Revisting My Love of Montreal

This essay is a one of a set of essays that I started to write six months ago on the plane on the way back from a trip to my old, beloved Montreal, in August 2007.

I always get very nostalgic when I’m in Montreal, as I think many do when visiting a city that was once called home. X-pats have a very special connection to their home town that is very different from that which most city dwellers have to their municipality. Unlike locals who are completely linked in to the fabric and the life of their city, ex-pats who return home have a more familiar yet tender relationship to their hometown- like an X-lover. Every part, every curve and scent is weighed with a fondness for the old beloved. I have previously invoked Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities once before in my blog of my LAST trip to MTL: the magical draw to a place that you once loved and left, which now lives in the world of ghosts.

This time my impression of Montreal hit me before I even set foot in Pierre Trudeau Int’l. I was listening to CBC On Board heard of a news report of Mario Dumont, the leader of the Action Democratic party, give a speech about limiting immigration to the Quebec. He said that Quebec has reached it’s capacity to assimilate new immigrants and needs to curb it’s intake of foreigners to avoid getting swamped by them. He said that the new arrivals need time to assimilate fully within their new culture so as to avoid being ghettoized and fortified within their own communities and live outside the laws and values of their newly adopted nations.

His word struck me, like a pie in the face. I was shocked to hear how the leader of a political party who was the head of the opposition party in the National Assembly could say such a racist thing. Then just as quickly as it came, the shocked passed and I got into my, “oh this is just Québec” tune. I remembered another such episode, back in 1995 in a nationally televised speech after the failed 95 referendum, when Jacques Parizeau, then head of the Parti Quebecois, blamed “l’argent et le vote ethnic” (money and the ethnic vote) for why the Québécois can’t have their sovereignty – their own country.

Six months after that referendum, I moved to Vancouver.

I sometimes do wonder who would live in a state that was run by such racists. I would think that people would be in the streets – but maybe not.

It was almost six months before my last visit to Montréal, in January 2007, when I did an unannounced visit to my parent’s house to surprise my mom who I hadn’t seen for almost two years. My mom loves surprises so I rented a car at the airport and arrived stealthily to knock on her door, one sunny afternoon, just to see the look on her face. It ended up being a very full 10 day trip; and having a rental car meant that I got to listen to a lot of radio. On the first day of my arrival, as I was trying to figure out exactly how far Laval had expanded, I heard of a survey that the Quebec gov’t had done about racism. http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2007/01/15/mtl-racism.html They had discovered that 59% of Quebecois said that they are racist, compared to the 47% of people outside of Quebec. This was front page news and all over the talk shows.

“plus ça change, plus ça reste le même”

Racism and the Québécois, who have a rather dysfunctional view of a nation that borders on xenophobia and outright prejudice, have a very long history. Everyone in the rest of Canada - and many in Quebec - are quite aware of this history. It’s one of those many idiosyncrasies that Canada has allowed this unhappy province.

I certainly don’t want to chastise the good hearted Québécois for trying to keep their culture alive; because the odds are against them - in many ways. Yet they still thrive mostly due to a relentless pursuit of higher culture and Frenchiness. Racism is the darker part of a bigger picture that is the rather pathetic history of the French in Canada.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Vancouver has been my home now for 12 years, but despite that, many people, after having sniffed me out as a Montréaler, often ask why I left Montreal - a city that I speak so fondly of. I tell them jokingly that “I was tired of being called a foreigner in TWO languages”. I laugh when I say this, but I’m noticing more and more that many of my listeners don’t join in the laughter. I used to blame that on my comedic timing, but recently I’m realizing that maybe some people don’t think being a victim of racism is funny at all. Many people think racism is a horrible thing that a society inflicts on its people and should NEVER be tolerated. The Québécois, despite their worldliness, seem to be missing this point and it’s not funny anymore. I realized that having grown up in Quebec, I’d got accustomed to being the victim of racism and had always been using humor to deal with it, but when I learned how real the problem of racism is in Quebec today…well, it struck me like a pie in the face.