aMMusing

By all accounts, with the exception of one canicule (heatwave) at the beginning of June, it hasn’t been very summer-like in Montréal. Well, from what I’ve been gathering by checking the weather back in Halifax or Moncton, it’s been better here than there. But despite this not being an idyllic summer yet, Montréal is definitely in full summer mode and it’s an especially fantastic place to be from May to October.

As Tornwardo mentioned in his blog post today, the city is trying something new this year: closing off Sainte-Catherine from Berri to Papineau from June 17 to September 2. I was walking in the Village last night around midnight and the street was a beehive of activity (and “beehive” doesn’t just refer to the drag queens’ hairdos). In addition to extended patios at numerous establishments, the city also parked several “green cars” along the street — sculptures resembling cars but covered with green plants. It could be that it was busier last night than it will be through the summer because it was the first weekend of the street closure plus Tuesday is la St-Jean (the “national” holiday), but still, it was really cool. More than usual, though, I really wished last night that I could have been soaking it all up arm-in-arm with Esposo.

While at Club Sandwich for a heart attack on a plate poutine, a group of six sat at the table next to me. Three were older transsexuals, with one in particular being quite convincing as a plausible, strong-featured Québec woman of a certain age were it not, upon closer observation, for the manly arms. Sitting next to her was a man who was subtly yet unmistakenly affectionate towards her. At one point he declared (in French), “Well, I’m 72!” Several people at the other tables turned around and I think we all agreed he didn’t look a day over 60, if that. I returned my attention to my poutine, thinking once again how a scene like this — people of all ages comfortably out and about late at night — is what makes Montréal such a great city to live in.

In a few minutes, I’ll be heading to the airport to pick up Hiker (a.k.a. Brad) and Bello (a.k.a. Jeff) who are coming here for a few days to take in some of what makes this city so great. There seems to be a comedy of errors on whether or not I should bother going to the airport to taxi them into the city, but since I got their messages too late, I’m going to stick to the original plan and go. We might have a drink downtown if they’re up for it.

The first week I’m in Mexico, one of my brothers and his wife will be staying at the apartment. And late in the week, the Queen of Sheba confirmed that she’ll be coming for a long-weekend visit on August 7. Others may be reserving a spot, too, which is great. I chose to be part of this city after several visits, so I understand what draws people here. The jazz festival starts in a few days; summer here is one long festival, it seems; and, the museums and culture generally are wonderfully vibrant. What is there not to love about this place, especially in the summer!

There have been times in the last three months when it seemed that the reunification with Esposo, although again temporary, would never come — a state of affairs that would get both of us down at times despite my propensity to put a positive spin on things. But finally, now it’s just around the corner. Indeed, by this time next week, I’ll be rushing around to pack and get ready for the trek back to Mexico City on the 29th. This time I’ll be flying Continental with a long layover in Newark on the way over, but that inconvenience is well worth the more than 400-dollars savings over what the other airlines, particularly Air Canada, had to offer.

The day job has continued its hectic pace. At some points this week, I became quite frustrated with one of my colleagues. But now it’s Saturday and I look back and think, “It’s just an effin’ job.” Moreover, I’m just days from being away from it all for two weeks. That helps me put things in perspective again: work is the means that allows one to live.

When I listen to the news the least bit, though, I can’t shake the feeling that living is becoming really tough economically. The price of fuel is reaching the stratosphere, which is dragging upwards the cost of just about everything else, especially foodstuff. I shake my head in disbelief each time I pay over $3.50 for a very ordinary loaf of whole wheat bread, yet at the same time I recognize that, with the global food crisis, things are so many times worse elsewhere in the world. At least here we still have access to a vast variety of food and it still doesn’t cost something unsustainable like 70 percent of monthly earnings.

This week was the week when I can say I wrapped up my Québec residency. I finally have the car’s license plate and proper insurance coverage as of Thursday, as well as medical and prescription coverage from work. Formally establishing my residency here was the essential component before stepping forward with everything else. State medical coverage is the centrepiece of proof of residency which, within Canada, only starts on the three-month anniversary following a move. So, technically, I’m still a Nova Scotian until July 1.

On this beautiful sunny Saturday in Montréal, which finally feels like summer again after nearly a week of autumn-like weather, I have to admit that I’m feeling a bit dazed. So much has been done — much of which I didn’t think would be so damn difficult — yet so much is left to be done. They say patience is a virtue, but there comes a time when I get sick of being so damn virtuous!

No wonder I’m so looking forward to the 29th.

Two major forest fires are raging in my former HRM stomping ground, leading to the evacuation of 4,000 homes on the Eastern shore.

I was speaking with my friend George and he reminded me that many had warned that this might happen since much of the downed timber in the backwoods as a result of Hurricane Juan was left there to rot. Almost five years later, we could be seeing the result of inaction.

My dealings this week with the RAMQ (Régie de l’assurance maladie du Québec) have restored my hopes with bureaucracy in Québec after my pull-your-hair-out frustrating experience with the SAAQ (Société de l’assurance automobile du Québec).

One thing that really bothered me at the SAAQ is that three out of the four people with whom I had the most dealings at that agency, in addition to being arrogant, somehow managed either to make an inappropriate remark about non-Québécois or to demonstrate that stereotypical narcistic view francophones here are often accused of having. At the RAMQ, on the other hand, I spent a lot more time than everyone else in the waiting room, as my request was clearly more involved and complicated than seeking some kind of reimbursement. However, when my number was finally called and I sat down at the assigned wicket, I was somewhat surprised but pleased to be greeted by a lovely, smiling young woman wearing glasses and a hijab.

She was in the advanced stages of training, so another woman about my age sat next to her and verified that she was doing everything correctly. The thing is, she was! She was utterly competent, always two steps ahead of her mentor, explaining everything to me clearly as if she had been doing this job for years. Her French accent was neutral: not overly Québécois, but certainly not European, either. She was a pleasure to deal with, and she set me on my way in 15 minutes. (Of course, it helped that I had all the necessary documents.)

I needed to take a leak before leaving the building and heading back home, but before entering the washroom, I realized I had forgotten my bag at her desk. I turned around, went back to her desk, to find she was already serving someone else …in fluent English. Although I suspect she is not first-generation to Québec, in my eyes she perfectly illustrates the benefits of “reasonable accommodations”: the public service has a stellar employee who’s a net asset to our society, and her hijab is, as it should, as banal as someone wearing a discreet gold chain with a cross. Whoopy ding!

Cleopatrick also had a successful, productive week, and directly and indirectly, his encounters within the cultural mosaic of Montréal have provided him with renewed energy in his endeavours. He came back with an interesting factoid about this neighbourhood (Côte-des-Neiges), namely that over 110 nationalities are represented within its boundaries. My sister who was visiting last weekend noticed the difference between now and when she lived in this neighbourhood 30 years ago. At that time, the neighbourhood was still predominently Jewish, but today, within a few blocks of the Snowdon metro as we went on a quest to find her a hair brush, we surely came across people from every continent, yacking away in their native tongue as well as French or English while paying for their new wares. It’s wonderful!

Next Wednesday I hope to have some time to go downtown to take a Spanish placement test. If I can’t make it on Wednesday, I can go any other day but will have to pay $20 for the test. I may just do that if I have to, because getting into a class in September is more important to me than a lousy $20.

I just came back from the Village. I was sitting in the park at Panet and Ste-Catherine having my first coffee of the day — there’s a reason it was so late, but never mind for now — when I noticed a dog climb on the ledge of an opened window at the top of a three-floor building across the street. I was in disbelief in what I was seeing, and yes, the dog kept going and jumped. He (I’ll assume it was a “he” for the sake of this story) hit a passing pedestrian on the head, but didn’t fall directly on him — not enough to buffer his fall in any way. And then he laid still on the sidewalk, with everybody gathering, slack-jawed and looking at him, not really knowing what to do.

Eventually, what seemed like the dog’s master came downstairs and carried away the limp dog whose legs, mind you, seemed to be sticking straight out. I was too far away to tell if he had survived the fall, though I doubt it. About ten minutes later, we saw the dog’s master carrying him away in a car.

That prompted one of the guys in the park to speculate that the master was getting rid of the evidence: “Leaving a dog unattended with an open window like that, that’s a crime,” he said in broken French suggesting English is his first language.

Funny how, once again, I don’t assume the worse of people. When I saw the visibly upset master take away the dog from the sidewalk and then by car, I assumed he was rushing it to a vet, although, as I said, I couldn’t tell from my vantage point if he was still alive. And prior to the dog being taken away, I sat in the park wondering to myself what would ever provoke a dog to jump like that. It’s not like the building was burning, so this act seemed extremely counter to a dog’s instincts. It’s not even like he seemed to be chasing anything and “forgot” that, as a dog, he couldn’t fly or land on his feet as a cat might have been able to do.

One thing’s for sure: When Tadzio moves in, the screens in this apartment are going back in the windows. He may be a cat but he’s not a young thing anymore, and I don’t want us to find out if he could pull off landing three stories down should he take the notion of giving it a whirl.

Suppose you’re trying to change a car registration from Nova Scotia to Québec, as I’m having to do. And suppose you have a letter from the company from which you leased your car but bought out a year ago that reads in part:

Account Settlement
We are please to inform you that all obligations under this lease have been satisfied.

At the top of this letter, on letterhead, there’s the date, the account number, a bar code and a toll-free number. And suppose you have tons of other documents — bills, a passport, everything! — that states your same Halifax address over and over and over. Wouldn’t you think that should be enough to switch your bloody car registration?

Well, not according to Québec bureaucrats. Or at least, the bureaucrat I had the misfortune of falling upon this morning.

The instant I arrived at her wicket, she exuded that “what the hell do you want from me” attitude that led me to think she was trying to come up with ways of asking me how deeply I should kiss her ass and mean it. Think a cross of the attitude of Selma Bouvier and the look of Radio-Canada’s Fosse aux lionnes “collaboratrice” Guylaine Guay below, complete with the latter’s glib smile. And our encounter went downhill in the first seconds when she asked me to sign “in the box, without going outside the lines,” which I did with the pen that was in the holder to my right. “Non, non, non, non, non!” she exclaimed, rolling her eyes. “That’s the wrong pen” (in French). For you see, hidden beside and under the magnetic pad was another identical-looking pen that I was supposed to use because, shouldn’t I know, it’s connected to her computer. With much ceremony to emphasize how much I was putting her out, she replaced the paper on the pad and got me to sign again.

Upon looking at my registration, she paused and asked, “Noh-va Sco-tee-a …that’s a province of Québec?” I know that at that point, I blinked hard and my jaw dropped. “A province of Canada,” I said, “just like Québec” (suppressing the “whether you like it or not, you stupid bitch”). And after she conferenced with her supervisor and it became obvious my perfectly good letter wouldn’t be good enough, I just fell silent, put away all my papers, looked at her straight in the eyes and said, “You really don’t want new residents of Québec, do you!” She protested and disagreed, urging me to see it her way with my “flimsy” letter. She seemed to be as pleased as punch that, in her eyes, she had saved the government of Québec of some egregious fraud and, generally, ruined another person’s day. No wonder they have security guards in that place; it took every grain of a non-violent person’s fibre — namely mine — from reaching over and bitch-slapping her right then and there.

And I forgot… A few moments earlier while I was in the waiting room, a security guard called for all those exchanging “un permis de l’étranger“ (which should literally mean, “a permit from abroad“), so I didn’t get up. But “Wait a minute,” I thought to myself a minute later. This is Québec, and gawd knows most francophone Québécois (although this guy seemed more like a brainwashed first-generation Quebecker with heavily accented French) are hopeless navel-gazers who THINK they’re worldly but know little outside a 200-mile radius of their little self. So I went up to the guard and asked (in French):

– When you said ‘de l’étranger’, you did mean from outside Canada right?”

He asked where my license was from and I told him — Nova Scotia.

– “Well yes,” he replied, annoyed, “that’s ‘de l’étranger’.”

– “Maybe YOU define another province of Canada as l’étranger, but that’s not obvious to ME!”

I have trouble imagining a U.S. state like Louisiana or Texas getting away with people saying stuff like that. Québec is run like a different, sovereign country while still gladly (but absent-mindedly) sucking on the teat of the central government in Ottawa for equalization payments, of which it’s a recipient unlike Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia although many around here would deny that’s the case. It’s remarkable, really.

And needless to say, I walked out of the SAAQ without new plates and only a temporary driver’s license. When I got home and called my leasing company, the guy who answered (who was in Toronto) just said, “Oh …you’re having to deal with the SAAQ. They’re notorious.” He immediately started the paperwork and I can look forward in about a week to a third visit to the SAAQ. Third time is the charm, let’s hope.

Oh …and my health card? If I’d moved within Québec, the SAAQ could have initiated the necessary paperwork. But not for a “foreigner” like me. And no, “No idea where you’re supposed to go to get that done,” I was told. Fortunately, Cleopatrick‘s mother wisely suggested I go to the closest CLSC …and please don’t ask me to define what a CLSC is. I haven’t the strength.

I’ve got to put a positive spin on all of this. Got to!

Found it!

It’s not just Esposo who’s immigrating to another country. We both are.

Thanks to The Quad for posting this video to my Facebook Fun Wall. Defending net neutrality is a battle we must all undertake. In my books, if Tim Berners-Lee says so, that’s an endorsement equivalent to one coming directly from God.

Two months into living in Montréal, I’ve had several people ask me if I miss Halifax. After all, I lived there for 22 years! Yet, generally speaking, the answer is No. But — there’s always a “but”! — in no particular order……

• I do miss dropping in on my canine nephew Boy-Boy (a.k.a. Jackson) and his mommies.
• As summer begins, I know without a doubt that I will miss Crystal Crescent Beach. The nearest equivalent here prompted me to remark, “You call that a beach?”
• And I do miss Friday Night “Whine & Wine” sessions with whom I shall henceforth refer to as Tarzana.

Other than that, no, not really. For instance, back in Halifax, I wouldn’t have done what I’m doing right now: I took public transportation to go to another part of town (the Village) to have coffee and connect via wireless Internet to write in this blog. That there’s a gay village here and not in Halifax isn’t why I wouldn’t do something similar in Halifax. It’s just that, with a 8- or 9-minute headway for the metro, it’s super easy to go from uptown northwest of the mountain to the east end of downtown, as it doesn’t take outrageously longer than by car, not to mention that it’s a lot cheaper considering how gas peaked at $1.43,4 last week and parking on the street has to be paid until 9:00 pm on weekdays. Even on a Monday night like tonight, which is mild but on-and-off rainy, people are definitely out of hibernation and walking about. Being surrounded by that kind of activity is what always drew me to Montréal, even if it’s not as “wow” as it was for me initially. Now it’s more about comfortably being, which in my mind is a different and more nuanced notion than being comfortable.

Indeed, things change over time, as do plans and perceptions. A few don’t, though. My dwelling is much as I long imagined and in some ways better. What I didn’t see coming is that there would be a roommate with me in Montréal, and no, here I’m not referring to Esposo. As I told many friends and colleagues at work, the move here would not have been as successful had Cleopatrick not been there. And we’ve agreed that until Esposo is able to move in, Cleopatrick will live here, too — at first part-time, although eventually full-time as he gets his footing back in Montréal. I have to admit that I very much like having him around. We lived together before in the early ’90s in relatively tight quarters, back when we were together, and like with the Queen of Sheba, we didn’t get in each other’s way and still don’t. It’s not easy to find someone like that, and I think it gets harder with age as we get more settled in our ways. But for me, the current arrangement with Cleopatrick works perfectly: he does the lion’s share of the cooking and cleaning, at which I’m horrible (especially the latter), and he pays for some food and stuff which amounts to way less than half the rent since he’s putting in his fair share in kind.

I also didn’t anticipate the time-consuming complications resulting from Québec bureaucracy, let alone the bumpy first two weeks courtesy of Bell. Nor did I know that two months starting from the move until now would be unusually busy time at the day job. I’ve put in way more overtime than I care to think about and been asked to participate in peripheral projects I knew nothing about before leaving Halifax. Regrettably that’s been a setback for the seemingly endless to-do list outside the day job. And one change I really didn’t expect, which I only learned about last Friday, is that The Woman is being promoted (deservingly) and will no longer be my boss. Hers will be big shoes to fill and I’ll miss working with her, for while she can be demanding, she is irreproachably fair and the furthest thing from a micro-manager.

Of course, as recently as a year ago, I wouldn’t have believed you if you had told me that I would be married, let alone to a beautiful, tall, long-haired Mexican who absolutely rocks my world ♥♪♫♥, which would then lead me to enrol in Spanish classes some 15 months later. Exactly a year ago, I hadn’t unequivocally decided to move to Montréal, although I had been thinking about it for a very long time and finally convinced myself to take the plunge through a five-part series of blog posts later in June of last year. The only thing I knew is that since I turned 40, I’d been itching for change. And indeed, after a rather long stagnant period, how I made sure to change just about everything!

The phrase distinct society has been thrown around in reference to Québec for a few decades now. It’s more than a symbolic designation. And it’s more than an acknowledgment that French is the predominant language. But in day-to-day life today, the greatest “distinction” I can discern aside from the fact people generally have a more open and live-and-let-live attitude (at least in Montréal) is that this place has a stunningly complex and inflexible distinct bureaucracy.

It doesn’t matter that this is still a part of Canada. Very little is like how it is in the rest of the country. At the base of this difference is the Civil Code of Québec, whereas federally and in all other jurisdictions within Canada, the underlying code is British common law. And to those who believe the RoC (Rest of Canada) is intent on forcing Québec to its image and that the RoC does nothing to make Québec people “feel at home” within Confederation, I do like pointing to federal efforts to harmonize laws to fit with Québec’s civil law. In other words, it’s not the other way around.

When you consider the 10 major areas of law the Civil Code addresses, it’s little wonder that getting things done through the bureaucracy of Québec leaves people like me feeling that I’ve moved to a different country. But it’s not just that it’s different; it’s complicated. Insurance is different. Car registration is different. And very little is centralized.

I had a particularly unpleasant encounter last week with a stereotypical civil servant when I tried to have my car plates changed from Nova Scotia to Québec. He was condescending beyond belief because I didn’t know the rules and what has to be done. But the only thing that “saved” me in his book is that I spoke French like a Québecois, which he didn’t expect from someone arriving from Nova Scotia. An insulting back-handed compliment to say the least.

I finally should have everything in order with regard to Junior by the end of this week. Finally! For you see, to change my driver’s license, you have to make an appointment, the soonest I could get being two weeks from when I called. And Junior required a safety inspection costing $85, which he passed with flying colours, and he’ll never be required another one while we’re in Québec (unless we’re ordered to), unlike in Nova Scotia where he had to be inspected annually. The only silver lining in the walk through the maze of Québec bureaucracy is that my government health insurance and formal recognition of my being a resident of Québec will be done all at the same time.