Mount Royal Cemetery - A Halloween Special of Sorts

Mount Royal Cemetery is one of the most isolated, beautiful places you will find in the city. Reach the overlook on top of Mount Royal and head just a ways beyond on that gravel pathway until you reach the gates of this hidden sanctuary. For nature lovers, it's a must. If you're missing the simple sight of trees and grass (as I am), this will feel just like home. Whoever the groundskeeper is here, he really knows what he's doing. Lilacs are planted in abundance in every section of the cemetery. The sight and the fragrance give the sense that life is still in bloom, and here in the cemetery it blooms even in after life. Elsewhere in the city, these metaphorical lilacs of life bloom everyday, on every street corner, in restaurants, in galleries, in bars, in coffee shops, all around La Ville-Marie. The cemetery is not a gloomy scene at all. In fact, the cemetery is the perfect place for self-reflection. Walking around these graves, you begin to realize that you are vulnerable and mortal, your time is finite, and who you are will be remembered through the best and the worst of your characteristics. The sense of time overcomes all else.

The cemetery is just as multi-cultural as the cemetery it lies in. No surprise there - the dead are just as good an indication of a city's culture and history as the living. In the cemetery there are Jewish sections (which are gated off and far removed from the rest), Greek sections, Eastern European who-knows-what sections, and as my girlfriend and I strolled through rows and rows of tombstones on a Sunday afternoon, we came across... strange groupings of graves where we couldn't quite see the connection. About forty identical tombstones were given their own plot, and the only thing they all had in common were deaths around the years 1948 to 1953. Where did they come from? Where have they gone? It makes you wonder what's been going on in this city for the last two hundred years. There are thousands of different family names, thousands of different stories. Even some of the Molson family lies here at the top of the hill. It's only as soon as you see, in person, how many graves there are here that you realize how magical this place is. Half of Mount Royal is for the dead; the spirits of Montreal.

Apple Country

This past weekend the Champlain crew took a train out to rural Quebec for some apple picking. Just a breath away - a twenty minute train ride - from the pillars of concrete and glass that construct this hectic urban landscape, there are orchards. There are trees fruiting.

In the above pictures I make my first appearance on this blog. I'm the bearded one with glasses on the far left of the circular wood-cut-out children faces. My hand also makes a cameo - the one with the hornet on it. And you can see from these pictures that we, as twenty and twenty-one year old college students readying ourselves for the "real world" of e-game design and public relations and broadcasting professions, are still absolutely enthralled by childish activities like petting farm animals and picking apples And this is a great thing. If everyone on this earth had their own farm animals to pet (or use for food) and orchards to harvest, then the world would have much fewer disputes and strife. Young and old alike can enjoy a day's worth of apple picking.

In about fifteen minutes, we had already picked as much as our apple bags could hold. At that point I was looking for the largest, reddest apples to pick and eat on the spot. After about five red giants, I was appled out. So there was a bit of time lingering before the bus left for the train station and I took a walk out to the unpopulated parts of the orchard next door. And out there in the middle of nowhere in Canada, you can pretend you're in the middle of nowhere in Vermont. It's the same landscape. The fields are yellow and withered and the trees are bright oranges and reds, as they should be this time of year. It's natural dying beauty - that flickering spark before a desolate winter. And Burlington came out of the same landscape as Montreal, more or less, a few degrees of difference. We both have apple picking and cider and pumpkin craze in autumn, but there's a border that separates us and thus a cultural split, and that seems to make all the difference.

Burritoville

There are plenty of great Mexican restaurants in Montreal - There's Casa de Mateo, Maria Bonita, Tequila Taco, basically more than I can count on all my fingers and toes, more than you would ever want to visit if you spent a lifetime in the city. But many of these are a bit expensive for college students, and many others are take-out Mexican restaurants with questionable food sources that don't quite satisfy. On the other hand, Burritoville is the perfect in between for the bohemian who still cares about eating healthy. It's a bit of a walk from the UQAM residence, but it's still in a college setting right across from the Henry F. Hall building of Concordia University on Rue Bishop. The atmosphere of Burritoville is less of a restaurant and more of a casual student lounge. On a typical day you'll find students with their laptops, books, and papers out. The food is made with healthy, all vegetarian ingredients, and you can expect to pay less than ten dollars for a filling meal and a drink. The people that work there are also extremely friendly. So give it a try if you're in the area.

Architecture, Graffiti, Graffiti'd Architecture, and so forth

This past Sunday I took a walk from the lively and vibrant east side of Rue Saint Catherine up to the darker industrial side of Montreal. Rue Saint Catherine is considered the "main" street of Montreal, but unfortunately most of the main drag is under construction. Half the street is upturned - you can't go walk there during the day without taking ten detours around the rubble and hearing the roar of jackhammers and bulldozers. It looks as though an air raid struck the city - it's a mess, you get the idea.

But dear reader, if you're ever in the area and the mess is cleared, I suggest you take a long walk down Rue Saint Catherine. You can find anything and everything just on this street. Shops, cinemas, restaurants, galleries, and son on. As an artist, what appeals to me is the architecture of these churches (and there's more than a few on Saint Catherine) - these gargantuan steeples and statues that loom over every nearby shop. Every side and every corner of these buildings is cut with intricate design, every window is placed with such harmony and symmetry that even a non-religious observer looks on with awe.

Even more exciting than Montreal's architecture is Her graffiti, and once again, Rue Saint Catherine is just the place for that. As you can see from the photos above, obviously not all this graffiti is illegal - these murals are done in plain public sight. Some companies will actually commission artists to spray paint around their stores. It acts as a landmark. It draws in a different crowd. Montreal even has a graffiti convention every year called Under Pressure, where graffiti writers show off their talent (legally) on local buildings. Graffiti is just another medium for self-expression, but because it was misused and laws were put in place that gave graffiti this negative stigma of crime and vandalism, it's an unexplored medium in most major cities. Perhaps Montreal is ahead of its time in embracing this graffiti culture.