Montreal

It’s only when you leave Montreal that you begin to appreciate it. You appreciate its tininess, first of all. You can walk from Guy to St. Laurent on St. Catherine in half an hour or less. Try walking from North Beach to the Golden Gate Bridge sometime.

The people aren’t nice. But that’s the way you like it. You’ve gone to the same grocery store for ten years, but no one knows your name. You nod and say hello, but they still address you in French, despite your carrying a Montreal Gazette bag and despite years and years of seeing you around. Even the bag guy that you suspect to be an Anglophone addresses you in French. And you wouldn’t have it any other way.

In other cities, strangers passing you in the street say hello as if they know you. In Montreal, no one says hello if they don’t know you. But if you suddenly act like a Californian and start chatting up the register guy in the Provisoir, he suddenly becomes Californian too. Open up the floodgates, and out it will come. I rarely open up the floodgates, because that’s the way I like it.

I remember my first day in Montreal. It’s etched on my brain. I took the 65 downtown and had a coffee at a terrasse somewhere on Sherbrooke—it must be gone now. But I said “Hot damn. I’m in London. No, I’m in Paris. No, I’m in New York.”

And I remember crossing the border on Amtrak and seeing all the signs suddenly switch to French. “Fuck,” I always think, “these bastards really have a nerve to be making this tiny island of total French in this ocean of English. How the fuck do they DO it?” I sigh admiringly.

And it’s always good to talk about Montreal to people when you’re on foreign shores. So many things you say elicit a “Really?!?” that you end up thinking “Yup. Montreal is myyyy secret.”