Art on the Streets of Montreal

My yearly visit to Montreal has been rather quiet this time around. The friends I had when I initially left almost three years ago are slowly drifting away from each other and myself, so it's been harder to gather them together like I used to during earlier visits - but I guess that makes me grateful for the ones who do show up. That being said, I ended up a lot less busy than I had originally thought I would be.
 Thankfully, though, my visit this year was in Summer, coinciding with the yearly line-up of festivals that take place in Montreal one after the other during the warmer season. My hometown of Montreal is nothing if not a city of celebration, with high media-attention-gathering events such as the Just for Laughs festival of comedy, or the Jazz Festival. There's always something going on in Montreal, unless it's too damn cold.

 As it so happened, practically just out my doorstep, the city-wide "Nuit Blanche" event took place. Nuit Blanche (literally "White Night" but signifying "All-Nighter") is an event spanning three nights in a row where the streets fill with art and performances during the hours between sunset and sunrise. The trains run continuously, uninterrupted by their usual curfew, allowing commuters to get home easily. My friends themselves did happen to have a curfew, though, so I didn't wander the streets too late into the night, but I did get to see what was happening in my own area as part of the event.

Princess Mononoke!

On Mont-Royal street, painters were turning the very pavement into their own canvas, boldly displaying large pieces of art. This year, the theme was cinema posters. It was a little inspiring to see people go at it, with each artist or set of artists in various stages of completion, surrounded by crowds of wandering in between them. Though many apply for the chance to have a spot on which to paint well in advance, very few do get chosen, so it's a great honor to be chosen by the city to have the spotlight shine down on you.
Unfortunately, it appeared two artists chose the movie poster for "Jaws" as their subject. They must've been quite exasperated to find out afterwards. Like my friend said, that's kind of like finding someone's wearing the same prom dress as you are on the night of the event. Ouch.
 Regardless, I'll probably walk up the street one last time once the event is done with, just to see what the finished results ended up being.

Quebec City, Tabarnac

My vacation in Canada's drawing near to its end already. It's a little colder here than I remembered it being, and I'm glad enough to be ducking out before Winter draws its big ugly face around the corner and breathes icy death upon Montreal. The American border might as well be The Wall (you know what I mean if you're a big enough dork.)

 And although I missed my beloved Zombie Walk this year, I did get a chance to go even further north (I know, right? I'm an idiot, shoot me,) to Quebec City. I often say Montreal has history, but Quebec is even more ancient than my hometown. This is where North America as we know it began. We're talking 16th century.
Accompanied by old friends of mine, we rented a car and made the trip in three hours and spent a good day there, basking in the sights I hadn't seen in...six, seven years now? Shit.

Hell, you'd be tempted too.

Forget what you know about North America's distinction from Europe. It all blends in here as you go down into Old Quebec, where new structures are built shouldering truly ancient ones, dating from the colonial days. Quebec is a city of battlements and fortifications, and castles and canons, but also damnable cold where you might get your tongue stuck to poles, and old men with thick old accents. It might be relatively close to Montreal, but hell is it different here. Good luck using your English anywhere, we're in deep French territory here! Shit, good luck using your European French. We're in
DEEP French territory here.
 Walking around Old Quebec inevitably ends you up in the Plains of Abraham, where American history was written as, in a nutshell, the English toppled the French. Having been occupied by both, you can sort of get why the province of Quebec holds both languages.
 Regardless of your interest in history, it's a nice place to take a walk, and gives you a nice view of the Saint-Lawrence river and the other side of the riverbank, and that's good.

On the side, if you're anywhere near Quebec, or even in most parts of Canada if you look hard enough, you can try out a beaver tail, one of the local desserts. Don't worry your vegetarian ass, it's actually just fried dough topped with different condiments like chocolate spread or cinnamon. It's worth a try - if you aren't counting calories. It'd been at least two years since I last had one of these, seeing as I missed out during my last trip.


 That aside, the Montmorency Falls are only a 20 minute ride away and are definitely worth the stop. They're actually higher than Niagara's, and the tallest in the province, which might not seem like a big deal until you realize that Quebec by itself is almost four times the size of Japan. At night the falls are illuminated by bright lights projected upon the surface of the falling water.

Is that a camera you have pointed so close to my face?

 I really skimmed the surface on this one. If I were living in Quebec city rather than Tokyo I could easily write an article about each of the things I touched upon here, but that'll have to do for now. Quebec's worth a visit, folks. If you ever do, don't forget to greet people by saying "tabarnac," loud and proud. All the locals will be so impressed!