When summer comes
Winter is well and truly over and, contrary to popular belief, it wasn't harsh. The cold is easy to bear; you just need to be wrapped up. Most of the time the sky is clear and the sun generous, and that matters far more for morale than a mild winter under a grey Parisian sky that lasts three months. The snow, meanwhile, opens the door to a thousand activities. We haven't had time to get bored, and winter has flown by, even if we'd have liked it to end on a different note. No need to dwell on April: we didn't do much. The lockdown isn't strict, but with everything closed except the city parks, the range of possibilities shrinks to very little. We work from home, we cook, we run.
So winter didn't cost us much. What we hadn't foreseen, and what ends up being disconcerting, is the complete absence of spring, even if Quebecers will swear otherwise. You know, the season that announces the end of winter, the return of fine days, the buds, and which normally comes with a little mildness. All over Europe, despite lockdown, summer is starting to settle in; in Montreal nobody is ready to put their coat away. Apart from two or three days around twenty degrees, temperatures stay low.
Then comes May, which, as the saying goes, does as it pleases. On the very first weekend a wave of cold and frost hits Quebec. On Thursday 7 May it even snows for two hours in Montreal, a snow too soft to settle. For a few days the thermometer stays below ten degrees and nears zero at night. Luckily it doesn't last: by the middle of the following week, summer finally arrives, around twenty-five degrees. The parks fill up, and Montrealers bring out bikes, rollerblades, mölkky and other outdoor games.
It's something we'll often remark on: for the French, going to the park mostly means drinks and a picnic; Montrealers go there to have a drink too, of course, but also to play, with frisbee, mölkky and spikeball leading the way. And we can picture you, baffled: “What's that?” Invented in 1989 and somewhat neglected in the 1990s, the sport is making a strong comeback in Montreal. It's a kind of four-player beach volleyball, two teams of two, except that the net, instead of being strung between two posts, lies on the ground like a small trampoline, and you have to bounce a small ball off it. You can't cross a single park in Montreal without coming across a game of frisbee or spikeball. We'll soon buy our own frisbee to fill the hot afternoons ahead.
Monday 18 May
While the French are on their hundredth public holiday of the year (barely an exaggeration), here there's no Labour Day in May, no 8 May (even though Canadians fought alongside the Allies), and don't even mention religious holidays. This Monday 18 May is only our third public holiday of the year, after New Year's Day and Easter Monday. Yes, you read that right: the third. Victoria Day is celebrated on the Monday before 25 May in memory of Queen Victoria, Canada being, as you probably know, a member of the Commonwealth as a former territory of the British Empire. We use this three-day weekend to enjoy the fine weather, do very little and… look for a car.
With the health restrictions, all the festivals that are the soul of Montreal have been cancelled. Summer here is unique, as every French person who lives here will tell you: it's warm and sunny, nature is all around, lakes and rivers to swim in are less than an hour's drive away, festivals and concerts follow one another every weekend, not to mention the nightlife. But with Covid-19, Montreal's summer will be unique in a completely different sense: nothing will happen. A little disappointed at the prospect of a cut-price summer when we'd promised ourselves so much, we decide to leave the city earlier than planned. We won't leave in September but at the beginning of July. And with the borders closed, Canada will be far less overrun with tourists than usual: its grand landscapes will be all the more ours.
We plan to cross the country to Vancouver in about three months, and we need a car that's up to it. After Australia and our faithful 1997 Honda CR-V, which carried us 45,000 kilometres, we want something newer, more economical and more comfortable. Good timing: here, as with the American neighbours, cars sell for a song (thank you, oil and car lobbies…). Our choice quickly settles on Japanese and Korean makes. We appreciated our Honda's reliability, and Japanese cars have a reputation for being mechanically flawless even after ten years of service.
Budget and criteria in hand, we comb the second-hand ads. Two Hyundai Elantras from the same year, with similar mileage and within our price range, catch our eye. We drove one during our road trip in the American West: we know it's a gem. Cassandre draws up a meticulous mechanical checklist so as not to be cheated, because the whole of Canada knows that Quebecers take very little care of their cars, and that a Montreal car is hard to resell in Vancouver. We'd noticed it: where Australians pampered their cars and easily pushed them to 400,000 kilometres, here they're rarely more than ten years old, and when they pass the decade, they look like wrecks. Rust, fed by the road salt that cakes the bodywork and the underside, doesn't help.
The first one we go to see is no exception. The seller is barely polite and doesn't seem in any hurry to sell. The car is dirty, McDonald's leftovers clutter the passenger seat so you can't even sit on it. We'll spare you the mechanical details, but the verdict is final: we pass. A neglected car, an unappealing seller who doesn't inspire trust: we leave empty-handed, hoping for better luck the next day. Luckily the second Elantra is in much better condition and its seller more serious. Before buying, though, we want a garage to check it. He has no objection; we'll get back to him as soon as we have an appointment, even if it means a more impatient buyer snatching it from under our noses. Better to let a good deal go than rush into a car in poor condition.
Saturday 23 May
While we wait for our own car, we rent one from a private owner for the weekend, a very common practice here, to enjoy the fine weather and get out of town a little. We pick up our friend Guewen and head for Cap-Saint-Jacques nature park, thirty kilometres west of the centre but still on the island of Montreal. Hemmed in by the Rivière des Prairies and the huge Lac des Deux Montagnes, more an inland sea than a lake, this 288-hectare park offers a pretty walk and a real sandy beach. You can fish, kayak, windsurf, kitesurf… Normally sun-starved Montrealers flock here, but in this still unusual period the park is rather quiet.
After a two-hour walk we settle on the beach to enjoy the sun and dip our feet. Let's not kid ourselves: it hasn't been warm enough yet for the water to be pleasant. It's so cold it feels like knives piercing our feet, and even after five minutes it's impossible to go deeper than our calves. That doesn't stop the children and a few daring adults from throwing themselves in happily.
None of the three of us being fans of lying on a beach doing nothing, we soon get bored and head back to Montreal mid-afternoon. On the way we stop at the Jean-Talon market to buy good meat from the butcher for tonight's barbecue. Then, without wasting time, off to the park next to our place for the eternal evening picnic-and-drinks, which has become the norm in every park in the city with bars and restaurants closed. It's sunny, it's warm, and the atmosphere is so relaxed, so good-natured. We'll miss Montreal, that's for sure.