Allez a Montreal! (Translation: Let's Go to Montreal!) -- by Anne Shier (a.k.a. "Annie")

Celina Martin had wanted to visit Montreal, Quebec for a very long time.  The last time she’d recalled being anywhere near Montreal was in 1967 when she and her family had visited Expo ’67.  Then, she was only 15 years old.  She and her family had camped in a tent just outside the city and had gone to see the wondrous sights of Canada’s celebration of her 100^th birthday.  It was a grand occasion for all Canadians and a chance to show how proud they all were of their great country.  In that regard, Celina was no different than any other native-born Canadian.  She truly loved Canada and, in particular, Quebec, which is known as “La Belle Province”.  Those residents of Canada who were not connected somehow to Quebec did not seem, at the time, to appreciate the individuality and uniqueness of the French-Canadian people and their culture.  French-Canadians in Quebec had a lot to offer Canada then, and still do today.  She, quite naturally, wanted to re-discover her French-Canadian heritage.  But, the awful memory of her first visit when she was a young teenager had continued to stay with her.

Whenever Celina recalled their first visit to Montreal, she knew that it had not been anywhere near the great experience that it should have been.  Now that she was mature and had the means to travel wherever and whenever she desired, she wanted to re-visit Montreal.  Incredibly, it had been a quarter of a century since she’d been there, though it had been only 12 years since she’d visited Quebec City with three girlfriends on a wild weekend trip to the Quebec Winter Carnival.  At that time, she was 27 years old.  That trip had been a real adventure, lots of fun and far too short.  Celina reflected back on that fabulous trip. 

Celina and her three girlfriends, Sylvie, Nancy and Sherry, had gotten on a Greyhound bus bound for Quebec City from Toronto.  The bus had left downtown Toronto with a full bus load at precisely 12:00 midnight on a Friday night in February and had traveled all night until arriving at its destination.  No one on that bus slept on the way there – they were all too busy telling jokes and stories and laughing together.  Upon their arrival in Quebec City, everyone got off the bus at 8:00 am and proceeded to have a great time at the Quebec Winter Carnival for that entire Saturday.  Then, at Saturday midnight, they re-mounted the bus to return to Toronto.  By this time, everyone was exhausted, not having slept for the last 24 hours.  Though they, at first, laughed and joked around with each other, they finally settled down to sleep a good portion of the journey home.  It was a trip to remember.  One of the girls had met a special guy during their trip that she would date and later marry (and stay married to forever it seemed).  In fact, they’d all met someone of the opposite sex, but Celina was not yet ready for a commitment to anyone then.

Previously, when she was only 15, while most of the Martin family had gone off to visit the Expo ’67 fair grounds in Montreal (because, after all, that’s the reason they were there), Celina suddenly came down with a mysterious illness that rendered her too ill to enjoy the lovely pavilions and exhibits of Expo ’67.  Thus, she chose to stay at the camp ground in the family’s tent, resting, hoping that this sudden illness would somehow disappear overnight.  It didn’t happen.  The next day, she became even more ill and her parents were finally forced to take her to see a French-Canadian doctor.  They found her one on the Expo ’67 fair grounds and he carefully examined her right ear for redness, inflammation, pain and infection.  As expected, she did have the beginnings of a middle-ear infection developing, no doubt from the many trips to the somewhat unsanitary public swimming pool close to home that she and her two little sisters liked to frequent during the summer months.  At the time, the family didn’t know how serious her illness really was.  Celina appeared to be recovering soon after starting the medication given to her.

After a few days of visiting Expo ’67, instead of going back home to Toronto, they continued on their vacation out to New Brunswick to see the east coast of Canada for the very first time.  It was so beautiful to view the vastness of the Atlantic Ocean at the Bay of Fundy and admire the tall, narrow islands (“flower pots”) that dotted the ocean’s shores.  Celina just loved it there; the whole family loved it there.  Canada’s east coast is truly wonderful to experience.  The camp grounds were clean and well-kept and actually had indoor plumbing and showers located in outdoor washroom cabins – far nicer than using outhouses as toilets.

For the first two or three nights, Celina continued taking the medication that the doctor in Montreal had prescribed her and she began to feel a little better. The pain and inflammation subsided and everyone thought she was getting better.  Then, the antibiotics were finished and, mysteriously, she started to get ill again.  No one knew what was happening.  This had to be one hell of an infection if she wasn’t getting better.  There had to be a reason for its continuation.  But, there were no doctors immediately available this time and she started spending an awful lot of time in the public washrooms late at night bent over the sink, trying to ease her piercing ear ache.  She used hot water and ice intermittently, knowing these things could ease swelling and pain.  It wasn’t working – nothing was.  She got worse and worse and feared that the family vacation was going to be ruined.  Either she would end up in a hospital in nearby Moncton, New Brunswick, or they have to leave for home early.  Celina did not relish ruining everyone’s vacation, but something had to be done.  Finally, her father, in his desperation, decided that the family would pack up all of their camping equipment, clothes and food and drive non-stop all the way back to Toronto.  This trip, unlike the one going east, was not going to be at all pleasant.  Celina was in great pain and discomfort the whole way home.

Both her father and mother took turns driving the car and it was very hard on the entire family since the trip from New Brunswick took at least 12 hours.  There were only a couple of stops for gas and food-on-the-go.  When they finally got home, her mother immediately took Celina to their family doctor and he gave her a second strong regimen of antibiotics, as expected, but he also administered some very powerful ear drops that would eventually cure the damage done to the inside of her right ear from the infection.  This medication took quite a while to work, mainly because it took forever for the ear drops to make their way down the extremely narrow canal into her now very swollen middle-ear.  She was completely miserable for the next month while she was healing, but she did get better finally.  The thing that she felt worst about was that, if it hadn’t been for her illness, the family would have had a great time, both in Montreal and in New Brunswick.  Her illness had created a very unpleasant memory that would stay with her a long, long time.

This time though, in 2011, she knew her trip to Montreal would be very different.  She had been asked by a teacher colleague of hers at their high school to accompany him and 8 teenagers to a conference.  It was a “Model UN” conference for high school students in which they would carefully research and then discuss and debate current international issues.  The students who could put up the best arguments and counter-arguments on the various issues discussed were eligible to win an award.  The conference was to last 4 days, including the trip in and out of Montreal.  Celina experienced just a moment’s hesitation about deciding to go with them, but then, she quickly realized that this was a golden opportunity to make some new memories about Montreal.  She told her colleague, Jack, that she would be delighted to go with them.  Upon reflection, she became excited about making a trip now that she had already decided she needed to make at some point.  It was an opportunity to be in the city of Montreal for the first time, eat some of the special foods found there, and see “Old Montreal”, the part of the city that was a few hundred years old and historically important.

Though she did have her students’ report card marks to prepare and finalize for submission on the following Monday, she was very happy to be a female chaperon to the half dozen girls on the trip, two of whom would share Celina’s room.  She decided that her marks would get done on time, one way or another.  Their hotel, the Delta Centre-Ville, was in the city’s centre.  It was a very nice, deluxe hotel and the rooms they were booked into, though small, were comfortable with nice beds.  They had left Scarborough, Ontario via the "Megabus", Coach Canada's daily bus service, at 8:30 am for Montreal, a 6-hour trip.  It was relatively comfortable on the trip there and besides, Celina had found a seat mate with whom she could carry on an adult conversation, which helped pass the time.  The trip to Montreal, thus, went by fairly quickly.  There were no scheduled rest stops along the way; those were reserved mainly for the night runs (on the way back) when the driver had to be replaced by a relief driver and snacks and drinks were obtainable by the passengers.

Once they finally got to the Montreal bus station (Station Centrale) in the downtown area, they still had to make their way to the hotel by subway (le metro).  The metro is designed similarly to the one in Paris, France.  It is extremely easy to navigate because all the subway lines are coloured on the map of the system, which would tell travelers where they were currently located and how they could get to the station they wanted.  The final destination station’s name was used to identify each subway line.  Celina liked this system so much that she resolved that when she came to Montreal on her own, she would spend a good deal of her time on the metro, trying to find her way around.  It would be an adventure that she would cherish.  Her French was good enough for her to read it; if she had any weakness, it was because she didn’t use conversational French much in Toronto.  In Montreal, however, there were plenty of opportunities for using French conversationally; she loved that part of it and it reminded her of her wonderful trip to Paris in the early 1990s when she was a young adult and starting to travel more without her family.

The time she spent in Montreal with Jack and the 8 students for whom they were responsible was truly memorable.  They ate dinner at Reuben’s Restaurant the first night where they ate famous Montreal smoked meat sandwiches.  The food was delicious!  Celina felt truly at home in Montreal where she could speak French daily as much as she wanted.  The second night, they ate dinner at a small restaurant in Old Montreal called Papillon (meaning “Butterfly” in English).  There, they could order anything they wanted.  Celina always wanted to order something she didn’t ordinarily eat when she wasn’t at home because, after all, that’s what vacations are all about, aren’t they?  So, she decided to order beef bourguignon because it reminded her of France and French cooking.  Later that night, they walked back to their hotel along the narrow, cobble-stoned streets of Old Montreal looking into the windows of the many small shops and art galleries along the way.  A good time was had by all. 

Two days later, after they had returned to Toronto and were back at school again, Celina thanked Jack profusely for this marvellous opportunity to see the sights of Montreal, sample the wonderful foods there, and, most of all, to speak her native Quebecois French.  This particular trip would most definitely replace the one that had haunted her for so long when she was only 15 and had given her some wonderful memories to carry with her from now on.