Montréal: Expo Dream

One of the Montreal things that I’d read about obsessively before going was Expo 67, the great World’s Fair that took place here on Canada’s Centennial. It’s a multilayered megaevent that’s still seen as Canada’s cultural “Camelot” or even “last good year,” and there’s a lot to say about it, but during our stay at the In-Terminal Hotel, one thing of that era stood out: I couldn’t help but imagine the excitement that people must have felt as the world and even cosmos seemed to be getting smaller and smaller. You can’t really think of that decade without thinking of … Continue reading “Montréal: Expo Dream”

Montréal: Airport Swim

This time last year, I was telling you about our little cocoon of comforts by a lake in Idaho. I hadn’t planned to tell you about this cocoon of comforts on our last night in Montreal exactly one year after I told you about that cabin by that lake, but I’m not surprised by the coincidence. x I told you about that lake of baptisms and the washing away of shame, so it’s only appropriate that, one year later, I’d tell you about a dinky little overchlorinated pool on the eighth floor of an in-terminal hotel where silly people try … Continue reading “Montréal: Airport Swim”

Let Us Compare Mythologies

Leonard Cohen’s first publication was a book called “Let Us Compare Mythologies,” a phrase that kept nagging me as significant to my trip to Montreal. What if we compared mythologies? Settler versus indigenous; English versus French; Expo 67 versus FLQ 70—what would we find at the other end of that trigonometry? That line comes from the slim volume’s second poem, I would learn, one with a most elusive title of its own: FOR WILF AND HIS HOUSE. The poem itself is a touching testament to the harsh contrasts of Jewish agency within Christian structuration. You can find it online read … Continue reading “Let Us Compare Mythologies”

Montréal: Postscript

As someone from someplace oft described as “a land of contrasts,” I understand at a visceral level how asinine descriptors like that are; for what is a city but a mixed multitude and condenser of opposites? There are cities where this mixity is thrown in stark relief as harsh lines of stratification, it’s true – San Franscisco comes to mind right now – but we rarely use the language of “contrasts” there; haves and have-nots are not the kind of duotone that capture our imagination. No, lands of contrast excite the eye like a splash of modern art. It’s the … Continue reading “Montréal: Postscript”

Montréal: Cohen & Kateri

On our first night in Montreal, we tried to watch a documentary called “Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr. Leonard Cohen,” but we were so tired that we started drifting off a few minutes into it. That was enough time, however, to catch a Leonard Cohen refrain from an old interview from his youth that would play in my head as we huddled under the world’s smallest umbrella in the world’s most terrifying sneak-attack thunderstorm. After asking Cohen what concerns him, and after Cohen laughed and demurred, insisting that he hasn’t the faintest concern, the interviewer pressed the poet to share what … Continue reading “Montréal: Cohen & Kateri”

Montréal: Day 1

I just woke up from what feels like the most necessary Sunday siestas that just happened to happen on a Monday, having never fully lost consciousness during our redeye to #Montreal: I just sort of bounced between silent meditation and mindless scrolling on the airplane Wi-Fi. This gave me a lot of time to reflect on air travel, curled up in the blue glow of the pressurized cabin, but I don’t know if I’m awake enough right now to express it properly. All I know is that I was feeling rusty; our suitcase still had the tag on it from our … Continue reading “Montréal: Day 1”

Montréal from Seattle

Christine and I are going to Montréal in a couple of weeks. It’s going to be my first international trip since becoming a U.S. citizen and the first time back on an airplane since getting my green card and landing here. There are a half dozen reasons to be excited about visiting this oddball part of North America, but our primary impetus for wanting to go in the first place was to visit a Mohawk Catholic shrine as part of @christine.bingham.art‘s ongoing book project based on her series of mirror saint paintings. I’ve been reading a lot about the history of … Continue reading “Montréal from Seattle”