Day Two - 10/18/07 - Francophones and Anglophones

We left Berg’s bright and early in the afternoon to start the trip to Canada. Montreal was only about 2 hours from Johnson State College, where we’d spent the night, so we made our way there pretty quickly. The Canadian border was pretty uninteresting. The guard greeted us, “Bonjour, Hello.” And asked for our passports and began checking all of our identification and asking us random questions about what we were carrying. After phrasing one of the most baffling questions I’ve ever had to answer in order to ascertain how much money we had in the bank, he straightened up and suddenly said “I am satisfied.” He said it with the tonality of an internet browser that had just accepted an e-mail password. He tried to follow up with some monotonous ‘jokes’ as we crossed the border into Quebec, but we were already fully aware that he was a robot. I decided to draw a picture for posterity. He looked something like this:



The countryside in southern Quebec is covered in golden fields and farmland. The road was flanked with wheat, pastures and silos for most of the way until we started approaching Montreal. Once we crossed the border, the speed limit changed to 90, and I (who was driving) was close to uttering an audible “Fuck yeah!” until I realized it was in kilometers. The speed limit had actually gone down. It was now about 55 mph. I decided not to say ‘Fuck yeah’ anymore.

As we approached Montreal, the highway was lined on the left side with tall lampposts, and on the right side with gigantic iron structures holding up telephone wires. They looked like massive metal giants standing guard and leading us into the city in the distance. It gave a weird surreal dystopian look to the yellow afternoon.

We finally arrived in Montreal, which was a really nice city. Parts of it felt like old Europe, which was comforting as we began getting irreversibly lost on the sporadically one-way, French-named streets, in search of the apartment which contained Gordon and Bryan’s high school friend Caroline, who went to college in the city.



We found the street finally, after I went the wrong way and almost killed 3 French-Canadians and our entire car. I’ve never driven in a city before, and a foreign city whose first language I know three words of thanks to Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, was probably not the best place to start. We found the place and met Caroline and her roommates, who were lovely. Caroline, who is a warm, funny outgoing, person, invited us to stay the night in their living room, as we had nowhere else to sleep that night. We were set to go out to dinner with her friends too, so we settled in and got ready for the night.

In the city of Montreal, Humanity’s constant need to divide itself into irreconcilable, warring factions manifests itself as the Francophones (French speakers) and Anglophones (English speakers). We were warned before we headed to dinner, that the two groups tended to exchange pleasantries and then split into themselves for the rest of the night. Now I would have made a concerted effort if I were even vaguely bilingual in that regard to try to talk to the other side. My friends and I, however, all speak fluent English and a rudimentary amount of Spanish, and only about 3 words of French, so there was really no effort that we could put forth. It’s hard to have a hearty philosophical conversation with “Hello”, “Yes”, “Goodbye” and “I’m the young girl”. Yeah I learned that from that old Muzzy commercial (Je suis la jeune fille!). I can say that, and I don’t even know how to say “No.”

There were about 12 of us in total, and we set out for the restaurant in a large group, walking quickly through the chilly Montreal night. We became split up on the way there for various reasons, some of Caroline’s friends wanted to look in a Halloween store, I needed to go to an ATM to get Canadian dollars, and so on, and by the time we turned up at the restaurant, we (the Anglophones) were the last ones there, and the Francophones had already dominated the left side of the table. We gathered around the right side of the table, and realized that there was no stopping the division of the languages. We were declared the ‘west side’, and had to be given special English menus, because all of the regular ones were in French. Within 15 minutes there was a shocking clarity to the separation. They were gathered on their side of the table, speaking in their gushy, fluid language, dressed nicely in dark clothes, all drinking glasses of red wine. Meanwhile on the Anglo side, we were all dressed in our ragged brown road trip clothes, drinking pints of beer, talking in our sharp, brassy language. There was nothing we could do (They all spoke English as well, so the ball was really in their court), so we just ordered our tapas. I got something called a “lamb cigar” which we thought was hilarious. It turned out to be pretty small, and after 2 Groucho Marx jokes, I realized I wasn’t funny and just ate it.


After dinner, we headed to a bar, and a few people left, so the smaller group was able to talk easier, and the lines between the Francs and Anglos was finally broken. We talked about summer camps, and winter in Canada, and tons of random things, and it became a pretty nice night. Montreal was a really great town, and I just wish we got a chance to see more of it. We stopped at one more bar, and after a hearty pint of Guinness and a discussion of the joys of the completion of the public school system, headed home for bed. We had a longer day of driving the next day, the trip into Ontario to Sudbury would be about 9 hours, so we vowed to get up at 7:30, and went to bed.
We woke up at 11.