Vive le Quebec!

We decided to take advantage of Capella's only two days off in a row from the opera for the next month to take a trip to Montreal for the weekend. It was good timing, because our friend Matia from McGill (hi Matia!) was in Montreal for a few weeks visiting from Germany. Our friend Greg, who is also a violist, and came to McGill the same year as I did, and is also tall and brown-haired, and a source of endless confusion for a few years, just got a job with the Winnepeg Symphony and is moving in a day or two. So it was good to see him and his wife Donna before they move across the country. And another friend of ours from McGill, Lana, another violinist (hi Lana!), came to Montreal to see Greg and Donna, and arrived just before we left. So we got to see her, too, for a few minutes.

We mentioned to our friend Nathan, who lives around the corner from us, and also went to McGill, that we were planning on going to Montreal. His eyes lit up and asked if he could come, too. So we decided to rent a car and split the cost three ways. Somewhere between Kingston and Cornwall one of the tires blew out. We pulled over and called the car rental company to ask for help (I didn't much like the idea of changing a tire by the side of the busiest highway in Canada in the dark- and no jokes about the relative busyness of Canadian highways, please). While Capella was on hold with them I called AAA. They managed to get our info, call a truck, and call me back, and Capella was still on hold. So we put sweatshirts on and leaned against the side of the car and looked at the stars for 10 minutes until the truck came. You can't see stars in Toronto. The air's too dirty.

So we made it to Montreal eventually, and have a fridge full of bagels and beer to prove it. Capella also bought a jacket at the St Laurent Street Fair. For one weekend every year Bvld. St Laurent (or St. Lawrence Bvld, as Mordechai Richler called it) is closed off to cars and all of the stores bring out racks of stuff onto the street. There's a similar thing in Toronto; once a month the Kensington Market- an area of a few blocks with lots of used clothes stores and organic fruit markets and such- is blocked off to cars. They call it Kensington Pedestrian Sundays. Because it's Kensington Market, only Pedestrians, and on Sundays. I'm not saying St. Laurent Street Fair is the most imaginative name, either, but really... But anyway, I ran into an old teammate from the McGill Track and Field team. She just finished her doctorate in pharmacology and has no idea what to do next. I'm just impressed that she can talk to our coach; I have to avoid him like the plague when I visit because he's scary.

If it ever gets released in the US, go see Bon Cop, Bad Cop. It's in the same vein as 48 hours or Lethal Weapon, but set in Montreal and Toronto. The basic story is that a crazed hockey fan goes on a killing spree against those he feel has harmed the great game. His first victim ends up draped over the sign marking the Ontario-Quebec border; as a result, a very straight Toronto detective and a very laid-back Montreal detective end up having to work together. It's bilingual- the french release had all of the English subtitled, and the English release had all the French subtitled. If you speak any French you might understand the scene about how to swear in Quebec. You'll thank me later anyway.

photo update (the show part of show and tell)

Tony, Andy, and I enjoying curry dinner after loading up the truck.



Me at Niagara Falls. (Canadian side)



Capella at Niagara Falls.



The Portugese church on the night of the crazy party in the park.

No more crazy rock star stories just yet.

Aparkalypse Now; or, Greg and Capella take a ride.

We did some serious biking today.

After a morning of sleeping in and practicing, Capella and I biked west to look at an apartment (it was nice, and cheap, but had dingy wall-to-wall carpets that the landlord wasn't keen on taking out). Then we went along the Lake to downtown. Ordinarily the bike path peters out and you have to ride in the street through the downtown core, which is a pretty silly place for the bike path to end, if you ask me. I guess I'm not the only one who thinks so, because for this week only the city has transformed the east-bound lane (closest to the lake) of Queen's Quay Ave., the street that follows the shore through downtown. The right-hand lane has been covered with grass- like, actual grass- and the left lane has been painted down the middle to make a great bike lane. Between the bike lane and the streetcar tracks they've planted bright red geraniums. This whole thing goes for a kilometer through the city. At the eastern end there's a big gate, like the Arc de Triumph, but made out of bicycles that have been locked to posts and abandoned in the city. There's free movies at night, Adirondack chairs all over for people to hang out, all sorts of crazy stuff going on.

We locked up our bikes and wandered around for a while. There were free copies of the Toronto Star (the non-tabloidy one), so we picked up a copy and eventually found two empty chairs. We sat and read the paper and watched the boats sail by in the late afternoon sun. It was warm, but with a slight breeze blowing in off Lake Ontario. Heavenly.

We saw a guy making rock-balancing sculptures. He makes 4-foot towers out of rocks. We walked by just as he was placing the last two stones on a tower. The second-to-last rock was fairly small, and round. Then he knelt down in front of the tower, picked up the last rock- much larger than the previous one. Like, much larger- took a few deep breaths, and placed the rock on the tower, rotating it slightly until it found its place. As he stepped away, he made a short speech about how he hoped that his sculptures, and the transformation of the road, would help people to eliminate the word 'impossible' from their vocabularies, and that we wouldn't teach it to our children. When you're unstoppable, impossible is just a word.

The whole thing is called Quay to the City.

Jim, Anna, and Finn got back from California on Saturday. The house is very different with them here. Finn is a bit shy of two years old. He's learning his words, so most of his talking is names of things or people. On Tuesday Jim and Finn came into the room where I was practicing because Finn was curious. He got Jim to put him in front of the drum set, Jim picked up a guitar, and we had a little jam session before lunch. Finn was picking up the beat most of the time, and was pretty creative with different sounds from the drums and cymbals. Of course, he also likes to wail on one drum and play loud. I don't improvise much (or, really, at all) so for the first few seconds all I could think was "What key is Jim playing in? What the hell do I play? How about this?" Once I started playing I began to forget about that and played. Fun.

It's a little crazy with everyone here now, but at least it doesn't feel empty anymore.

Happy Simcoe Day

Happy Simcoe Day, everyone. Because a month without a holiday is no month at all.

In which Capella learns to duck her head under water without getting water up her nose; a trip to Niagara Falls; and a Portugese battle of the bands.

We currently live down the street from a municipal community center. It's got a pool and a gym and a not-too-grimy weight room in the basement. Best of all, for two hours a day there's a free free swim. Capella has become determined to learn to swim, and I've been drafted as her teacher. We've gone three or four times in the past week and a half. The first time we went Capella couldn't put her face in the water without getting water up her nose and getting tense and mad at me. Yesterday was a big breakthrough, as she was able to put her head underwater without holding onto the wall, holding her nose, or panicking. Very, very exciting.

Today we went to Niagara Falls (finally). It's really, really big, and really made me want to try swimming it. I'm amazed more people don't, especially after seeing the main strip of the tourist part of town. The main street goes uphill from the canyon, and when you face uphill it's like a miniture Las Vegas. If someone led you there blindfolded you would have no idea what was lying behind you, and vice versa. You can stand at the bottom of the street and look out at the falls and would never know about the Ripley's Believe It or Not, Guiness Experience (that's World Records, not the beer), Lego Land, World Wrestling Entertainment tower, Dracula's Haunted House, or any of the other myriad ways to seperate fools from their money. (We did indulge ourselves in a round of Dinasaur mini golf. I won, 53 to 57, but it was a disapointing course. Very little originality in the layout.) [another side story: we saw the cutest little girl, about 4 years old, who was leaving a haunted house being carried by her father, bawling her eyes out, with freaked-out, but trying to keep it together, older sister in tow. A priceless moment, and we couldn't help laughing. Would that make us bad parents, or good parents?] So anyway, after walking up one side of the street my brain was so over-stimulated that not only could I not make up my mind about dinner, I couldn't even answer the question. We got subs to go & ate on the bus.

When we got home there was a Portugese festival going on in the park. It was church-related, for sure, because the church around the corner was lit up with all sorts of lights and a huge heart (presumably the sacred heart of Jesus, but that's just my guess here) in the middle. If the picture comes out I'll put it up. We're still in the Film Age, so you'll have to wait till we finish the roll. As we cut through the park to go home we realized the party was still going and headed over. Two community bands made up of old men & high schoolers, with middle-aged men percussion sections, were on two bandstands trading off songs. We wandered around and saw tents selling soccer jerseys and religious statuary, and thought about getting a beer at the beer tent until we saw that there were only older Portugese men inside. After a few songs from the bands we headed home, and now it's time for bed. Tomorrow we're heading out to the islands in Lake Ontario just in front of town.