A Flawed Love

      Good son of eastern Canada that I am, I spent my undergraduate years at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario.  While that town had a great student community and a pretty rowdy nightlife,  a vibrant metropolis it definitely was not.  The student life did not extend much beyond the central drag and the dilapitated neighbourhood most of us called home.  People came to Kingston for its schools, its summer beauty, its sailing and, if 'invited' by the federal government, one of  several major prisons. However, if the bright lights of the big city are what one is looking for, it would be highly advisable to pass Kingston by.

   Perhaps this is why, on the three hour bus rides back home from Kingston, I always experienced a childlike glee at the prospect of returning to my beloved Montreal.  About forty minutes before our arrival at the central bus station, the dark and monotonous landscape of the journey would give way to bright lights and buzzing traffic.  After what was usually a month or two in Kingston, even the number of lights flowing up and down the arteries of suburban Montreal was a bit overwhelming.  So many people! As we made our first stop in the  evening commotion of a shopping mall plaza, I would smile to myself: not only was I home, but I was back in the city.  Just a few more hours and I would be out on the town with great friends, relishing my return with a big city rush, good conversation and plentiful pitchers.

   At this point, it would be best to back the story up a little.  My relationship with Montreal has been a long, complex and sometimes painful one, not surprising considering I was born and bred in the city.  For nearly two decades of my young life,  Canada's second most populous urban area was not only a city, but my entire world.  Sure, I visited other places; sure, I lived in Paris for a year when I was eleven; but these were just distant and exotic dreams. Normality was to be found in the streets of Montreal. The rest of the world was for vacations, movie settings and exam question topics.

   Of course, at the time I was completely oblivious to how special this normality really was.  Growing up in a bilingual environment as part of linguistic minority (English) within a majority at the provincial level (French) that itself was a minority at the national level,  I failed to acknowledge the complexity of Montreal's language relationships.  Visitors would ask why signs were in French while people around them spoke English, or wonder why two English speakers, strangers to each other, would converse nonchalantly in French in a public setting. To me, this was just the way things were.

   Similarly, I failed to notice, or really appreciate, Montreal's rather incredible urban environment.  Now,  this doesn't mean that I support the tourist brochure fluff that the city is  the "Paris of North America" or "a perfect blend of Europe and North America".  On the contrary, I personally feel these comparisons to be bordering on the ridiculous: Montreal is certainly not European,  and the 'French' culture of Canada is about as similar to France's as the American one is to the British.  These slogans are, perhaps,  clumsy attempts to categorize that there is, well, just something different about Montreal.  It is  a bit  too scruffy to be a bonafide 'Canadian' city, it is certainly not similar to any American city I've been to- heck, it's a world away from its own provincial hinterland.  Like any other city, Montreal is a unique product of geographical, cultural and historical circumstances; and like any other city, the outcome defies easy description.

    So what is it about Montreal? Well, you might hear that it is Canada's party town,  that its  joie de vivre  leaves the urban centres of English Canada far behind in terms of style, flair and, yes, well-dressed cosmopolitan arrogance. You might hear about the  bilingualism (and increasingly multiculturalism) of daily life on its streets.  You might hear, as well, that Montreal's ambience come from its 'latin' culture, whatever that is supposed to mean.  Personally, I believe these explanations do little to describe where the city's strengths lie. To me, Montreal is so attractive because it successfully blends the vibrancy, street buzz and unfathomable 'cool' of a major city with the approachable human scale of a smaller town.  You get fabulous neighbourhoods, funky people,  an impressive nightlife (convenient, what with the largest student population in North America after Boston) and a fabulously liveable environment.

    Perhaps it is inevitable that with all this, many of the city's natives become 'Montreal snobs'.  Spending my undergraduate years in Ontario , I certainly took on this role with an unapologetic fervour.  Surrounded by friends whose world centered on that bastion of evil, Toronto, I would defend my hometown's worth ferociously, often with more emotion than reason. In retrospect, I think this reflected a certain naive idealism on my part, one in which Montreal represented a dream of a life beyond bank towers,  bank accounts and bland sub-divisions.  Montreal, with the funky vibe and attractive lifestyle I perceived it to have, fed my urban bohemian fantasy of a cultured life of cafes, cool streets and interesting, well-dressed people.  How could I not be proud to come from such a city?

    Over the years, however, I have developed another character trait in regards to Montreal  of which I am not so proud: that is the one of hypocrisy.  Professing the city's great charm and my deep love for my hometown, I  nevertheless must realize that I have not lived here since 1998, apart from summers and holiday visits.  So, as painful as this exercise is, a tough question must be asked: if I love Montreal so much, why do I keep leaving it? This contradiction, I think, digs to the heart of  my relationship with this city. After years of being away, growing up and unfortunately  succumbing to a healthy dose of realism,  I bring a much different perspective to bear on my beloved Montreal, one that grapples with conflicted emotions and dreams of what could have been.

   This new perspective has emerged from the grudging acceptance that my urban bohemian fantasy is just that: a fantasy. Many a long-haired college kid dreams of the 'cool life'; unfortunately, this dream usually ends with the triple whammy of jobs, responsibility and adult obligations. Thus, from a pragmatic, failed idealist point of view, I have come to see Montreal's greatest strength, its lifestyle, as a simultaneous manifestation of its greatest weakness.  The city that has managed to remain so funky and liveable has done so because, to put it quite simply, its economy has been such a mess for most of the last few decades.  For those of you unfamiliar with the city (and you are likely many), perhaps a little more explanation is in order.

   Montreal's fate, as the urban hub of Quebec, has for better or worse ebbed and flowed with the tides of the province's nationalist/separatist political movement. Once the business and cultural centre of Canada,  the 1970s  saw a virtual evacuation of both corporations and English-speaking people during the 'nationalization' of Quebec, with many of these heading for the greener and more 'stable' pastures of Toronto.  Since then (and until only recently), one could hardly say the city has ever been on the up-and-up; for a major urban centre, the amount of vacant lots in the downtown area has always been rather disturbing.  Boarded up shops, economic decline, Anglo flight: this was the name of the game well into the 1990s.  But in a positive twist, this situation is what, in my opinion,  saved Montreal from the ravages of boom-time development and managed to preserve a very liveable and human scale for those who make their lives here. The city retained its flair, its vibe, its cultural je ne sais quoi,  refusing to completely give up and collapse in the face of Quebec sovereignty referendums. And as a testament to the vibrancy of my hometown, it managed this all while taking a severe economic battering. 

   These  forces that have ultimately preserved the city's charm are also, unfortunately, the very ones that have prevented Montreal from achieving its true potential.  It seems to me that the Quebec nationalist movement has always been intent on taming Montreal, making it their city,  and I would argue that they have largely succeeded: cosmopolitanism and culture aside, the city has been relegated to a largely provincial status, somewhat disconnected from the wide world that exists outside Quebec.  I guess in some ways, Montreal can be considered an 'international' city (mix of languages, cultures), but it is surprisingly inward-looking, content to be king of a rather small hill.

   And this is why I get so conflicted and confused regarding my beloved hometown. Frustrated that its potential has been constrained by the petty politics it necessarily suffers, I nevertheless realize that it is the very fact that Montreal is not an international hub that makes it such a great place to build a life for its inhabitants.  Not being the most attractive of destinations for investment and opportunity over most of the last three decades, the city has, in that time, mostly managed to avoid an influx of people, money and real estate speculators that would have indeed transformed the city into something else entirely.

   Over the past few years, however, things have started changing. It seems that Montreal is, for better or worse, "on its way back". A renewed confidence in the city, as well as a recognition of all that it offers as an urban area, has led to a growing buzz, a dusting off of the cobwebs.  Traditionally working-class neighbourhoods are witnessning the telltale signs of gentrification, and a surprising number of those vacant lots are sprouting highrise luxury condominiums.  It is a strange thing for me to see in Montreal, so much so that this whole mini-boom doesn't seem very 'Montrealish' at all.  Nevertheless, I do not feel that the city's small town charm is under threat: the damage has already been thoroughly done to Montreal's international connections, and the city has been comfortably relegated to a not-very-important scale in the grand scheme of things. Whether that is ultimately such a bad thing depends entirely on one's personal preferences.

   It is this removal from the grand scheme of things, however, that keeps me personally from giving Montreal the devotion it deserves. The provincial and inward-looking nature of the place is certainly exaggerated in my eyes at the moment, as I experience it fresh from a year in London and two years in China.  Montrealers have a tendency to highlight the loose, scruffy nature of their lifestyle, particularly when it comes to a disregard for both traffic rules and signals. Yet compared with even the smallest Chinese city, Montreal is more akin to Switzerland.  After the cosmopolitan madness of London, my hometown feels quite parochial, localized and, yes, Canadian.

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   But it is with a very heavy heart that I write in the negative of my beloved city.  I refuse to declare Montreal anything other than an amazing urban experience- what else could I do, given my genetic attachment to the place? My perpectives on Montreal's shortcomings are perhaps, in the end, more indicative of my own life goals rather than any fault in this fabulous city.  I know many people who have built fruitful and satisfying lives here, and I know several more who are in the process of doing so. Of all the cities in the world, Montreal is one of those select few that offers both urban excitement and small town comfort. 

   Sadly, at this point in my life, my perspective is a bit too ambitious to settle into a comfortable existence here. I have a thirst for international  movements and machinations, and I need to be out there, I need to be 'connected' into the big league flows.  I have realized this will likely entail a sacrifice in lifestyle -to pursue my interest in urban development issues, I will have to bear cities that are monstrous, overbuilt, polluted, sprawling and gridlocked. These are, for better or worse, the places where things get done, where big decisions are made.  Montreal, as spectacular an urban phenomenon as it is, cannot hope to compete with them in terms of opportunity in my field. By becoming the city that it is, Montreal has paid the price in terms of both influence and connectivity.

   Sometimes, my ambition to go big frustrates me to no end. Why can't I just accept Montreal for what it is? Why can't I just settle down into what would be a rewarding and comfortable life, albeit with a narrower focus on a smaller scale? I will confess to be intensely jealous of those who do not crave the prospect of an international life, those who can look at Montreal, recognize all it has to offer and make it their world.  For many people, Montreal is the life.  And I can't necessarily disagree with them.  It offers in its daily scenes what many the world over can only dream of: relatively safe and lively neighbourhoods; a beautiful environment; a thriving restaurant/music/bar scene; a mish-mash of architectural delights; a positive collision of cultures; a legendary hockey franchise (that one's for you, Torontonians)- the list could go on and on. And yet here I am, unable (or perhaps  unwilling) to scale down my ego enough to truly appreciate the wonders of the place.

   I hope that, someday, when I am done trying to save the world and finished with thrill-seeking experiences, I will realize that the best city on earth, after all I've seen and done, is the one into which I had the great honour of being born.  Hopefully, after these long years of treason, Montreal will still welcome back one of its loyal sons, heavy-hearted as he will be with his betrayal of home.

Patrick Bennett currently finds himself in Montreal and  is gradually rediscovering its wonders.

Comments

[Will]

Great piece on Montreal!

You've had me see-sawing back and forth between loving and wanting to live in the city you've grown up in, through the recognition of its strengths, and valuing all the experiences and other possibilities different cultures and societies have to offer.

It's a tough choice.

[Orlando Cabrera]

Montreal, is an amalgamation of ethnically distinct, provincial cantons. It is a twilight zone, which eventually leaves its inhabitants with an almost fatal disconnection with the modern world.