The Royal Mountain of Quebec

Hi!

Forgi and I went with her folks to Montreal and Ottawa last week! It was fun!

In Montreal, we stayed 3 nights and had two days sightseeing in the Old Port area where there are lots of historic buildings and pleasant water views. We could have easily occupied oourselves for a week or more with what there was to do and see in Montreal, but that will have to wait for another time. We were staying on the French-speaking side of the main river-bound island (okay both sides are bilingual, but the side we were on leaned toward French), so we confused a few waitresses by saying "Bonjour!" and then staring blankly at them when they continued in fluent French. We were staying in the Latin quarter, on Rue St Christophe (Avenue), which was near a whole bunch of restaurants.

Here are some photos of Montreal:

The Chapelle Notre-Dame-de-Bonsecours. Originally a relatively humble chapel built by the early settlers, including a rather determined "uncloistered nun" by the name of Marguerite Bourgeoys. The rear section (originally built as a school house) had been converted into a history museum which was very informative. It seems Ms Bourgeoys travelled the Atlantic 7 times during her 80 years. There is an interesting portrait painting of her that had been painted over several times over the centuries. In the 20th century, they discovered this using x-rays and decided to see what the original looked like - quite different! The original painting was of an old, very lived-in face of a woman who obviously had a lot going on, whereas the idealised version that had ended up on top after multiple re-paintings looked much more like the old woman who'll sit you down with a cup of hot chocolate and ry your clothes.


Lots of big churches in the area of various denominations. Here is the church of the ABC (see the ABC logo in the centre of the picture). Actually, the logo is an M and an A superimposed, and was seen in several places, including on a seminary building which was the oldest building on the island.

Another old-manor-turn-museum in the middle of town had a large vegetable garden. I think these cabbages seemed much more impressive still in the ground than when they finally end up chopped up and steamed on your dinner plate.

The City Hall. There were several buildings around with the green roofs such as this. There were tours going on in the interior, which was very dark due to very little natural light being let in. There was a large display panel inside that talked a lot about the 1967 Montreal Expo and the 1976 Olympics, two events which the authorities are still raving about.

From the top of the chapel, we could see people riding around on these weird 2-wheel things that looked halfway between a manual mower and a pogo stick. We checked it out at the waterfront that afternoon - they're gyroscopically controlled so you just lean in the direction you want to go. It looked like heaps of fun; too bad we were all pretty tired and we would have had to wait 2 hours to get a go (and the Robbins' are a bunch of wusses when it comes to rides ;-).

An apartment complex called Habitat 67, which is considered an eye-sore by many locals. It's a conglomerate of more than 100 apartments arranged in cubes in such a way that the windows of any apartment aren't looking into the windows of any other apartment. The result looks like something hornets built.

The Basilica de Notre Dame. Half the churches in Montreal seem to be called Notre Dame ("Our Lady" ie Mary) but this is the big bad one. Built in the 1800's when they had plenty of money, everything is covered in gold. The contrast between Marguerite's relatively humble chapel and this behemoth monument to the greatness of God (amongst other mortals who apparently thought they were pretty good too, including the musketeering founder of Montreal, Paul de Chomedey, of whom there is a pedestal statue in the square in front of the basilica) is marked. The building sports "fake" gothic architecture, including a cylindrical internal roof that isn't actually weight-bearing because they had figured out how to do A-frame roofs by then.

Inside the Basilica, a wooden staircase winds to the top of the intricately-decorated pulpit. A great vantage point from which to give a sermon to the masses - and I doubt too many of them would contradict you either.

The light was low inside, so I turned off my camera flash and used longer exposure - pardon the not-terribly-steady hands. The organ over the entrace was very impressive. Still, I didn't feel like I was in a particularly "holy" place, rather than a place that was designed to impress and even scare into submission. I thought this was a really interesting place, not least as an example of what the church saw fit to do with money in the 1800's. I'd go to a classical music concert here, but I wouldn't want to go to a wedding - too weird having a statue behind the altar of Abraham about to sacrifice his son.

Anyway, we actually did heaps more than this, but couldn't take photos inside the museums. One museum on the waterfront had an entire subterranian layer where they'd unearthed the foundations of early Montreal buildings. One spot used to be the governor's house, and now it has the main museum building, and then you can walk under the street through an old sewer (cleaned up of course ;-) through to the remains of a fountain square that also used to have, at various times, a guard house, a warehouse, and a gate into the city.

Anyway, blogger is about the crash on me so hitting "publish" now...
Cheers
Ben