Parlez-vous Anglais?
My ramblings this month took me a little north of the border, and actually quite a bit north of Ohio.
I found myself making a last-minute decision to attend the Folk Alliance International conference in Montreal. As I have a natural puncheon for doing things backward it only seemed appropriate that I should head north in February as opposed to flying south. And now, you have an insight into my convoluted way of thinking.
A few weeks ago, I received an invitation from Mike Beck, an enterprising musician from Chicago. He is known as Chicago Mike, tours extensively, and brokers music to film producers. He sponsors half a dozen performance showcase rooms at this conference and was looking for help with room hosting. I have been planning on attending this event for a while and Mike's invite proved enough of a nudge for me to decide to go.
I invited my lovely, and supportive wife, MJ, to join me as Montreal has a great cultural reputation, a massive underground shopping and dining complex, and an extensive subway. She also speaks a little French, which is a good thing when traveling to the Provence of Quebec.
Our plan was to split up, and, while she took in the city, I would engage in the conference activities. We would re-group during the conference downtime and together we would enjoy her discoveries of the best Montreal had to offer!
A great idea for a wonderful independent, yet shared experience.
Unfortunately, the weekend before the conference, Montreal received 75 centimeters of snow over four days. That is about 30 inches. This was one of the biggest snow events the city had experienced. The sidewalks off of the main streets were nearly impassable! So we had to make a little shift in our plans. I minimized my time at the conference and all of our excursions out and about, were made together. Oh, did I mention, that the temperature for the first three days of our trip was between 5 and 12 degrees? (This is a picture from CBC)
Taking the situation in hand, we resolved to have a grand time, in-spite of the conditions. With a little internet sleuthing we found a lovely breakfast cafe a few blocks from our hotel. It took nearly forty-five minutes to walk there! In many places the sidewalks were reduced to 12 inch wide canyons, carved through knee high snow. Needless to say we had worked up an appetite by the time we got there so the food tasted incredible.
We continued on that day to the underground “city” and had a marvelous time. We spent the majority of our visit at a fantastic bookstore. The store happened to have a piano, and a student from the local university was playing classical pieces. It was so enjoyable to sit and relax, read, and be enveloped by the sound of a full-grand piano.
The 7-block return trip took the better part of an hour.
On the following day, we braved our way to the Montreal Museum of Art. That was only 6 blocks away so that was a much more manageable endeavor.
At the conference, in addition to hosting a showcase room for a few hours each night, I did two performances myself and took in some remarkable musical acts. Everything from world music to spot-on country honky-tonk, blues, jazz, all manner of folk, bluegrass, and Americana music. I saw some old friends and made a few new ones, including talent buyers for several venues.
Our hotel did not have a shuttle service to the airport, but there was a metro stop across the street. The front desk told me the 747 bus went to the airport and I could buy tickets at a subway station just a few blocks away. As MJ was engaged with ordering some bagels from a famous deli for a DoorDash delivery, I took it upon myself to go get our metro tickets.
I navigated into a huge subway station and proceeded to go down three enormous sets of stairs hoping to find the ticketing agent. It is easy to forget that, in this part of Canada, many people do not speak English, and for the most part, all of the residents were incredibly friendly and helpful. However, as I was going down the steps, I was getting a more and more concerned about getting the right tickets!
There weren’t many people there and an irrational anxiety started to build. What if I needed a translator? As I approached the ticketing agent, I thought the proper thing to do would be to inquire if he could speak English but what was I supposed to say?
Suddenly, from the recesses of my mind, I remembered the incredibly inappropriate cartoon from my youth, Pepe La Pew, and a scene when the overly aggressive paramour asked an unwilling cat, “Parlez-vous Frances?”
And with that, I burst forth on the ticket agent and said “Parlez-vous Anglais”, only it sounded more like “Eng-li”. (It was sort of embarrassing!)
And he said “Nan”. Which I immediately assumed was "Nope"!
So, I then reverted to the other treasured skill I learned from watching “Westerns” on black and white TV as a child, that is, Native American sign language. With the appropriate gestures and auditory supplements, I soon had two Metro bus tickets in my hand.
Now our adventure was nearly over, but not quite. The next day, we were using a very handy real-time Metro bus app that was designed to relay the exact location of the bus. We were a little confused as the app was telling us that the bus was there, and clearly, there was no bus. Suddenly a man appeared who was wildly waving his hands. As it turned out, he was the bus driver. He escorted us to his bus which was parked a block and a half away. It had been re-routed due to snow removal equipment. Now that was service.
Oh for Montreal, I hope to go back, but probably not in the winter.