Everyone I’ve mentioned Montreal to here in Canada has told me that I would love this city because it is really like Yerp. Exactly which bit of Yerp is not always as clearly enunciated as the level to which I will love Montreal. Is it like Paris? Is it like London? Is it like Tallinn? Is it like Moscow? Is it like Rome? Is it like Ballyporeen? I ask. None of the people who assured me that Montreal was just like Yerp had ever been there, so I had my suspicions.
Having spent 28 hours here, I can now definitively state that the answer is, none of the above, and not only that, it is like nowhere I’ve ever been in Yerp. Apart from the Old City looking remarkably like Dame St. About ten years ago before they started cleaning the buildings.
True, the murmur of French all around me is reassuring in a weird way, but the locals are so ecstatic at my attempts to speak the language that I can’t possibly be in the ‘land of the people who almost wrecked Europe, as well as Canada’, according to most Canadians. Not me. I’m delighted they voted NON.
Actually, I feel like I’m in New Orleans, so I suppose it’s American style Yerp. It’s very similar. Lots of wrought iron balconies, but not as many window boxes, perhaps something to do with the long cold winter. The same long, dilapidated boulevards, superimposed onto an American grid system. The same blistering heat, and obsession with terraced coffee houses. The same jazz records playing in the background.
It’s nice, although I have already decided that I prefer Toronto. But as night falls on my second evening here, I might change my mind, because it is definitely a city that wakes up around eleven pm.
Way back in March when I collected my first Frank’s from Ian, Dermot, Mark and Lisa were in the Alliance Francaise and I told them all I was going to Canada. We talked destinations and Montreal came up. Dermot said that God Speed You! Black Emperor had a café/ bar there called Casa del Popolo and I determined then and there to add it to the musical itinerary. I found it last night, at the far end of the Boulevard St. Laurent, the main street of Montreal, which separates English speaking west from French east.
It’s a long straight street, leading up the hill towards the Mont Royal. Being the interface between two dominant cultures, it’s mostly Arab and African, with some trendy furniture shops and a lot of hookah bars. On the way, I ate in a Portuguese restaurant on Duluth.
Inside, it’s really dark. A DJ was setting up his equipment at the end of a long bar. The bar sells only microbrews, at four dollars a pop, which is really cheap for here. It’s small as well, only about the same size as the back part of The Long Hall, with the same panelled ceiling, painted bronze I think. The walls are tongue and groove wood panelled. Painted white. Dim lights hang low on chains, like in The Long Hall.
You can smoke inside. The bar has zebra print covered stools along it, and a large leopard skin lamp, which apart from ten red bulbs on a string, are the only light by which the barman pulls pints and washes glasses by hand. It’s quite Irish in a way. The bar is dark wood, with some spirit bottles sitting in a desultory fashion along a single shelf behind the bar. The barman’s English is terrible, but I manage to get a nice beer all the same.
There are a couple of tatty sofas in the bay windows and the rest of the space is taken up with a large stage and a few small wooden tables. Photos of jazz legends are on the walls, as well as two large blackboards, one outlining the food menu and the other listing the events for three months.
I went out to the terrace at the back of the pub. It’s a small enclosed courtyard, overhung with two enormous plane trees (I think). They droop over nine small aluminium tables with an ashtray placed artfully in the corner of each. Fairy lights are hung on the walls. It’s not as nice as Aileen/ Dermot/ Katharine/ Andrew’s garden. They need a bit of design input on the horticultural and lighting sides. On one wall, there is a large rectangle painted white. It is for showing movies I presume. Tonight, the trees cast shadows across it, making a show of their interaction with the wind blowing up the boulevard.
On the back wall is a large sign that says ‘Don’t talk to me like you’re my real dad’.
Upstairs on an apartment terrace, a barbeque sizzled into life and someone played Venezuelan merengue on a wheezy sound system. I moved inside because DJ Sundown was starting up. He was accompanied by his partner, Ilana. The music was very languid, lots of French stuff I had never heard before, with an English, poppy beat underlying everything. The sound system is fantastic – clear as a bell.
At ten thirty, there were eight of us in the bar. By eleven, there were forty people milling around. They were eyeing my table longingly, so I gave in gracefully and left for the long walk home to my hostel.
Queenie would like a life where she gets to go to the pub at eleven in the evening on a Monday to hear her mate’s DJ set. Is that too much to ask?
Probably.
I am only starting to realise how intertwined music is in my life. Everywhere I’ve been so far has had a really important musical connotation for me – Toronto and NXNE, Kingston and the Rev (and Neil Young’s dad was buried there the day I arrived), Montreal and Casa del Popolo, and tomorrow, Nova Scotia and the town of Springhill. And all that represents for me in terms of the music I grew up with.
I am enjoying my pilgrimage I must say.
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