1. Arrived in Montreal June 27, 2018

Bonsoir. Salutations de Montréal –

Very short trip to Montreal (following short jaunts to NY and Chicago last week – and back to California for two days and then here – not the most logical of my travels)

Long story as to how and why, so I’m just going to jump into what’s happening here. By the way, while I’ve been to Montreal several times, my last visit was about 15 years ago.

Arrived in Montreal yesterday (Tuesday, June 26) early evening. I’m traveling with an old friend from graduate school days (Carol) who flew in from L.A. We met up at the Pierre Elliot Trudeau Airport (named for the father of the current President – the one our president accused of betraying the US). Settled into our hotel : Auberge du Vieux-Port, a 150 year old building on the Saint Lawrence River. It was originally a warehouse and has been renovated so that there is still some authenticity but also modern rooms. It’s small (45 rooms) and each of the rooms has brick walls and wood floors and are actually quite spacious.

We then walked to Le Club Chasse et Peche for drinks and dinner. The menu was fantasitc and the food was wonderful; among the best meals I’ve ever eaten. Carol and I shared the braised piglet risotto with foie gras shavings, followed by a great salad of heirloom tomatoes and beets, followed by the special chasse et peche dinner which included sweetbreads and lobster in a fantastic mild soy ginger wasabi base. We couldn’t help but end it with dessert — maple syrup parfait with a red berry sauce, and some kind of dark chocolate shaved swirly thing on top. Pretty good start to the gastronomic four days to come.

Today we had breakfast at the hotel (included in our room) and then set off to walk – we decided to stroll to the classic Habitat 67, the housing complex built for the World’s Fair in Montreal in 1967. Designed by Moshe Safdie, the Israeli/Canadian architect. I had actually seen Habitat first while a student when it was built so it was interesting to see it now – 50 years later.

Of the many pavilions built for Expo 67 only two remain intact – Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic dome which is now the Montreal Biosphere (devoted to the environment) and Habitat which was seen as an attempt to reinvent the apartment house. Expo drew about 50 million visitors (apparently a record then and even now) to a country with about 20 million people and a city of about 3 million..

It’s a complicated story – To some, the project was seen as a new solution for housing… but from the beginning, the finances were messy; costs spiraled out of control although the assembly line-style production was touted as a prototype for many other developments. The production was done with an onsite fabrication plant. In order to attempt to recoup the high costs, the government set rents so high that no one could afford them. Within a few years there was a global economic downturn, the oil crisis and the Vietnam War were in full bloom; money for these kinds of projects disappeared. More than that, the concrete soon needed lots of repair. Even viewing it today you can see evidence of patches and leaks. It is said that one former resident fled the building after developing asthma and finding his cat dead (presumably from the mold). By the mid-1980s, the building was in private hands.

Anyway, the walk to Habitat was a little less exciting than what we expected. We strolled along the waterway for about a mile and then had to cross under the freeway through industrial areas and walk along a bike path that really didn’t consider pedestrians at all. By then it was getting hot and humid and really no place to find shade.. Also, no place to stop to get a cold drink. Really don’t know how those people who live in Habitat get around; you can really only access it by car and there aren’t any services close by. Still, I hear there are diehards who believe that Habitat’s utopian ideas have been successful. To give it credit, the units look quite wonderful with large balconies for inner-city gardens and sleek concrete walls with big windows… but you have to learn to live with mold!

We decided to nix the walk back to the hotel and opted to hop into a taxi to go to the marche (market). We opted for the big one Marche Jean Tallon.. which we didn’t realize was quite as far away as it was. And there was a lot of traffic, so the going was slow. We got to see several other parts of the city along the way…Chinatown, the Jewish neighborhood, and a lot of very sweet shopping streets. By the time we got to the market, we were famished so we headed to a little café for what turned out to be wonderful paninis with salad – just what the doctor ordered.

We strolled the market and then took the metro back to our hotel. The metro is simple to use, inexpensive, clean, and efficient. It was an easy 20 minutes back to the hotel. We changed quickly to head to the home of an old friend who has lived in Montreal since 1976; I last saw her when she lived in Calgary about 12 years ago.

Carol and I hopped into a taxi to head to her house in Outremont – the Francophile neighborhood about 20 minutes from the old town of Montreal where we are staying. I met Carol (her name is also Carol) and her then-husband and very young children when we were all living in Helsinki, Finland many many years ago. We became good friends over that year and have kept in touch in a loose sort of way. So now her children are quite full grown with children themselves who are emerging into adulthood. Peter is an architect with his own firm and Valerie is a neurologist specializing in Parkinson’s Disease. Valerie’s husband is an emergency room doc. Valerie has two daughters and Peter has two sons. Three of the four kids are in college and one is in high school.

We started out at Carol’s house for drinks and snacks and then we all headed to a local restaurant for a huge meal and a lot of reminiscing and political talk about our two countries! Given the current political situation in the US, we had lots of questions about living in Canada. Carol has been a Canadian citizen for many years. It was great to catch up and to reconnect with Carol’s children and to meet the grandchildren.

After we pretty much closed up the restaurant, Carol and her husband Ed drove us to the hotel. By now it had cooled off considerably and was raining. Rain is in store for tomorrow, so not sure what impact that will have on our plans.

Bonsoir… l’année prochaine au Canada ??? Next year in Canada ? (It’s close; it’s civil ; it’s democratic ; it’s tolerant — what more could you want ?  And French isn’t sooo difficult to learn !)