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...