Don't worry, this isn't a hockey post.
I was fortunate to experience the miracle people call "vacation" last week. It meant some time off - from emails, from obligations and set schedules, from housework and best of all from "the daily grind." They call it a grind for a reason, that feeling that if it doesn't stop soon you'll be ground down into a fine powder, untraceable forevermore.
Melodramatic? Yes, a bit, but sometimes I can't help myself. Especially when it's been years since I had a real vacation, with the luxuries listed above. So off we went, my sister and I, piled into the car with a list of friends to visit and nothing else particularly on the agenda. What a beautiful relief!
First stop, Montreal. La belle province. Avec mes belles amies. How wonderful to share time with intelligent women who are coming up in the world, who are a pulverizing combination of brains, beauty, hard work, wit, and charm . . . . the list goes on.
I am not convinced the world is fully ready for these women - educated and competent, ready to make an important contribution to society but still dealing with a society that thinks blonde doctors can't be in charge, or that you can't sound divine if you don't look perfect. But the world is going to have to deal with it, and while many people spend their time worrying about the effect Miley is having on their daughters, they are missing the myriad of role models right in front of their faces. It's the glacier effect, slow-moving but inescapable transformation over time.
Montreal seems different to me this year. We spent our honeymoon there in early fall 2010. Maybe I'm exaggerating, maybe it's the long winter everyone seems to be cursing, but there seemed to me a black cloud hanging over the city this time. My initial perception, being a political junkie, is that maybe this whole "Charter of Values" has really hit a sore spot, and people in Montreal are feeling the edge of a political wedge that is being driven into their city and the province as a whole.
On the street, I heard a random man say "I don't want to hear people in English," then switching to French. And although I was only there a short time, I couldn't shake the feeling that we were being judged as outsiders, and not quite measuring up. People seemed weary, and I couldn't quite put my finger on why.
The joie de vivre I have experienced so many times before seemed noticeably absent.
This all in contrast to Toronto . . . stay tuned for part two, hopefully this week.
1 comment:
I think the black cloud, air of despair that you speak about is coming from the political uncertainty of the seperatists uprising that seems to have taken front and centre. I, to this day, do not understand why they feel its like the world is ganging up on them. Quebecers feel as if the rest of Canada is bullying them, when in no way is that really the case. Why they feel compelled to have their own country is beyond me. If they were to model themselves after lots of other places on earth where you can easily support multiculturalism within the same country, i think we would all feel a little less doom and gloom
JFC
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