Canada Day

It’s been very quiet, and very steamy today. I went for a walk this afternoon, into the nearby Town of Mont Royal, a wealthy area within Montreal that is separate from the city, with its own government and municipal services. No barbecues, no flags on anyone’s porch, no signs of family gatherings. The only people I saw were hired garden service workers, trying to take a break from the humidity under a shady tree, and a few kids on the playground of the park where I stopped to sit on a bench, and took this picture of what I saw overhead. When I got home I was so overheated that I went downstairs and got in the pool.

Also seen on my walk: a reminder that in Canada, the wilderness is never very far away.

Although I am trying to get plenty of exercise, my ulterior motive for the walk was to try to figure out what to write about here. I have a serious post in the works, but that one will need more time. It’s really hard to know what to say at a time when words feel too plentiful and too cheap. One of the newsletter authors I follow noted that his commenters say one of the things they’re most tired of is “punditry.” I share that fatigue, and have unsubscribed from a number of places, keeping only the ones that feel the most honest, direct, and helpful. I’m also reading less opinion in the newspapers. I don’t need someone else to tell me what’s happening and share their outrage; I can see it and feel it all too clearly.

But it’s more than that. I have a hard time with stupidity, but somehow it’s more understandable to me than cruelty and inhumanity. I don’t watch movies that have those qualities as the basis of their “entertainment”, and I don’t even read novels that immerse me in unrelenting awfulness, especially when it’s directed at women and children. Yet this is exactly what we see now, every single day, in the real world, perpetrated by elected governments and carried out by their henchmen. That’s so much worse. And it’s not just in wars, it’s in policies that are being voted upon by elected representatives, and ruled upon in the highest courts. It’s in the streets of cities and small towns. What is this constant witnessing doing to us? Many are simply looking away, and saying, well, it’s not going to touch me. Others refuse to look away, and therefore feel horrified anew every day. Many are trying to speak out, but it’s becoming more difficult and more frustrating. Others are… silenced. Removed.

And here, in Canada, on our national holiday, it’s quiet.

Most of the people in that wealthy enclave are privileged and white; the lawns are manicured, the gardens beautiful, the trees mature. But nearer to home, as I walked back to my apartment, are many blocks of low-income multi-family apartments where recent immigrants live. I wouldn’t call them tenements; they’re considerably better than that, while not being great places to live. There are parks where kids can play, basketball courts, wading pools, soccer fields, picnic tables, a community center where city employees offer resources and programming; we’ve gone there several times for Covid or flu shots. I’m often the only white person in that park. The parents watching their kids on the swings, the guys playing table tennis or shooting hoops, the older people walking alone or sitting on benches, the kids playing soccer, or the people working in the community gardens, all tend to be African, South Asian, Asian, Middle or Near-Eastern. From their dress, I’d guess that many are fairly recent immigrants.

My own building is more affluent, but it’s also a broad mix of ethnicities, religions, races, sexual orientations and languages. And frankly, that’s a big part of what I like about living here. When the political posters go up in Montreal for our brief municipal, provincial or federal election seasons, the names and faces of the people running for office reflect this reality. We have our share of detractors and racists, and plenty of people who prefer to live surrounded by people who are at least superficially similar, but this mosaic of cultures is seen as a strength by most Montrealers. The hateful remarks, lies, and equivocation by mainstream party members following the recent primary election in New York was really awful, but not surprising. That level of invective would, however, be shocking here, and I hope our society doesn’t ever degenerate to that degree.

Sunset on a playing field at the University of Montreal, with the Oratoire St-Joseph at top left.

I think that is what I am quietly celebrating, and grateful for, this Canada Day. 2025 may be the year when Canadian pride — in more than our hockey teams — actually became a thing, thanks to the boost from our neighbor to the south. I’m not much for nationalism, myself, let alone patriotic fervor, but I am immensely grateful for the pockets of compassionate democracy that remain in our world, and want to strengthen them. I’m glad each of those newly-arrived Canadian kids can get health care, that rural hospitals aren’t going to be closed on a whim, and that we all pay into the system so that prescriptions can be affordable for everyone.

Here’s a little video I shot as I arrived at the McGill metro station yesterday, for a music rehearsal at the cathedral. Like the pictures above, it gives a small window into my life here. I’ll write more soon about what I’m doing to stay sane, and what I think we can all do to make the world a better place, regardless of where we are.