2012/06/22

• 
  2012.06.14
  Scènes de Montréal - Montreal Scenes
  

  Note: this post was edited over a two-day span.

  Sweat

  We're having our first heat wave today (Wednesday). At 19h00, it's still 32`C outside with a humidex or 'felt' factor, whatever it's called in English, of 40`C under sunny skies. This kind of situation is worse in a big city because of the pollution. Dangerous for the sick or the elderly. I went to Marché Jean-Talon for errands and thank god I could get hold of a Bixi both to and fro. Over there, merchants were obviously unthrilled. They suffer like everyone else, more even because they are outside all day, and to make it worse, the clientele is as scattered as sunflowers in the Arctic. It's supposed to be even hotter tomorrow.

  Today is also the year's longest day (as in daylight).

  

  Playa

  Montreal has given itself a second man-made urban beach. There's already one on Ile Notre Dame in the middle of the river, near the Casino and the Gilles-Villeneuve Formula One race track. This one dates from the second half of the eighties and is sometimes known as the "plage Doré" by the name of the mayor of the time whose idea it was. It has a real beach giving access to the water which is kept clean and filtered by by a system of algae.

  This week, a new one was inaugurated, on the model of Paris-Plage and other urban beaches which though located near the water, do not permit swimming for a variety of reasons. In Paris, the Seine is not what you can call the cleanest of waters, not to mention the boat traffic. In Montreal, it's because the beach is located on a pier (or quay) in the Old Port, the Quai de l'horloge (Clock Quay), which has on its side facing the city a marina, and on its other side the tumultuous and deep waters of the river St-Laurent. The beach itself lines the city side plus the tip of the quay. The setting is beautiful. This past weekend it was open house. Since Monday it's 6$ for an adult to enter the premises. I'm told a season pass is available for 27$. I have a cinch the beach was not deserted today nor will it be tomorrow. Of course, since it was open house, I bothered to Bixi myself downtown on Sunday afternoon and go check things out.

  The part of the beach at the tip of the quay is lined with a higher fence and is the recommended area for those with children. The other part lining the marina has very low fencing. At the tip, they have installed an elaborate set of stone steps, or staircase, leading to the Clock Tower. It started to get cloudy not long after I got there so imagine a bright sun for those less sunny pics. Oh, by the way, that very fine and very pale sand was imported from Ohio. It's the kind of sand they use for golf course traps, apparently. The beach is separated in two parts joined by a boardwalk section, boardwalk which also lines both sections on the marina side of the quay.

  In English, it seems to be open bar as to how "quay" is pronounced. In the U.K. it's something like a weird 'kee' (based on Google's translation module - never heard it live myself), in the States, it can be kway, key, kay depending on where you live (WordReferencs forums). For the sake of universality, I propose they all pronounce it 'kay' (like the letter K) which is the exact pronunciation of it French equivalent (and origin) "quai". Don't thank me.

  The only dark side of this beach is the semi-privatization of a formerly public space. The Old Port belongs to the Federal Government and it is not always developed in accordance with the city's wishes, or simply with our culture in mind. In some (most) areas, you could be in Ottawa, in Vancouver, in Toronto, or any other federally managed outdoors site. Not much originality to talk about. And way too much post-modern destroy-style steel. On the other hand, what it looked like before the new beach was put in place is nothing to be proud of either (pic below)

  Satellite view before. The numbers refer to the pics below.

  

  1- Looking westward
  

  2- Looking eastward
  

  3- Looking to the point from the clock tower. I noticed that in summer we can go to its top by a staircase having 192 steps. I'll try to go later on when I'm more in shape (and it's less hot) and it's a sunny day. The view from up there must be quite unique.
  

  4- There's something vaguely European about this setting. It reminds me of some cathedrals and their squares.
  

  5- Where the two beach sections are joined by the boardwalk.
  

  

  Paint job update

  I've finished a few days ago the painting itself of half of what I had to do. Remains the two closed rooms and the bathroom and for now, that will wait. The job is not finished per se since I still have to hang back on the walls stuff that was there before (or not hang back - decisions to make) and maybe replace some ceiling lighting apparatus and buy an additional floor lamp and maybe some furniture. Enough to keep me busy for a year.

  This is the whatever-it's-called entry room. It doubles as a storage room in winter for my bicycle. That plant is a miracle in a pot. It is usually not that lighted in there for much of the day when the ceiling light is off, so it grows erratically, looking for some light. I've had it since before I came to Montreal in 1985. I moved it here with me in my car, along with another one, from Sept-Iles to Montreal, a 950 Km drive. Comes to think of it, it's much older than the vast majority of protesting students.

  

  

  Dirty queening

  I've mentioned before that we have here in each province someone acting as the Queen, our official Head of State for some strange reason, and that this person is called the Lieutenant-Governor. It is a highly symbolic job, and in Quebec at least, this job holds no official residence. If in other provinces, this lieutenant-whatever is the one reading the throne speech at the opening of parliamentary sessions (the government's intentions), in Quebec he's been told years ago to take a hike, and it's the Premier who reads the policies of 'his' government. In other words, besides signing bills voted in Parliament to officially declare them laws, this person serves no real purpose, and most Quebecers wouldn't have a clue who and what that person's name is (I don't, if it's any indication). I've seen it in the papers somewhere, but it's the kind of information I don't bother reserving a space in my memory for.

  Unfortunately, in 1997, this job was given to a former television personality turned politician and who happens to be stuck in a wheelchair since she was 14, after an accident. I've never seen her going anywhere with her even touching the wheels. Her chair is pushed by servants. The reason I say unfortunately is not because of what precedes, but because she somehow got into her head that her new job was not a silly remnant from medieval times, but that she was the real thing, that she really was the Queen. And acted accordingly, taking grand airs, and showing up at many public events and make long speeches telling "her subjects" what is good for them. Ten years of this. Although questions were being raised about her lavish lifestyle, it's only in 2007 that they really started to look into her business. They discovered that over those ten years, from spendings of 1,700,000$ for which she got reimbursed, 700,000$ were for those frills, like fancy dinners in top notch restaurants, gifts to some people of her knowing, all of which had the same characteristic of having nothing to do with her job.

  Stephen Harper (the royalty freak, remember) and who is responsible to nominate these lieutenant thingies, ditched her in 2007, officially for reasons, he then said, having nothing to do with the revelations. Yeah, sure! The inquest did continue and in 2009, she was formerly charged under six criminal counts, of which fraud, breach of trust, forgery and fabrication of false documents. She's been trying since by all sorts of means to have those charges removed and to avoid a trial, including playing the poor victim, complete with a grief-stricken face.

  This is where it becomes juicy. Recently, she made a request to Quebec's Superior Court, through her new lawyer, to nullify the charges on the count that according to an unwritten common law rule, «the queen can do no wrong», or put in other words, that the queen can't prosecute herself. You've got to give it to her new lawyer, he sure pulled up a nice rabbit from his hat. The Court will render judgement on the request in August, but in the meantime, in other countries where they still have remnants of British monarchy in their Statutes, they are a little at unease, to say the least. It has of course never happened in history that a representative of the Queen has been criminally charged and furthermore invoked that rule. And just as here, they have no plan B if it happens.

  All this has pretty much to do with what I was explaining in a previous post. The British system is based on basic unwritten rules revolving around gentlemanship and has worked until today because said gentlemanship was, like the rest of the system, mutually understood and taken for granted. We live in a different world today. Nowadays, crooks with no scrupules whatsover, be they political or criminals, make profit of this vulnerability to hijack the system and use it to pursue their own personal goals. Harper, Thibault, all the same.

  By the way, Lise Thibault got the job because the one who preceded her had to resign. He is a highly respected stage actor and theatre director who studied medicine before becoming an actor and who, by his own admission, had the [bad] idea, for a prank he said, to draw a swastika on his lab blouse when he was a medicine student.

  I'm glad the British could celebrate their Queen's jubilee. They and their queen have obviously a fine relationship.

  Out here, however, royalty leaves nothing but a trail of stink. Maybe Elizabeth should ditch Canada, before the stench crosses the ocean.

  In this first pic, Lise Thibault with her official chair pusher, savouring all her glory in 2006 when she was playing being the Queen.

  
  pic © Wikipedia Commons

  What she looks like today, playing Maria Goretti

  
  pic © Radio-Canada website - photographer uncredited

  At my pre-2008 workplace, there was a manager whose wife was the sister of Ms. Thibault. He took pride in letting it be known. He retired some years before 2007 and I later saw him at a social gathering not long before I was transfered downtown in 2008. He wasn't the same color as the wall, but almost. I felt a little sad for him. But certainly not for his sister-in-law.

  

  Fête Nationale du Québec

  This week-end is the Fête Nationale (June 24). With the current events of the last months, the mega-concert on Sunday evening risks having a distinct color, figuratively and maybe literally, and also sound since the master of ceremonies for the show barely hinted that 'casserolers' would certainly not be shunned away. I saw today an interview with Adam Cohen, the son of Leonard, who is also a singer and who will be part of that show. For remembrance, Rufus Wainwright participated last year in a duo with a Québec mega-star, Robert Charlebois. Adam said he's proud to be a Montrealer and a Quebecer, and says so whenever he travels and people ask him where he's from. He speaks pretty good French by the way.

  

  Testimonial

  The ice cream cones are still on the sidewalk (see a previous post). That indicates it hasn't rained since at least June 16, or that's a pretty darn good quality chalk that kid(s) used.

  

  Mundial?

  I haven't followed too much the current football (soccer) series in Europe, that is I don't know for now if it's only European or if it's the Mundial. All I know is that today in late afternoon, hundreds of Portuguese were in the street on boulevard St-Laurent (at the level of Duluth and Rachel St). My take is that Portugal won a game. All traffic was blocked on St-Laurent and at the intersection with Rachel (pic below). I don't now for how long, I was there about fifteen minutes then headed by foot towards the Mont-Royal metro station, 'cause with the intense heat (34C, humidex 41C), there was no way I would use a Bixi to get back home.

  I got to St-Laurent just as people started to pour in the street and police cars were desperately trying to rush to the scene, sirens yelling. It cheered me up because I was coming back from a medical appointment at Hôtel-Dieu which was not particularly rejoicing.

  

  

  • 00:33
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