Montréal vs. Berlin

A brief summary of differences between life in the two cities. Part of the "Montréal vs." series of posts...

• On weekends in Montréal, young people start drinking at home at 8 or 9 PM. Then, at some point between 10 PM and midnight, they go out drinking in bars and clubs until 3 AM when the bars all close. They then congregate at such places as la Banquise to grab a poutine and go home. In Berlin, young people start their evening at about midnight before heading out to a club that plays minimal techno some time after 4 AM. After dancing until well after sunrise, they grab a currywurst on the way home where they may continue the party before going to sleep.
• In Montréal, the four metro lines connect under half of the city together and do not run after about 1 AM on any night of the week. In Berlin, the more than 20 U- and S-bahn lines
  connect the vast majority of the city together and the S-Bahn even runs during the night on weekends. 
• In Montréal, most people speak at least two languages, English and French, but it is still not uncommon to find people that do not speak English (or French). In Berlin, most people speak at least two languages, German and English, but it is fairly common to find people that do not speak English (but likely speak Russian and are old).
• In Montréal, people talk of how St.-Laurent used to be seen as the divider between the east (Francophone-dominated) and west (Anglophone-dominated) parts of the city. In Berlin, a large wall known about around the world used to divide the city into its east (Communist) and west (Democratic) parts.
• In Montréal, people buy their beer at the local dépanneur before it closes at 11 PM. In Berlin, people buy their beer almost everywhere at any hour of the day.

Québec is to Canada what Catalonia is to Spain?

The following BBC article by Catalan journalist Walter Oppenheimer originally dealt with the effect of the Spanish World Cup victory on Spanish national unity; however, I have "adapted" it to the Canadian context. 

I would be stupid to claim that the Olympic gold medal in men's hockey is anywhere near the same level as the World Cup, but there is no denying that hockey at the Winter Olympics has become the de facto World Cup tournament for the sport and is militantly followed across the entire country.

The Québec political situation within the confederation of Canada has often been compared to the Catalan one within the Spanish republic - so much so that there was even a 2009 documentary on the subject, additionally looking at the Scottish situation within the UK. As the simple edits (Catalan -> Québécois, Spain -> Canada, football -> hockey, etc.) I've made to the article demonstrate, maybe these comparisons do indeed deserve to be made...

Original article here. All edits in italics...

Viewpoint: Does hockey unite Canada?

Is hockey helping to unite Canada? Can the Canadian Hockey Gold Medal victory achieve what no politician has been able to do for decades, if not centuries? I don't think so, I'm afraid. 

Victory in Vancouver was fantastic news. It will cheer up a country moderately depressed after the recession, inject a lot of confidence and help the Canadian people to go out and spend more and boost the recovery a bit. It may even help the unemployed - 8% of the working population - to look to the future in a better mood. But it's not going to end the so-called Québec problem.

Pragmatic patriotism

 

I'm Québecois myself, despite my name. I was born and raised in Montréal, but I'm not a patriot. Not a Canadian patriot, nor a Québecois one. Borders are not my cup of tea - I love to speak French in Toronto and English in Québec City. So I think I understand what the Québécois want, but I have a sense of perspective. And I love hockey. And the Habs [Montréal] in particular. The Canadian team, too. As millions of Québecois do.

 

Some Québécois hate the Canadian team, but most of them don't. Equally, some Québécois want independence but most of them don't. They might be ready to support it one day if necessary, but not yet, because they don't feel they need to be outside of Canada. 

Most Québécois are souverainistes, which is something rather different from pro-independence: they love Québec more than they love Canada, but they don't hate Canada. The same happens with the Canadian team: they support the squad, but they are not prepared to put the Canadian team before les Canadiens de Montréal, for example. It has always been like that. 

Playing to strengths

Politicians and the media claim these days that the key to the Canadian victory in Vancouver was unity - that it shows how important and easy it is to bury regional political differences. 

I think what this victory really shows is that Spain has a generation of fantastic players and, as important as that, some time ago decided to forget the stupid idea of "la furia". This was a very racial and Franco-era concept of football based on character rather than ability. Instead, Spain embraced the natural qualities of its players: passing and technique, rather than physical power.

The day before millions celebrated victory against the USA right across Canada - including in Montréal and Québec City - more than a hundred thousand people demonstrated in Montréal against a judicial decision to reduce the powers of the Québécois parliament. This problem is not going to disappear just because the mood has improved. Québécois celebrate the squad's victory and the rest of Canada happily accepts that Québécois players were the key to success.

All this is very welcome but it is not even new. The same happened in 1976, when the Olympic Games was a great success and Montréal was full of Québécois and Canadian flags. Optimism took hold of Canada, but the Québec problem didn't change one bit.

There was just one paragraph I couldn't make work. Canada never had a dictator, nor would it ever neglect physical power in selecting its hockey team!

I had to make a few additional changes because the article was set against the backdrop of a Spain in deep economic turmoil, a situation that differs in many ways from our current one in Canada.

les Montréalais vs. les Touristes

Un membre du site web Flickr, Eric Fischer, vient de publier plusieurs cartes de ville qui tentent de montrer les endroits les plus fréquentés par les touristes, ainsi que ceux fréquentés par les gens de la ville. Pour accomplir ce coup, il a profité de la grande quantité de photos «géotagué» sur Flickr. Parmi ce classement (premier rang: London, UK) figurent cinq villes canadiennes: Toronto (no. 10), Vancouver (no. 11), Montréal (no. 26), Ottawa (no. 44), et Calgary (no. 93). Les résultats pour la ville de Montréal (bleu pour les gens de la ville, rouge pour les touristes, et jaune pour on-ne-sait-pas) sont tout-à-fait fascinants, mais ils ne seront guère surprenants pour quelqu'un qui habite ici. Même si dans sa technique il y a beaucoup de possibilité de se tromper en faisant la différence entre un photographe local et un photographe étranger, on voit très bien que:

• le vieux port est le royaume des touristes,
• centre-ville est assez mixte
• les rues St-Denis et St-Laurent sont bien fréquentées et deviennent de moins en moins touristiques vers le «nord» («nord» montréalais!)
• le Jardin Botanique est plein de touristes 
• tout le monde qui visite Montréal prend un photo du belvédère Kondiaronk

(faites clic ici pour agrandir l'image) 

Découvert à travers du blog excellent «Information is Beautiful»

Brewpubs of Plateau Mont-Royal

Dieu du Ciel

(site) 
29 avenue Laurier Ouest
The best beer in Canada, some say. You'll find this brewpub beside a large fire-station when nearing the Mile End neighbourhood from the south. No terrace, but inside you'll find modest establishment that seats over a hundred. Very recently added a large television to the bar, likely after noticing that the bar was deserted during Habs games. At any given moment, they will have 10-20 of their own beers on tap, plus occasionally an "invite" or two. The saison, imperial stout, and IPA's are must-trys if you're a fan of the styles. More experimental beers they've served over the years include a pepper beer and a "umami" beer.

HELM

(site)
273 Bernard Ouest
"HELM" - Houblon, Eau, Levure, et Malte (hops, water, yeast and malt) - focuses more on ambiance than beer, but that's not to say they don't pour a decent pint. This lounge-style brewpub at the far north of Mile End serves a standard array of blanche, blonde, rousse, & noire - all well executed - in addition to offering a few more styles, such as a well-rounded and hoppy American pale ale and some seasonal brews.

Benelux

(site)
245 Sherbrooke Ouest
Named for the tri-nation economic union, one hopes that they draw most heavily from the "Be" portion in the Benelux. And they do. Benelux has 6-10 of their own beers on tap at any given time, sometimes adding a couple invited selections from other small Québec breweries. Having started conservatively in the brewing department, Benelux has amassed a big enough clientèle that it now feels free to branch out into the hoppier territory of double IPA's. Sit at the bar and you might find that your barman also takes part in some of the brewing and is happy to chat about beer. For larger groups, a former bank vault in the bar doubles as a semi-private room that seats about 15.

Le Réservoir 

(site)
9 Duluth Ouest
Just off of rue St-Laurent is le Réservoir, a great local bar with a 2nd floor and patio. They generally have about 8 of their own beers on tap. Their stout is full-bodied and  as are many of the others. Le Réservoir often fills up in the evening and becomes a standing-room-only affair. Food is generally good, but quite pricey. This is a great place to have a decent pint in the central Plateau.

The following two bars are not actually in the Plateau, but in the Quartier Latin. Due to their choice and proximity, they definitely deserve a mention:

Amère à Boire 

(site)
2049 Rue Saint-Denis
This relatively new brewpub has about 10 of their own beers on tap, changing with the seasons. Their imperial stout is delicious, as are some of their wheat beers.

Le Saint-Bock

(site)
1749 Rue Saint-Denis
The St-Bock does quite a few of their own beers, but also offers many hard-to-find Québecois beers on tap. Their menu boasts over 100 bottles of domestic and imported beer, but their prices justify sticking with the bière en fût.

Alternatively, on a warm and sunny day, you can always stop off at Le Paradis de la Bière (a.k.a. Chez Rahman), the best beer Dépanneur in Montréal with over 300 beers in stock, at 151 Laurier Ouest and then head to the park!

Wordle

Wordle is a great little website that lets users visualize how often words appear in large (or small) amounts of text. Their applet is made with an aesthetic eye, permitting the user to control the maximum number of words to include, the colour scheme, the font, and the alignment of the words. While there are surely some great and useful applications of this tool, I decided it would be fun to visualize the artists in my iTunes list. Simply exporting an iTunes list to xml will not work, so I'll provide the few steps required to make an image like mine...

1. Select all songs in iTunes library. Alternatively, for large lists, deselect all view options except "Artists." This will limit the amount of data exported to the clipboard and will speed things up. The song title, unfortunately, cannot be deselected.
2. Copy and paste this list into a spreadsheet program such as Excel, OpenOffice Spreadsheet, or Google Docs Spreadsheet.
3. Select the entire artists column; copy and paste this as unformatted text into a text document (Textpad, Notepad, TextEdit, etc. will suffice).
4. Do a "Find and Replace" of all the spaces. Replace them with tildes: "~". This is necessary so that Wordle considers "Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band" as "Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band" and not "Captain," "Beefheart," "and," "his," "Magic," & "Band."
5. Cut and paste this text into the first field of the Worde Create page.
6. Click on "Go," and adjust according to your taste.

Here's what I managed with the 400 (but not including the many mostly unfinished songs I've made under my own name) artists that appear the most often in my iTunes Library...

 

And here, the permalink Wordle gives you when you publish to their users' gallery:

If you click the "Advanced" tab, there is a way to manually define the weight of each word. For example, the provinces and territories of Canada weighted by population:

Les Monolingues, bilingues, trilingues, et au-delà: les polyglottes à l'extrême

Montréal est la ville la plus bilingue au Canada, et en plus la ville la plus trilingue au Canada avec, à compter de 2006, 18.4% de ses citoyens qui signalent qu'ils parlent au moins trois langues. J'ose même à dire que Montréal est la ville nord-américain avec le taux le plus élevé de citoyens trilingue. Ceçi est parce que je ne peux pas trouver une ville américaine ou mexicaine où: 1) deux langues (très probablement l'anglais et l'espagnol) sont très répandus et 2) une grosse quantité d'immigrants des pays non-hispaniques habite et parle anglais ainsi que l'espagnole. Aux É-U, il y a surement beaucoup de villes, notamment New York et les villes du sud où parfois on entend plus souvent l'espagnol que l'anglais, qui ont un population très bilingue, mais le titre de la ville la plus trilingue devrait appartenir à Montréal. Mais ça c'est juste en Amérique du Nord... très probable qu'une ville africaine, européen, ou asiatique gagnerait le titre mondial.

À Montréal, on rencontre souvent des latinos, arabes, asiatiques, italiens, portugais, haïtiens (et si vous ne croyez pas que le créole haïtien est sa propre langue, expliquez-moi qu'est-ce que le chauffeur dit quand il parle sur son radio la prochaine fois que vous prenez un taxi ici) et d'autres groupes d'immigrants qui sont à l'aise de s'exprimer en anglais et français, en plus de leurs langues maternelles. Ici, c'est un question de la nécessité de communiquer avec les deux cultures linguistiques, l'anglo-canadienne et la franco-canadienne, qui forment la base de la population de Montréal.

Mais il existe un autre type de personne dans le monde linguistique: le polyglotte. Je compte parmi mes amis quelques uns qui parlent couramment quatre ou cinq langues. C'est impressionnant, mais je veux parler des gens qui parlent encore plus de langues que ça. Le pape Jean-Paul II, par exemple, parlait polonais, espagnol, anglais, allemand, italien, français, latin, croate, russe et portugais. Ça c'est 10 langues, malgré que toutes sont écrites avec l'alphabet latin sauf le russe. Wikipédia donne une liste de quelques célèbres «hyper-polyglottes», dont Georges Dumézil, qui a maintenu qu'il parlait une bonne trentaine de langues. Quand les gens atteignent ce niveau de variété et de profondeur dans leur compréhension linguistique, on se demande comment ils ont fait pour arriver à ce point-là, et comment ils font pour entretenir leurs capacités. Pour répondre à ce question, je voudrais partager un vidéoclip d'un polyglotte américain, Alexander Arguelles, un homme tellement académique et autodiscipliné que ça va vous faire peur, qui nous raconte son «work-out» qu'il fait à chaque jour, son entrainement linguistique quotidien (en anglais)...

Canada's Economic Action Plan

Chances are that if you are living in Canada, you have seen some of the advertising the Conservatives have been doing to promote "Canada's Economic Action Plan." Television, print, Internet banners, billboards. It doesn't end. Many people must be wondering where all the money is going. I've taken the liberty to summarize the spending allocations of the plan in this pie chart.

The usually lacklustre, but still lovable, This Hour Has 22 Minutes team has their own rather insightful take on it...

How to learn French while living in Montréal: 9 Tips for Anglos Moving to la Métropole

     Montréal is a fun, vibrant, and diverse city with a great deal to offer young people. There are many reasons to move to the biggest city in la belle province, the chance to learn French amongst the majority francophone populace being one of the top.

     Many Canadians from the ROC (rest-of-Canada), as well as a significant number of Americans, move to Montréal with bright optimistic sparkles in their eyes, saying to themselves, "I'm moving to Montréal so I'm going to learn French!" Or, as is often the case, they are complacent with their grade twelve French-language education obtained in Kenora, Kelowna, Kentville or wherever and have a strong belief that they are already fully in the know and will be able to speak with the best of them once established in the city. After spending a few years in Montréal, however, the majority of Anglophones have only marginally improved their capacities in the language of Molière. But why do some Anglophones succeed and others fail in this endeavour?

     The problem stems from the fact that Montréal has a large Anglophone population and that most of its Francophones speak a pretty good English.

     In Montréal, whether a conversation between an Anglophone and a Francophone takes place in English or French will depend on four things:

- the Anglophone's ability to speak French,

- the Francophone's ability to speak English,

- the stubbornness of the Anglophone in keeping the conversation going in French (or conversely, his or her shyness and lack of confidence in doing this),

- and finally, the stubbornness of the Francophone in keeping the conversation going in English (or conversely, his or her shyness and lack of confidence in doing this).

     As an Anglophone learning French, you can control only two of these. The following tips aim to help Anglophones arriving in Montréal to maximize the amount of French "immersion" they get through optimizing these two variables, as well as ensuring communication in French becomes a day-to-day happening:

1. Speak in French as often as you can

     This is the obvious one. Whether you are buying a ticket for the métro, ordering une pinte de rousse at a microbrasserie, or asking for directions, always start out in French. Formulate what you're going to say in your head and then blurt it out. Whether or not the person understands you right away and whether or not you understand his or her response is irrelevant. The point is to speak French as much as possible. And just adding a measly "merci" when ordering does not count!

2. Be selective when making friends

     It sounds harsh and pretentious, but it is something everyone automatically does anyway, albeit different people to different extents. So, if you are really serious about learning French, why not do your best to surround yourself with French-speakers. Do this and you will invariably be hearing and speaking more French.

     I am recommending that you maximize the amount of Francophone friends you have by pursuing the friendships you form with Francophones more actively than those you form with Anglophones. How you do this is up to you.

     Of course, in following this rule, don't avoid becoming good friends with someone you really get along with because they are an Anglophone and, likewise, don't become friends with some wanker just because he's a francophone! The extent to which you should follow this rule is your choice.

     Aside: Be warned that many young people from France - and there are a tonne of them on university exchanges and Working Holiday Visas in Montréal - are going to want to do the exact same thing (but with the languages reversed, of course) to help themselves learn English during their stay in Montréal. This can lead to some very aggressive and infuriating attempts on both sides to direct the conversation into the language of the other. To an external observer, these conversations can often be a source of great humour!

3. Integrate French-language media into your life as much as possible

     This one is rather easy to do, but you have to make sure you use it. For the absolute beginner, this may be something you'll want to do a little down the road. For those who are initiated in the language, there is no reason you should not be doing this right now. When you read news online, try to read it in French (see SRC, Le Devoir, or RFI, for example). Use Facebook? Change your language settings to "Français (Canada)." Watch CBC? Watch Radio-Canada (with closed captioning, if desired) instead. Taking the métro? Read the free "Métro" or (the slightly trashier) "24H" publications being handed out at the entrances. Like books? Read French-language books. And so on and so on.

     Sure it will take you longer to decipher and you will likely not understand 100% of the content, but you will be doing yourself a favour. Coupling written media with conversation is an excellent way to simultaneously improve your written and spoken French.

     There are some tools I recommend you add to Firefox (there are surely equivalents for other browsers): "Wordreference en-->fr" and "Wordreference fr-->en" are great bilingual dictionary search bar plug-ins for quick definition look-ups. For news, adding RSS feeds of French news sources is a great idea.

4. Keep a list of words that you learn

     Whether this is a digital or physical document is up to you, but keeping a list of your new French words is a great way to help your brain retain new information. If you are a student, or work in a job where you are often in front of a computer, one suggestion is to create a Google Document or continuously-editable e-mail draft with all your new words. Try to put in a few everyday. The simple act of looking up a definition - or asking someone what a certain word means - and then typing or writing it down will greatly aid you in expanding your vocabulary.

5. Drink and be social (en français, ôstie!)

     This is most useful when you are at the point when you have a decent vocabulary, but are lacking in practise and confidence in using it. But it is recommended at all stages. Drinking, as most of us know and appreciate, lets us feel a little bit looser and slightly more daring, great things for someone trying to speak a new language! Many people learning a language will tell you that they speak better when they are drinking. And this is probably true, although part of it is a matter of altered perception.

     There is one caveat. Over the course of a night, as you are consuming more and more La Fin du Monde and your French speaking abilities are rivaling those of native speakers, you will retaining fewer and fewer of the words you're learning. However, I am a staunch believer that alcohol presents a stronger benefit to the sociable French-learner than it does hindrance. Alors, buvez et jasez autant que possible!

6. Avoid Anglophone-dominated enclaves in the city

     This one is a bit tricky if you are not yet familiar with the city of Montréal, so I will try to give some examples after outlining the rationale for this tip. In deciding where to live and what parts of the city to frequent, you can help yourself be exposed to more French. This ties in a lot with Tips #1, 2 and 7.

     In Montréal, there are several quartiers where you probably shouldn't live if you are really, really serious about immersing yourself. This is not to say that they are not interesting areas, just that in these areas, you will come across more Anglos than French-speakers. At some level, it is at least interesting to be have a basic idea of some of the linguistic regions of the city!

     The McGill Ghetto (roughly defined as the area bounded by rue Sherbrooke on the S side, boulevard St-Laurent on the E side, ave. des Pins on the N, and rue University on the W), due to its proximity to McGill University, is dominated by English-speakers. You will learn very little French living in this part of the city.

     Mile-End is a fun place with some great shops and bars, despite now being overrun with hipsters. Francophones here are plentiful, but are far from the majority.

     "The West Island" refers, ostensibly, to the west of the island of Montréal, a very anglophone-dominated. Most of the communities here decided to secede from the forced unification of the City of Montréal

     Westmount, is the traditional seat of Anglophone dominance of majority-Francophone Montréal. Many Québecois still hold this part of the city in contempt and it is probably not the best part of the city for learning French.

     Other places deserve mention too. Downtown, especially the Concordia University area and towards the west, is very English and won't be your best bet for getting your français up to par. The Plateau is a very fun and diverse arrondisement that is, in my opinion, the most fun and interesting part of the city. It is worth knowing that from boul. St-Laurent west is very English (see Mile-End and the McGill Ghetto above) and from St-Denis east is very French.

     All-in-all, the linguistic boundaries of the city are partly imaginary and you will likely figure out fairly quickly where there are more English or French speakers (and additionally, where there are lots of Portuguese, Spanish, Haitian Creole, Arabic, etc. speakers). The point of this tip is just to say that that if you move to Montréal and, for example, live in Westmount and go to Concordia, or live in the McGill Ghetto and go to McGill, expect to find becoming bilingual rather tedious!

7. Live with Francophones
     Living with des colocs francophones will definitely help you learn the language. Even if they are perfectly bilingual and mostly speak to you in English, they will be happy to help you out now and then with words and constructs you don't understand. Furthermore, through them you will likely make more Francophone friends, maybe even the magic one who only speaks to you in French.

8. Get out of town 

     Once you leave Montréal, you will find that the relatively high amount of English-speakers in the city is a bit of an anomaly in the province of Québec. Outside of Montréal, with exception of the eastern townships, there are very few Anglopones in the province. Trips out of the city can be a great chance to immerse yourself into the language and to expose yourself to a larger variety of accents (some arguably more pleasant to the ear than others!).

9. Meet that special someone

     This could be your silver bullet. Doing this right might turn you fully fluent in a few months flat. Mix a bit of tips #1, 2, 5 and 6 together, add some charm and a dash of instinct, and you may find yourself with une baise, or better yet, une blonde or un chum.

     There is no understating how much a francophone girlfriend or boyfriend who speaks with you in French (even if it's just part of the time) can improve your French. Sharing pillows, as the euphemistic adage goes, is the best way to learn to speak a language. In what other situation can you have multiple hours per day of interaction in the language you are trying to learn, as well as many other benefits? This is, in my opinion, the most enjoyable and most effective method for learning any language. And who knows, you might just find le grand amour...

     Whew. So there they are, my 9 tips. They are mostly directed at 20-something-year-old Anglophones moving to Montréal, but I think they can be of use to a variety of people striving to learn French through real "immersion." I hope they help someone out. 

     And if you have any other tips that you find have helped you learn French in Montréal (or elsewhere), let me know in the comments. Bonne chance à tous!