July 29, 2003
Montreal: the last bastion of Europe in North America
The calendar tells me that I came back to Toronto from the grand trip of Asia only three months ago, but I feel that I have been here for ages. By the end of last week my desperation for any change of scenery became so pressing that I declared that going ANYWHERE is better than staying in town. Manoj gave up and instead of taking me ‘anywhere’ suggested a mini-vacation in Montreal. Since we both have been there before, the purpose of this trip could be succinctly described as ‘eat and sleep’ holiday.
For Europeans, driving more than five hundred kilometres for weekend trip might appear strange, but in North America it is quite normal. This distance would have normally taken us 4.5 hours (and it did on the way back), but not on the way to Montreal. Even skipping from work an hour earlier did not save us from the ‘cottage crowd’. Every Friday the great number of Torontonians head off out of Toronto to spend weekend in their cottages. Cottage could be described as a little house somewhere in a forest up North where people go fishing, swimming, hiking, etc. It is similar to Russian ‘dacha’, but no one grows potatoes out there. Anyhow, every Friday this crowd literally floods the highways reducing the speed to a crawl. Our attempt to sneak out of the city before the tide hit the road had failed. It took us more than two hours to drive thirty kilometres out of the city. We made it to Montreal only by eleven spending more than 6 hours driving.
My most favourite activity in Montreal relates to food. In this vibrant and alive city you can go out at midnight and find a nice restaurant that would serve a superb French cuisine. After distinctly Americanized Toronto where the only place you can have meal after 10 p.m. is Chinatown, European Montreal feels like a breath of fresh air. At least to us, sitting on the open patio, munching perfectly roasted duck, sipping red wine, and listening French language mixed with Moroccan music, it felt like we are back to our beloved France.
People-watching from the patio forces to compare demographics of Toronto and
Montreal: both cities mirror the demographics of the respective empires of origin.
Toronto is an Asian city with visible minorities outnumbering the ‘majority’
and with Mandarin becoming the second most spoken language after English (followed
by Hindi). The majority of newcomers to Canada settle in Toronto. The wave of
immigrants from Hong Kong, Mainland China, Taiwan, India, Sri Lanka, etc. gave
the city its distinctly oriental flavour. Every time I come back here after
spending some time in Europe nothing hits me more than the numbers of people
from East and South East Asia. On the contrary, Montreal is Caribbean cum Arabic
cum African city with immigrants from former French colonies imprinting their
cultures: it is a city of Lebanese, Moroccans, Algerians, Jamaicans, Congolese,
etc. If in Toronto you go for dim sum, in Montreal you look for your kebabs.
©Lidia Bhaskar, 2003