Montreal's Catholic Past

These are a couple of photographs from Cathedrale Marie-Reine Du Monde - a Catholic Church on Rene Levesque Street just a fifteen minute walk from the residence hall. Walking around downtown Montreal you may have noticed the enormous green dome atop a building lined with rows of saints. This is just one of many beautiful churches in Montreal - the likes of which you normally would not see in the US (definitely not in small town New England with their little white churches). What's more popular is the Notre Dame Basilica of Montreal, whose beauty I have yet to witness because there is a five dollar admission charge, which is something I have never experienced in entering religious institutions, but I suppose it's a reasonable amount when you consider how much is needed to preserve the artworks inside. Keep in mind that these are more than just churches, they are art galleries. They're preserving culture. But opposite to Notre Dame, Marie-Reine is free to visit and to my surprise, it's a quiet and empty sanctuary compared to the tourist trap at the Basilica.

I wish I could have taken more pictures - the ones above capture only a fragment of beauty in this massive work of art. I would have taken more, but I was asked to leave because apparently "photography is not allowed in the House of God." But upon my first visit to Marie-Reine with my father, I recall a middle aged woman approaching us claiming she was a Bosnian refugee without support from social services. She wanted help of the financial sort. I immediately gave her all the money I had in my pockets, which being a poor college student was only two dollars and thirty one cents (a great help I was). But my father refused to give anything, and coming from a traditional Catholic perspective, that's understandable - begging in the House of God comes off as sacrilegious. But this poor Bosnian woman was not the only one begging in the church. In fact there were a few people roaming about holding Tim Hortons coffee cups filled with change. And I'm okay with that, but I could not understand the reasoning behind letting people beg in the House of God and yet prohibiting photography in the House of God. I was there simply to appreciate the wonders of architecture.

It astounds me how such rich and intricate architecture - years of work from centuries past - can all be summed up in the digital world by this simple website here, not much more complex than this blog. In fact, both websites were probably created by only a few people (in my case, a single person - that's me), whereas this church was built by dozens of skilled architects, painters, laborers, and engravers. The internet is information-rich and there's much to gain if you read the right sources, but there's just no awe in it. But if you go out and see the physical manifestations of history, politics, religion, culture, war, etc. - this church as an example - that's where you find awe. That's when your brain shouts AHA! in epiphany and pieces together all these bits of information into a coherent story to make sense of the world around you. If you distance yourself from the world and learn only from books and the internet and lectures and formal education, then it all devolves into babble. You cannot retain information and learn without that element of awe.

There's the logic to study abroad. "The experience" is a vague phrase that's often thrown around when students cite their reasons for studying abroad, but what they're really looking for is awe.

And awe is most certainly the reason why us Montrealers are going to see Cirque Du Soleil on the last day of the semester.

Insect Insight

Speaking of hives and insect colonies, here are some pictures of our class trip to the insectarium at the botanical gardens. It's a fascinating place and I encourage you to go... if you like insects. It's not all pretty butterflies and honeybees down here, but I spared the images of the real monstrous and unearthly-looking creatures for the faint of heart (actually, the only pictures of tarantulas and ten-legged eight-eyed four-toothed whatchamacall-its all came out blurry, lucky for you). When you're separated from these bizarre animals by walls of glass and plastic, you realize there's no rational reason to fear them.

As a child I had an intense fear of spiders, but come to think of it I can't recall every being bitten by one. Now I just think they're creepy, and most people will agree with that. But as we learned from one of the insectarium employees, less than one percent of all spiders are capable of inflicting serious harm to human beings. Indeed, the vast majority of insects are essentially harmless. So why are things like spiders, centipedes, and scorpions the "stuff of nightmares"? Is it merely their alien appearance? Why is arachnaphobia so common?

I have a little hypothesis that it has something to do with evolution. You see, there are remnants of the reptilian and early mammalian layers of the brain that emerge in dreams. I mean, how often do we dream of being chased? Beyond that, how often do we dream of being chased by wild animals? Don't quote me on this, but I think it's a phenomenon that occurs across all cultures. But for most of us in the 21st Century, running from a predator does not occur in everyday life. And yet it still happens all the time in our dreams. And millenia ago while our ape ancestors (even neanderthals for that matter) in the wild were sleeping and dreaming, they would have to be ready to awake and protect themselves from any threat. To avoid predators, apes would sleep in trees, and there's a hypothesis that falling dreams are an evolutionary device designed to wake us up before we fall out of the tree. The only reason we still have falling dreams is because it's left over from our tree-dwelling ancestors in the mammalian part of the human brain. On the other hand, neanderthals slept in dark and enclosed areas - caves and huts and so forth. All these sleeping spots in our evolution - the trees, nooks and crannies, caves, and huts - while they were perfect for hiding from the big predators, they were also perfect habitats for spiders and scorpions and most insects. So while apes and neanderthals were sleeping and dreaming... they would often wake with the sense that something foreign was crawling on the skin... and immediately the reptilian part of the brain shouts "predator, predator!" And so they would quickly brush it off and go back to sleep. But these constant interruptions in sleep must've left an evolutionary mark, so that's my hypothesis of how spiders became a symbol of fear, the stuff of nightmares.

Or maybe they're just really creepy looking.

Anyways, it's around this point in my Montreal experience that my camera broke. Well, semi-broke... I can't see what I'm taking pictures of, so if any image from this point on looks a little off-centered, it's not any new artistic style, it's just the slow expiration of the cheapest digital camera available. That would also be why all the pictures of ten-legged eight-eyed four-toothed whatchamacall-it insects came out blurry.

The Underground Ant Colo-... I mean, the Underground City

For the longest time I couldn't find "The" Underground City of Montreal. I had been to a lot of the metro stations in the area, but I didn't see any sign of this subterranean world that people talked about as if it were a magical place. People would point out the downtown parts to me on maps, but that only showed the surface of the city, so the underground part was still unknown, elusive, mysterious. There's a sense of wonder in that phrase: "The Underground City." As if it was a secret place, hidden and eternal. Like it's Atlantis or something.

Along with not knowing where it was, I didn't exactly know what it was. At first I thought it was all in one place - a shopping mall in the shape of an underground coliseum, but I soon learned that it was a series of tunnels. Like a giant maze. It's a Labyrinth, not a coliseum... and so it's not easy to point it out on a map. It's everywhere, right under your soles. In my mind I envisioned a vague blur of tunnels, railcars, shops, and moving, talking, bustling crowds of people. And when I discovered what It was, I realized I was not far from the truth. La Ville Souterraine is a vague blur.

Don't get me wrong, it's an amazing feat of architecture and there is a sense of enchantment about it. It's no Atlantis, but it puts you in a kind of daze with all the flashy lights, glass, decorations and most of all, the people. Hundreds of thousands of people walk through this Labyrinth every day. And at night it all empties out, back into the sea of surface-life like tides. And what do they all come here for if they're not riding the Metro? Shopping. There are levels upon levels of shops connected by tunnels that lead to... even more levels of shops! The excitement never ends down here, you see. You walk and walk and you pass a shoe store, a clothing store, a jewelry store, another shoe store, a sushi bar, a magazine vender, another clothing store with more mannequins dressed in more flashy clothing, a video game store, a food court with another sushi bar, and it just goes on and on and on. Not all the stores down here are from Big Corporations and chains, but aside from the fact that this intricate network of tunnels was built by the City of Montreal, it seems to have less to do with the city's culture and more to do with its capitalistic economy. It's not too distant from the idea of the American mall. Some of the shop names are different, but they're all selling the same material objects. Fashion, Food, and Fun in all shapes and sizes.

If you love to shop, then this is Heaven. If you dislike shopping or don't have the money to shop, the Underground City is still an interesting Labyrinth to explore. I visit it frequently these days, almost as much as I climb Mount Royal. I haven't explored half of La Ville Souterraine, so all I've had to say about it is merely a first impression. I go there just to see the buzz and hear the drone of this thriving underground hive. In a place like this, you learn from a first-world perspective what the 21st Century is all about.