Montreal

Certain people, who shall remain nameless, mentioned that my round-the-world trip was a little light on countries. At the same time, it was also mentioned that my trip didn't ever leave the English-speaking world. In one stroke, I have addressed both of those issues.

Looking at a map, it occurred to me that it really wasn't all that far from my aunt and uncle's house in New Hampshire to Canada, and French-speaking Canada at that. So, in only one bus journey, I have increased the number of countries by 25% and there's a whopping 100% increase in the number of languages! And going to Canada means re-entering the Commonwealth and coming under the benevolent wing of HM Elizabeth once again.

The first thing I did was head for the local tourist information office and arm myself with a sheaf of leaflets, brochures and maps and a list of suggestions from the lady I spoke to. Incidentally, this must be one of the grandest entrances to any tourist office anywhere:

Her first suggestion was a boat trip on the St. Lawrence River, just to get a general feel for the place and an initial idea of the history and what kind of things there are to see. Like the boats on the Seine in Paris, this is called a bateau mouche, literally, “fly boat” where this is the insect kind of fly. It seems that this sort of tour boat was first designed in Lyons in what had been the meat-processing area. Naturally, the meat processing attracted lots of flies and the area came to be known as “Mouche” Now, you can believe that or not, all I'm doing is relaying what we were told on the boat.

The view from the river is pretty good, though it flows down one side of the city rather than through the middle as the Seine does. Montreal itself is, of course, built on an island of the same name in the St. Lawrence river but there are two smaller islands just off shore called Île Sainte Hélène and Île Notre-Dame.

Leaving the dock gave us an impressive view of the downtown area:

Almost in the centre you can see the two towers of the Notre Dame Basilica nestling amongst the modern skyscrapers. In the foreground, along the water front is the old town.

The first “landmark” as such was the Clock Tower, completed in 1922 as a memorial to those Canadian sailors who died in World War I.

I don't remember it leaning over, but it certainly looks that way in the picture. You can climb up the tower, but somehow I just never managed to be in the vicinity with both the time and the energy to do it...

A little further along the Montreal side of the river is a more contemporary building:

The original brewery was built in 1786 – apparently the first one in North America though that seems almost impossible to believe – and the company is still partly owned by the Molson family, though now in partnership with Coors.

The main access to the city from the South is across the Jacques Cartier Bridge – an enormous structure over 2 miles (3.5km) long. It's not what you would call a pretty bridge – there are elegant parts of it, but it sort of looks cobbled together to me:


The first picture is the Montreal (north) end of the bridge – the second shows where it passes over Île Sainte Hélène, which is only about half-way along the total length.

Montreal was a major port for the transshipment of grain from the western provinces of Canada (and some of the mid-west of the US) brought to the city by rail and loaded on to ships bound for Europe. Evidence of this part of the history is all along the waterfront:

The Île Sainte Hélène was originally three islands but these were merged together by dumping the spoil from the excavation of the metro system which was built in time for the World Exposition of 1967 – an event that put Montreal in the world's spotlight. The newly-created island was home to many of the pavilions built for the exposition. Most of these have now been dismantled and their place has been taken by an amusement park. This:


is called the monster and it's the biggest traditional, wooden, double-track roller coaster in the world. This is as close as I got to it, so if you're curious about how it feels, you'll need to come to Montreal and try it. I'm not the biggest fan of roller coasters, so, please, do your arms end up above your head or does it make the thrill bigger if you wave them about? It seems to me that I'd be hanging on as tightly as I could in the unlikely event that I ever ended up on the thing in the first place.

Back ashore, I took a little wander through the Old Town. The Old Town is amazingly French in feel:


I suppose that isn't really surprising, but it surprised me all the same; I hadn't, from afar, appreciated just how French Quebec is. For example, as far as I know, a “stop” sign in France says “stop” on it. Not so in Quebec:

When language is one of the things that defines your culture as different from your neighbours' then it has to be as pure as possible. The Dutch-speaking Belgians speak much purer Dutch than the Dutch do. In The Netherlands, English words have been widely adopted into the language, but not so in Belgium where it is important to have as pure a language as possible to differentiate the Flemish from the Walloons. So, what differentiates the Quebecois from other Canadians? Well, many things, probably, but one of the most obvious is language.

Everyone I met spoke English, but virtually every conversation started in French. And a surprising (to me, anyway) number of people spoke quite poor English. Virtually all the advertising I saw was in French. Many signs were only in French. I tried calling the local transport information line and that, too, was only in French. In The Netherlands, an officially mono-lingual country many public services are offered in English as well as in Dutch. Not so in Quebec.

Many years ago, I spoke passable French. The intervening years and the addition of Dutch to my over-stretched brain has buried most of what French I ever knew. I was pleasantly surprised at how much I could remember, but it was a long way from fluency. Sometimes, though, I could not only ask a question, but I could even understand the answer too.