugural day crowds at an estimated 1.8 million with Barak Obama in 2009. Greater Montreal has a population of just over 4 million, and a record-breaking amount of 500,000 showed up for this one day. That is pretty impressive and we were there to experience it.
Or, more accurately, "forgotten, but not gone!"
Yesterday, our friends Cal & Chrissy moved into their new place in Montréal. They had rented three U-pack boxes from Uhaul. Because we were not bringing furniture for the year, we were able to add all of our winter gear, books, and personal items to their shipment at minimal cost. Perfect, right? Apparently not. Cal picked me up yesterday morning with one of the boxes in tow behind a rented truck. When we arrived at their place, we encountered the first hiccup: the lock had been changed on the box. We didn't have a key. After waiting on hold, we just decided to drive back to Uhaul. They had not encountered such a thing before. The manager was called. He ended up grinding the lock off, which led to the second hiccup: the box was empty! All of our stuff, their musical instruments, Chrissy's personal papers, and most of their kitchen supplies...gone. Two schools of thought at this moment. Either, A) there was a screw-up on the BC side and, despite the paperwork indicating that the right boxes had been sent, there had been a mistake, or B) we had had everything in the container stolen. Never had I prayed so hard for administrative inefficiency! We unpacked the other two boxes without incident, save for the observation that Québec doors seem narrower, somehow, all the while waiting to hear from Uhaul. This was going to be difficult because all of the paperwork looked to be in order! Fortunately, perhaps by divine inspiration, Cal had snapped a photo of the last box waiting to be picked up, which happened to be THE box. In the picture? The box's ID number! An ID number not otherwise shown in any of the paperwork. Follow-up call to Uhaul in Kelowna. Yes, the box is there. Yes, an empty box was shipped across Canada. No, we cannot get out our (increasingly necessary) autumn clothes...yet. But we will be able to, soon. Merci Seigneur that this box was forgotten, but not gone! Yep, that pretty much summarizes it: many cultures and lots of homework!
In retrospect, Kelowna seems a lot more homogeneous than our current reality. There are the most obvious cultural differences—French and English. Hugh MacLennan called them the “two solitudes” back in 1945, before the quiet revolution of the 1960’s. But that’s just scratching the surface. We currently live in a culturally diverse suburb of Montréal, in a multi-ethnic building. At university, Val & I are the only Canadians in our classes. Everyone else is an international student, though some have been in Québec for a while now. There are more people from the former Soviet Union than from Canada! The people I am most friendly with in class are from Senegal and Iran, and Val’s been talking with people from Australia and Japan...all in French, of course. It’s similar at church. We’re in a black church (a couple of staff members immigrated from African countries), which has not been our reality before, and the “flavour” of what a faith community looks like here is different for other reasons as well, simply because it’s in urban Central Canada instead of the rural/suburban left coast. Add to this that the church is on the edge of Montréal’s predominantly white gay village, that our mode of travel is now bus, subway, and walking, and you have more levels to the milieu that is our new experience. As our goal is not just language acquisition, but cultural understanding too, we are absolutely in all of the right place(s)! Our hope and prayer are that we won’t continue to feel on the outside of all of these cultural realities we have the privilege to be amongst. Of course, the sheer volume of homework we have could keep us at home, working (hence the word), chained to grammar workbooks. Language learning isn’t at all about contemplating new concepts, or hypothesizing about anything; it is practice, practice, and more practice! We have two writing, and two oral classes. Each class only meets for 3 hours a week, but each also expects 1½ to 2 times that amount of time to be focused on homework. Translation: you are NEVER wanting for something to do. Would we trade it? Sometimes it feels like it would be easier. We are stripped from our context of connection, companionship, career, car, communication, and comfort. And yet, this is a whole new world, a world we have been invited in to. A world we WANT to know and be known in. So, we will continue to slog through our innumerable grammar exercises and all the frustrations that come with trying to learn a new language, hopefully with smiles on our faces. Another step closer to routine. Jaedyn is on her way to work, and Val's and my classes are now harmonized. We now go to the same classes at the same time, which is much nicer than the opposite schedule we started with. We try to make sure that we don't whisper in English, as the teachers seem to be watching...or so it seems to us, and that would be ultimately counter-productive. So, too, church. When we were introduced last week, the entire congregation was told to speak to us "en français seulement." Difficult still (neither of us feel like we have an ear for the language yet), but overall a positive. We both notice we are able to string more words together now, which is good to see since we often feel like we are babies, since we can't really express ourselves yet. I definitely have far more empathy for international students, or any non-English speaker who arrives and immediately immerses.
The thing is, that in Montréal, it is SO bilingual that as soon as a francophone hears our accents, they automatically switch to English, but we soldier on in French. But the city...what an amazing place it is. While we are not yet buried in homework (yes, we have some, but so far manageable), we have been using our transit passes to good effect and going out exploring new neighbourhoods a couple times a week. Just yesterday, we caught a bus after church and headed to Mont Royal. Instead of climbing it, as we had intended, we arrived to discover the Grand Prix Cycliste de Montréal (https://gpcqm.ca/en/grand-prix-cycliste-montreal/) taking place in the park. Not a local event, but international. The chase motorcycles had European plates, much like the safety and medical cars in F1, for example. For those who follow the Tour de France, this could be your methadone! After happening upon that, we wandered downtown and discovered a Québec version of the Academy Awards taking place (https://academie.ca/prixgemeaux)! This is a whole new world! And even without events, the ambience. Yes, some of the buildings are old, and the architecture is different, but even walking down the street and hearing one conversation in English, another in French, seeing a rabbi walk by, or random art installations, or graffiti (which could be argued to be the same thing), or Bloc Québécois election signs, all point to an amazingly unique culture. Finally, our team. On Saturday, all the FIT4M candidates, their hosts, leaders of the program, and an executive member from the Québec district of the PAOC met for the day, to hear each other's stories and hopes, and reasons for being here. Pretty inspiring, and a reminder that we are part of something much larger than our own story. It was a great day, and humbling too. Now we await moving out of the Air B&B and into our apartment. No complaints, but we look forward to really feeling like we live here vs. sojourning and still living out of suitcases. Le 29 Août – Le 6 Septembre 2019 – Notre première semaine.
It has been an entire week since we experienced our first morning here in Montréal. Things I (Val) have learned this week:
The last five days were essentially our only "late summer" holidays (we were away at the beginning of July), and so necessary after the hecticity (is that a word?) of August. Since we arrived Thursday, we've started to figure out transit, toured both downtown & our current neighbourhood in Lachine, and made it to our new church (https://www.gospelvie.com/, if you're interested to see).
But today, the next new phase began. While I'm sitting at home, Val is in class at UQÀM and Jaedyn is out having job interviews. She had seven lined up before we even left BC! Tomorrow, I have class and we meet with our FIT4M program director. It has been an interesting transition to "carless" life. While we will be right downtown starting in October, we are currently out in Lachine (west island). It's a lovely little neighbourhood, but everything we're here to do is about an hour away by transit, which we are beholden to. It changes your pace. Rushing either speeds up (to get the bus connection after being on the métro) or doesn't, if you miss it. From this end, the bus stop is literally a 90 second walk, so that's convenient, as is the proximity of services like grocery stores etc. (different names, Maxi & Pharmaprix, but same services: Extra Foods & Shopper's). We've already invested in a little wheelie cart to transport our groceries, but it has thus far meant that we are shopping every day! New rhythms. I've added a couple of pictures, including Val's first day of school and the outside of our apartment building. It's for rent October 1st if you're looking for a place in Lachine! Well, here we are...Montréal! The last weeks were a blur: family wedding, registering for classes, having our bed break in the middle of the night (we were sleeping), finishing the suite, and then getting our place ready for our renters. We literally stumbled towards the 29th, when we could get on the plane and head east.
We are SO thankful to have friends out here to meet us, and an organization that has seen to securing accommodations for us. We are still awaiting a second bed for Jaedyn, but the couch is a pull-out, so she didn't have to sleep in a chair! There's no coffee maker yet, though, so that could be critical! We have been out enough to get coffee (fortunately our bodies are still acclimatized to the west coast), find some wifi, and get métro passes. We are poised to become urban "non-car" people -- a bit more difficult in Lachine (commuting into Montréal proper), but this is short-term until our apartment is available on Oct 1st. Eight days until we leave, and it seems like a lifetime from now! We've rented our place, taken our pre-university language screener, and have sent out what we need for the year. As of this morning, we have a place for September too!
A couple of surprises along the way: Val is smarter than me (that part isn't a surprise), but it means we're in different classes on different days. We don't have ONE DAY that we go on the same day! |
AuthorTom & Val, off on a mid-life adventure (but not crisis) in la belle province! Archives
May 2020
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