Carly in Canada

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Despite having been thoroughly warned I still did not come to Quebec fully prepared for the outrageously cold temperatures.  A sailing jacket and $20 fake Ugg boots from Costco just don´t cut the mustard.

I am now fully rugged up and ready though with a $300 (ouch) 650 tog goose-down coat, super warm mittens and a pair of rubber boots that will see me down to -40.  It´s not pretty but it´s better than freezing your bits off.

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Woke up to beautiful sunshine again this morning so decided to make a second attempt to breach the Mount Royal summit.  What a difference a wee bit of sunlight makes.  Re-traced our steps back to the Belvédère Kondiaronk lookout and got some cracking views of Montreal and across the St Lawrence river to the snow-covered Mont St-Hilaire.

As you can probably tell I´ve finally got round to using my own camera.  Unfortunately, it´s taken until now for me to work out how to get the date and time stamp off the photographs.  Annoying but it shouldn´t appear on any future posts.

From Kondiaronk we headed up the mountain towards the famous Cross, spotting at least one very fat squirrel on the way who was happily getting stuck into one of the bird feeders.

Some Cross facts from Les Amis de la Montagne:

A fixture of Montréal’s landscape since 1924, this illuminated cross was built in commemoration of the cross erected in 1643 by the Governor of the Island, Paul de Chomedey de Maisonneuve, to thank God for saving Montréal from floods.

Today’s cross was erected by the Société Saint-Jean-Baptist, with funds collected from the public. The original design, by the Sulpician priest Pierre Dupaigne, included an observation platform in the arms of the cross and a base of cut stone. The project was scaled down for financial reasons. Facing east, the cross marks the symbolic appropriation of the city by French speakers.

Armed with my camera I managed to sneak in a few shots of JM.

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Woke up to sunshine yesterday morning and decided to seize the opportunity to attack the mountain.  Inevitably, by the time breakfast was had, showers were taken and layers were layered upon other layers, it had started to snow.  Undeterred we set off and were soon huffing and puffing our way up Mount Royal´s eastern slope.

Mount Royal Park was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, the designer behind Central Park in New York. Les Amis de la Montagne have a useful interactive map with slide-shows, fact-files and audio/video supplements.  They also provide a series of podcasts.  We downloaded them and listened to one about the Chalet as we drank machine-brewed coffee from paper cups inside the same building.  It was built in 1931 and has a 1,000 person capacity.  It must be amazing in summer when all the doors are open and it´s full of people.  In December however, it was quite empty – with one lone official sitting in the middle of the massive hall at a kiosk.  To make it even more bizarre the giant wooden beams that form the ceiling are supported by big stone squirrels.  It´s obviously a bit of a haven for some people; a few regular-looking types had come up with packed lunches and were quietly getting on with their work.  One couple with backpacks produced a chess board, a couple of beers and a bottle of wine.

Just in front of the Chalet is the Belvédère Kondiaronk lookout.

Well before F.L Olmsted created the park in 1874, the remarkable viewpoints of the city and the plain from Mount Royal were popular sites. It was only in 1906 that the municipal administration commissioned architects Maxwell, Marchand and Haskell to build an observation terrace. They constructed three summer pavilions linked by covered passages, right on the edge of the escarpment. The site became a popular attraction in the city and the three Maxwell pavilions, victims of their own popularity, rapidly became too small. The terrace, which was completely restored and redeveloped in 1992, was renamed the Belvédère Kondiaronk in 1998.

Despite the -14 conditions many dedicated runners were out pounding the slopes and we were overtaken by lots of cross-country skiers.  At Beaver Lake people were whizzing round on ice skates and there were kids screaming their heads off and falling off sledges.

After slipping and sliding our way back down the mountain, ignoring the “steps closed for winter” signs, we found ourselves in Downtown Montreal and from there to the Sir Winston Churchill pub on Crescent Street.  Not sure what connection this place has to the great man but it was pretty empty and over-staffed when we got there.  Although we suspected that come Happy Hour kick off at 5 that might change.

From there to something completely different, The Dominion Square Tavern in the Golden Square Mile.  This is where we tried and failed to get a table with Marc-Andre earlier in the week and even at 4 o´clock on a Thursday afternoon every single table and place at the bar had a reserved sign on it.  We convinced the snooty waiter to let us stay for an hour and sat at the copper topped bar drinking possibly our first glass of decent red wine since arriving in Montreal.

After that we headed back towards Mile End and tried out a new bar called The Waverley.  It took some time to convince JM that I was saying “ferry” and not “fairy” when I told him about the paddle-steamer that sails between Largs and Millport in Scotland.  Our waitress told us that The Waverley bar only opened a week ago but it already feels like an established addition to the Mile End drinking scene.  From their Twitter profile:

Un point de rencontre à Montréal au coeur du Mile End. Quelque part entre un Pub et un Lounge. Toujours groovy, jamais agressant.

Both agreed that we don´t like the tipping culture here.  Bars nearly always provide table service and the custom is to pay your server after each individual round at $1 per drink.  Rubbish and expensive system.  Will probably go back to The Waverley but won´t be having their house red again – definitely one to be avoided.

One last check-in on our way home to our local Dieu du Ciel where our favourite waitress humoured me and my slightly inebriated attempts to order in French.  We noticed that there is very little in the way of chatting up in Montreal boozers.  Groups and couples tend to stick to themselves.  Perhaps it´s something to do with the cold and the fact that everyone is more concerned with rugging up than dolling up.

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Quite enjoying getting into Canadian radio, or rather, CBC Radio 1.

There was an interesting piece this morning on Q with Jian Ghomeshi about the death of printed newspapers (December 15 about 53 minutes, 24 seconds in).  Tom Rachman talks about his novel The Imperfectionists, a fictionalised account of a failing English-language newspaper in Rome.  From The Globe and Mail review:

A former editor at the International Herald Tribune, Rachman takes on a valedictory air as he acutely and lovingly describes the types of people found at this vanishing workplace. Among them, there’s Lloyd Burko, the Paris-based freelance correspondent at the end of his career; Herman Cohen, the hyper-fastidious corrections editor; Kathleen Solson, the imperious and temperamental editor-in-chief.

…

Rachman leaves little doubt that he’s writing what he knows well. His novel is sprinkled with hard-won observations such as that “ ‘news’ is often a polite way of saying ‘editor’s whim’ ” and “[j]ournalism is a bunch of dorks pretending to be alpha males.” And yet even someone whose familiarity with newsrooms doesn’t extend beyond the work of Clark Kent and Peter Parker will recognize these characters.

Touching on the demise of Newsweek, Rachman and Ghomeshi discuss how people like the idea of it existing but they´re not actually buying it.  Rachman suggests there is still a role for the journalistic expertise required to produce these weekly publications; which is to sift through the mass of information we are glutted with from media outlets available online.

If traditional media is weakest in terms of handling breaking news, what newspapers can and are doing is to shift their focus onto analysis.  One problem with the new technological age that news publications are now struggling with is that people have become accustomed to consuming information on screens; they are no longer comfortable reading long articles which means, ironically, that the in-depth analysis traditional media are moving towards is also losing favour among readers.

I also really enjoyed The Sunday Edition.  On December 5th, Ira Basen explained how Google became all-powerful in an item entitled Engineering Search: The Story of the Algorithm that Changed the World.

It happens billions of times every day. Somebody somewhere types something into a search bar on their computer screen. Maybe they’re looking to book a trip, or buy a book, or find some information, or answer a question that’s been bothering them. In 2010, search is how we have come to navigate the worlds of commerce and information online. Increasingly, search determines what we know, what we buy, even what we think.

And of all those billions of searchers around the world, nearly three quarters of them will do their searching on Google. If search rules the web, then Google rules search. And that fact has given the company an enormous amount of economic clout. It has made the Google algorithm, the top-secret computer program that runs the search engine, the most important piece of intellectual property in the world. With so much at stake, it’s no wonder that the clamour for more public scrutiny and even regulatory control is getting louder every day.

The whole programme is 3 hours long and runs from 9am – 12pm.  The Google documentary lasts for one hour.  That´s like Radio 1 in the UK devoting 60 minutes of prime Sunday morning hangover air space to a show about Facebook.  It just wouldn´t happen.  Not even on Radio 4.

Every weekday evening at 9pm there is a show on called Ideas.  Tonight it is featuring a discussion between atheist Christopher Hitchens and former British PM Tony Blair on whether religion is a force for good in the world.  Obviously Blair is pro and Hitchens against.  The event was organised as part of twice yearly series The Munk Debates and has already been broadcast on Radio 4.  It took place on 26th November 2010 in Toronto.  According to CBC, touts were selling tickets outside the venue for up to $500.

Christopher Hitchens: If religious instruction were not allowed until the child had attained the age of reason, we would be living in a quite different world.

Tony Blair: Religious faith has a major part to play in shaping the values which guide the modern world, and can and should be a force for progress.

Hitchens argued that religion is divisive and causes conflicts or makes them worse.

Blair conceded that “horrific acts of evil” have been committed in the name of religion, but said people like Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot, who opposed religion, had been evil, too. “I agree in a world without religion, that the religious fanatics may be gone, but I ask you: Would fanaticism be gone?”

Blair pointed to the Northern Ireland peace process as an example of different religions working for peace.

Hitchens replied that 400 years of religious warfare in Ireland entailed “people killing each other’s children depending on what kind of Christian they were.”

“To terrify children with the image of hell … to consider women an inferior creation. Is that good for the world?” Hitchens said.

From CBC News: Hitchens apparent winner in religion debate

You can see the whole thing on YouTube but Christopher Hitchens´ opening statement is here:

Debate Results

PRE-DEBATE
Pro: 25%  Con: 55%  Undecided: 20%

POST-DEBATE
PRO: 32%  CON: 68%

And here´s a wee Hitch highlight:

A question about the role faith played in Mr. Blair’s decision to invade Iraq drew a chorus of nervous, sitcom studio audience-like “oohs” from the crowd, but Mr. Blair replied unequivocally.

“It was not about religious faith,” he said. Decisions he made as prime minister were “based on policy and so they should be, and you may disagree with those decisions but they were made because I genuinely believed them to be right.”

…

An Ipsos Reid online poll released Friday said 52 per cent of 18,192 global respondents believe deeply held religious beliefs promote intolerance and division in the world.

On the other hand, 48 per cent of the respondents from 23 countries said religion provides the common values and ethical foundations that diverse societies need to thrive.

Of the 1,000 Canadians who took part, 36 per cent said religion was a positive influence while 64 per cent — almost two-thirds — said religious beliefs promote intolerance.

From The Globe and Mail: Preliminary poll results show Hitchens winner of religion debate with Tony Blair

The Globe and Mail ran its own poll Is religion a force for good in the world? A whopping 96% or respondents said No.

The New Statesman has the full Hitchens vs Blair transcript.

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Went to see Darren Aronofsky´s Black Swan yesterday afternoon at Cinéma Banque Scotia Montréal on rue Sainte Catherine Ouest.  Don´t think I have ever been gripped by such persistent tension watching a film before.

Met our friend Marc-Andre afterwards at Dominion Square Tavern on Metcalfe.  Unfortunately it was full but hopefully we will go back as it looked fun.  From Tourisme Montreal:

Opened in late December 2009 by Alex Baldwin (of the fashionable Baldwin Barmacie) and Alexander Wolosianski (of the legendary Whiskey Café), Dominion Square Tavern is rapidly turning into the darling destination of the Montreal in-crowd.

“Until now there was no real midrange restaurant downtown. Your choices were either a really haut-de-gamme restaurant or Peel Pub”, says Wolosianski.

Built in a 1926 building, Dominion is one of Montreal’s oldest taverns. It was also one of the first gay bars of Montreal in the 1960s. The vintage Dominion Square Tavern sign actually still hangs in the back alley.

So instead we caught a cab to L´Assommoir on Notre Dame.  Lovely bar.  And Marc-Andre told us the original is near where we are staying in Mile End on Bernard so we will be adding that to our list of places to visit.  On the last Wednesday of every month they host an event called “Souper de femmes” – ladies reserve online, print off a voucher and receive a free 2 course meal.

Marc-Andre also explained that if you want to find a decent selection of wine you need to find an SAQ outlet.

The Société des alcools du Québec (SAQ) is a state-owned corporation responsible for the trade of alcoholic beverages.

Thankfully there are a few near us.  The selection of wine you find in the local depanneurs is pretty uninspiring.  You see the same litre bottles of rough and ready $10 table wine in all the supermarkets.

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We went for a brief wander round the Old Port and ended up having dinner at microbrewery Les 3 Brasseurs on rue St-Paul.  From their website:

In a time in Northern France where trucks and commercial transportation were not yet a part of daily life, the process of brewing beer was a very different one than it is today. In small villages across Europe, it was the local brewer that filled the vessels of pubs and cafés with beer made from his own closely guarded recipes. With the advent of industrialization, however, local breweries all but disappeared, bringing to an end the era of the authentic microbrewery.

Twenty years ago, a family of brewers decided to revive the traditions of the past that were deeply rooted in three generations of their family – thus the name The 3 Brewers – “three” for three generations of brewing tradition. The 3 Brewers opened its very first microbrewery restaurant in Place de la Gare à Lille in 1986. Since then operations have expanded to 28 locations in France as well as several restaurants in other parts of the world including Quebec and soon Ontario.

What a headache I now have today.  Ouch.