Invading Canada and Invading the Market

Yesterday, I visited the Chateau Ramezay which has a storied history of being the residence of Montreal's governor in 1717, Ramezay (for which the chateau was named), the home of subsequent French West Indies Company, British invaders and administrators, and even a seven-month stint as the wartime headquarters of the Continental Army during the American Revolution. As such, it has exhibits that explained the history of early Montreal and showed a diorama of the Iroquois village that likely existed before European settlement. It then moved on to the early founders of Montreal and those that transformed Montreal into a industrious colony of France that centered mainly around the lucrative fur trade, especially of beaver pelts. After the exhibits dealing with the fur trade, Montreal's first influential citizens, and how they dealt with and traded with the native people, they showed artifacts such as British officer uniforms and the like to show Montreal's invasion and subsequent surrender to British forces. Of course, being a citizen of the United States and going through the trouble of obtaining an American Studies concentration, I found it especially entertaining learning of the Chateau Ramezay's time in the possession of the Continental Army. According to the audio tour, the only thing that kept the colony loyal to Great Britain was Great Britain's own strategy of preemptively placating Montreal's main complaints against the crown in 1774. Alternatively, it may also have been the small pox ravaging the American forces attacking Quebec, but in either theory the result was that Canada did not become the fourteenth state of our great union.

While the Chateau Ramezay was my main objective for the day, I also happened upon two unexpected places while trying to return to my metro station through the labyrinth of city construction project, closed roads and sidewalks, and detours. First I encountered the Mache Bonsecours a building that has served as a public market, a concert hall, Montreal's city hall, and even the Parliament of Lower Canada. It became a permanent public market in 1859 and today it houses a dozen or so boutique stores, a tiny museum, and a few restaurants. Technically I visited this site second, but the first photos I took were with my phone and so you will have to scroll all the way to the bottom to see its beautiful grey dome. I visited each of the little boutiques and enjoyed a productive, if expensive, shopping day that included some handmade crafts from Canada's local native peoples and a special tea sold here called Icewine Tea, which I am excited to try when I return home. Luckily a quick call home prevented me from dropping a few hundred dollars on a fur scarf or fur "hat ring" (it wasn't going to be for me, but I thought it looked nice). Either way, I enjoyed walking through the trendy, narrow hallways of the boutique mall and I felt good about buying certified Canadian handicrafts rather than "Canadian" souvenirs made in China.

The third location was the tiny Notre-Dame-De-Bon-Secours (sharing the last part of its name with the market) whose beauty is better expressed by pictures, so enjoy!

Traveling Through the Biodome and Traveling with New Friends

Today included a journey through three different ecosystems, a four-hour wait in line to see said ecosystems, and a trip through the dark past of my Jewish heritage. All in all, it was an exciting and expansive day. To the great relief of my mental state while waiting in that line (it was Montreal Museum Day and free museums equates to disturbingly long lines) I was joined by a fellow Magellanite, Jess, who just happened to have picked the same dates and city as me. After a sweltering wait in the heat and beaming sun, we were welcomed into the ecosystem of the tropics. Almost a cruel joke to leave the heat of outside, enter the air-conditioned lobby, and return to an even more hot and humid area, Jess joked that making the tropical ecosystem the first upon entry a design flaw.

After journeying through the humid heat of the tropics, the next ecosystem of the Biodome was a Laurentian Maple Forest that was thankfully cooler. In each of the ecosystems, we were surprised to see as many animals as we did. We had both thought the Biodome was part arboretum and part greenhouse, we had no idea that actual animals were present and we were happy to find out that we had stepped into a miniature zoo as well.

After our minor bout of dehydration and sunburn (some people suffered more than I did), we ate at a diner, realized our trip to the Biodome had hemorrhaged our time more than expected for the day and decided we could only make one of the two museums we had wanted to go to for the rest of the day. To put the time spend waiting for and wandering through the Biodome into perspective, we started out at a little earlier than 10:00 AM, and by the time we had sat down to hydrate and eat lunch (the first time either of us had eaten anything all day up until that point) it was past 3:00 PM.

The Biodome from a distance

Humble Beginnings and Humble Buses

First off, I would like to say that exchanging a simple hour or so flight (even though the shortest would have taken about two and a half hours due to a layover between Toronto and Montreal) for about 24 hours of bus travel was a mistake. A great, money-saving, mistake. Granted, the $200 plus dollars I spent on busing here saved me plenty of money to do more in Montreal, but I never understood the emptiness of bus travel until today. My convoluted journey from Pittsburgh to Montreal was by way of  Pittsburgh to Youngstown, Youngstown to Buffalo, Buffalo to Syracuse, Syracuse to Ottawa, and Ottawa to Montreal. That ordeal included the use of five buses, a five hour layover in the most barren bus station known to man in Youngstown, and a route that started by taking me further from my destination. It made getting to Montreal all the sweeter when I finally arrived, and offered a much different experience that my previous flights.

Even though I fear this is more of the same, I feel it necessary to describe what I meant by a "barren bus station" in Youngstown. To start off, I am pretty sure that the bus station was actually closed for the majority of the time I was waiting there, and the single guard there was friendly enough to let me stay. There were no restaurants, tiny convenience stores, or any of the usual fare you would expect of a bus station or airport terminal. Instead, besides the central circular desk that was the pulpit of the armed guard, the station's interior has a semicircle of about 7 or 8 vending machines that ranged from the usual snacks and drinks,to a coffee vending machine that reminded me far too much of the one from Better Call Saul's opening episodes. After I had been sitting there for maybe a half hour, the guard suggested I get food from a deli a couple blocks away and told me he would be watching for me to unlock the doors for me when I returned. I happily obliged, and when I got to the "deli" which is deserving of its dubious quotations, I was surprised to see it was a deli/convenience store. Apparently in Youngstown, Ohio, a deli/convenience store equates to fried chicken, cigarettes, a shocking amount of booze, and admittedly, a pretty solid convenience store component. I was a little upset not to be getting pastrami or corned beef on rye, but at least I was able to buy some premade pepperoni rolls and use their microwave. Then I returned to the station, realized I had to kill four more hours on a backless bench, and promptly drained 80% of my cell phone's battery watching That 70's Show while balancing my phone on a window sill and sitting backwards on a bench.

Lake Ontario after we crossed the border.