English if you did
first, and would reply in French, likewise, if you spoke
French. The French Canadians were bilingual; they had to be.
But you could feel the French Canadian sense of under-class.
The wealthy English minority, with corporate control, and
colonial loftiness, made the French feel weak and inferior
in their own time and place and spawned, at the extreme, the
FLQ. Past St Laurent, however, French was predominant and
English speaker might be forced to attempt the language
without sympathy or assistance. Though we never saw bombings
or violence, these tensions were manifest in people's
manner, tone and attitude. Tension was in the air - a large
part of the soul of Montreal. In a more complete reminiscence I would have to tell about Stan Shaffer, a literary intellect, who arrived to SGWU from UCLA and became an instant friend; I remember that, within days of knowing him, he loaned me $5.00 for food; Barry Thompson from Calgary also studying English Literature and regular apartment guest for talk, beer and TV; Milly Ristvedt, painter and model who used to walk around our apartment naked on those many nights she stayed with us after the clubs closed; Bob Brookes, from New York - my friend and partner in a psychology experiment and one-time alto sax student of Eric Dolphy and who like Walker became a college student and put his horn away; Ron Proby, Vancouver jazz trumpeter who I followed around from club to club and who occasionally visited the apartment for a needed meal; Nancy Geller, student and artist and friend; Dwight Gardiner, the blazing young poet from Calgary sporting a Smith Brother's cough drop beard, fellow beer drinker, and expert on New American poetry and poetics; Derek Bennett, student and post modern prose writer before the term was invented, and my co-editor of the SGWU literary journal Prism; Peter Leitch [link to two tracks from his latest CD in Realaudio format], jazz guitarist, now a premier player in New York City, who I got to know during a jam session at his mother's house; Roy Kiyooka, teacher, poet artist who turned me on to Ezra Pound, and lent me his copy of For Love. Many other friends came to visit briefly: Brian Coulter, Judy Johnson, Karen Kunelias, Doug Harding, Jane Carter, Brad Robinson, and Bill Reuter who hand printed my first book - these are the people I remember as germane to our life there.
Did we weep in our short homage and goodbye to Montreal? Then we were young in the time machine, but knew in that moment of leaving--this blurred scape had entered our hearts forever. A note on the title: While having a pleasurable talk and reminiscence with artie Gold in Montreal this May, he as a curious question that stuck with me: Why in science fiction do the time machines have chairs? This presumes that time-travellers have to ironically sit and wait in the present before transporting to more desirable destinations in the future or past. We didn't wrestle long with the question, but his line, "chairs in the time machine" stayed with me as the right title for the memoir about Montreal that I wanted to write. |