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.