French word of the day: quartier (KAR-tyay); neighbourhood

Bonjour mes amis,

Welcome to a tour of our 'hood. Not comprehensive, but it will give you an idea of the area.

The view from our front door: a parking lot. This area does not have much in the way of detached houses at street level, so we often surprise pedestrians when we emerge from the house and step down onto the sidewalk.

This "used to be" a red light district.

Who knew porn theatres still exist?

Montreal, city of haute couture and tacky tourist t-shirts. I'm with stupid!

We recently watched a CBC tribute to the Montreal Canadiens for their centenary. Host George Strombopolis (sp?) was walking around major party places in Montreal, and this nightclub was one of them. Milo loves the giant hanging spider at the front gate. But he's underage, so he can't go in.

Henri Henri: who knew haberdashers still existed? This one is right on our corner, and has been there since 1938. See my first post; behind me is the interior of the shop, which probably has not changed since it opened.

The Quebec Grande Bibliotheque and archives. It was designed by the Patkaus, apparently to much controversy as they are anglophone architects and many thought it would be more appropriate to get Quebecois designers.

Here's a shot taken from inside one of the glass elevators.

St. Catherine's street, a long rue of many moods.

Who doesn't want to buy their smokes from the local wise guy?

Milo's daycare. Not the massive gothic church, the modern office building to the left of it.

A head shop. Bongs a go-go. And listen, it's not hip hop if it's on the radio. (I don't know what that means; it's on the shirt in the window. Anyone?)

That's it for now, peeps. This is a sucky coding job, sorry if there are swaths of blank space between the pictures, will try to do better next post.

We got a FOOT of snow last night!!! In.sane.

Later sk8ers.

French word of the day: garderie (gar-der-EE) a daycare center for children; a nursery

Bonjour tout le monde,

Not much to report since the last post, except that we hit the rocks for the first time since our hitherto idyllic time here. To wit: (okay, not much of that going on here) Milo decided he hated his new daycare. Most of last week was an emotionally draining affair of leg-clinging, teary pleading not to be left there, and lots of guilt and doubt on our part. Friday was a little better; he seemed resigned, if not thrilled, to be going there. So maybe we've worn him down. This did raise some questions about the whole Montessori thing though. The managers at the daycare said there are no toys out because Montessori pedagogy advises against having them out while educational activities are going on, so they are locked away most of the time. Milo's Calgary daycare is all about free play, with lots of toys available most of the time. So his new one seems a lot less fun to him, and we can't say we blame him. Well, as those of you who've met him know, he's a very social guy who needs friends. So hopefully he's making friends and that will make him much happier. A few of the kids in his room speak English as their first language, but the teachers and most of the kids are francophone, so that's got to be a little challenging too.

In other news, we were tourists yesterday. Montreal's Olympic velodrome was converted into the "biodome," a big indoor zoo. It's pretty interesting, organized by climate regions, and you follow a path through the whole thing starting with a rain forest, going through the Laurentian landscape/marshes, St. Lawrence seaway, and ending up in Antarctica with 3 species of penguins. Canadian animals and fish are so BORING compared to the technicolor fish, plants, and birds of remote climes! But maybe their abilities to live in harsh cold weather makes them interesting from a biology standpoint. That's what Milo seems to think; his favourite was the giant Atlantic cod.

Other than that, we've just been exploring around our own 'hood. I went to the Musee d'art Contemporain with Iggy, but it was between major exhibits, so we just saw a reduced version of their offerings. There were two video art exhibits, one from Canadian artist Lynne Marsh, the other some Japanese artists.

Iggy didn't get the cultural references of Marsh's work, which dealt with feminist representations of the female body in public sites of power, but he really liked the Japanese works, which were lovely animated images dissolving into different colours and shapes to music. It was like those little Sesame Street vignettes I remember from my youth; maybe that's why I'm drawn to that kind of animation and video art.

I will leave you with one observation: Montrealers seem to really love their pastries. You can buy all manner of really fancy-looking ones in the supermarket, right out of the freezer case. To say nothing of Le Pain d'Ore, a boulangerie in our street that sells real French-style pastries and breads-- to die for, literally.

A la prochaine, mes amis.

French word of the day: accueil (AH-koy), reception, greeting, welcome

Hey Tribe,

I'm making good on my threat to post a blog. Many of you have asked "How's Montreal?" so rather than respond over and over, I'll post as often as I have any worthwhile observations to share and save individual communication (assassination conspiracies, point shaving operations, knit patterns) for email. So, with a tip of the hat to Andy Warhol's theory of plebian, shortlived fame, I'll begin here and let up with the apologies already...

About the title: we actually are living in a converted Salvation Army chapel.

Beginning at the beginning. The trip was good, Mel and John helped us schlep our 6 months worth of stuff to the airport and the boys were angels on the flight. Dave was traumatized when the passenger across from him started violently vomiting from her nose and mouth while unconscious (flight phobes: DON'T mix your tranqs with red wine!!!). But the flight attendant was a total mensch about it and the puke was soon forgotten.

We arrived at the house to a lovely crackling fire in the wood stove which heats most of the place, and our hosts Jean and Marie had made us a risotto dinner with wine and a galette of the Epiphany for dessert. This is a buttery, almond paste pie thing with a gold paper crown around it and a 2 cm-tall ceramic figurine of Barba Papa, king of the epiphany, baked inside. Whoever gets the "bean" is blessed with good luck for the year and gets to wear the crown. Guess who got it, in the very last piece to be served? Dave. Hard for him to top '09, but if that's what the galette augurs, it must come to pass. It came from the Pain d'Ore, a boulangerie perilously near here that has all the real French baked goods. They showed us around the place, then left us to our new home, to begin their travels through south America in the morning.

It's been really cold here ever since we arrived, with only a couple of days' respite from -22 to -34 temps. I've been coping by eating a lot and buying myself a real Quebec muskrat fur hat for my birthday.

It's like putting a bunch of Hot Shots in a bag and putting them on your head-- and so soft.

And we have to keep the fire stoked at all times. When I'm up in the night to feed Iggy, I put a couple of logs on. Makes me feel like a woman of the frontier. Except I've got a plasma screen tv to watch while breastfeeding.

We've done a little exploration of our immediate environs, despite the cold. We live within short walking distance of the Quebec archives and Grande Bibliotheque, which has English materials too, and a great children's section. Also a beautiful modern building. A very useful institutional neighbour.

We started Milo at a day home on Monday. Right away we had misgivings; the lady's apartment is cramped and dark, there's only one other kid close to Milo's age, and only 3 kids total; nice ratio, but really boring for a social animal like Milo. That's what you get for putting your kid in a daycare you signed up for over the Internet. Long story short: he's starting at a new daycare on Monday, a big bright one with lots of kids and a Montessori program. We're pretty sure he'll love it. He's been fine in the original place, as they went skating and swimming, but he would've become bored by next week probably. It's going to be awkward breaking up with the daycare lady, she's a nice person, and doing the best with what she has.

Montreal observations: everyone is bilingual, even the homeless drunks shilling for change. Everyone is stylish; lots of people smoke. Downtown is teeming with activity; we're near the Universtity of Quebec at Montreal (UQAM) so lots of students around, standing outside the campus buildings, looking gorgeous and smoking. We're close to many big tourist sights, and will explore those soon. The museum of contemporary art is walking distance from here.

Unlike Calgary with the Chinooks, the snow just piles up here. They have trucks that travel beside the snow ploughs to take the snow out of the city. It's hard to get more urban than where we are right now. We've missed being in a dense place like this. Just going for a walk is a social event; you're going to get to do a lot of people watching, window shopping, and umpteen snacking options will present themselves. And the beer. Fin du Monde is delicious, a rich dark sweetish brew, but kind of a big commitment at 9% alcohol. I love Maudite, a more tame version of Fin du Monde. The local IGA has more fancy import stuff than delis in Calgary; we are back in the land of committed foodies. It's hard to be a serious foodie with young kids, but we'll try our best.

That's it for now. I'll post again soon. Thanks for visiting. Come in person if you can. We have lots of room.