Last Friday I sat looking at the 130L sack of kit needed to survive a winter in Canada and wondered how we managed a 6 month trip around South America with a mere 50L rucksack that held everything needed for Glacier treks of Patagonia through to sweltering humidity of the Brazilian rainforest: 6 months, one pair of jeans, some walking trousers and a pair of shorts, five t-shirts, one shirt, a waterproof and a jumper: When it was cold, I just wore all of it.
The Canada kit list is skewed heavily by next weeks winter bushcraft expedition and a kit list that allows for temperatures down to -40C where the human body cannot exist unaided and nothing should be exposed unless you want it chopped off later. Everything is thick and bulky, its heavy and it doesn’t pack nicely. I find it irritating that I can’t condense this all into a few versatile key items: It might not even get down to life threateningly cold, anyway what if it's just mildly chilly?
It isn't. We arrived in Montreal last weekend, it's snowy and it's -12C but weirdly my snowman is still melting as if daring the weather to go colder. I've been colder in Canada (albeit with a snowboard strapped to me) but walking to Notre Dame cathedral the air feels very sharp and the light wind disproportionately stings and stabs your face but the rest of the city doesn't notice; roads are dry, school buses go past, everything is open, no-one stays in, the metro runs, everything just continues as usual. In such weather it's just not what an Englishman is used to!
Neither is the french-ness and Montreal is very French, an arrondissement 5000 miles from Paris. It's not just a token historical nod either, the signs aren't written in both languages, it's all French and it's so unexpected that it's difficult to adjust to but this gives the city a real identity.
Every street is so full of cafes and excellent restaurants you have to wonder if 4m inhabitants is enough to keep them all full? These aren't chains either, there are very few Starbucks, no KFCs, just street fulls of excellent independent restaurants.
Many of the buildings around Old Montreal could have been lifted straight out of Paris, they sit next to New York-an style stone towers backlit with the distant glass office blocks of downtown. The Gallic flavour is only lost from the mound in Parc du Mont Royal the city looking much like any other in North America but it's at street level you notice a boutique, a Champagne and cigar bar owner excitedly offers a range of European beers with the assurance that we can try them all; they're open until 3am. He's seems surprised that I don't want anything I've had before, "I've already tried them all, have you anything Canadian?"
The frozen St Lawrence river sends an aching chill up the town in echoes of the heavy ships that line the dock scratching and groaning against the ice. This is Canada's main port established by French missionaries some 100 years after Jacques Cartier first arrived in 1535 convinced he'd found the north west passage and would swiftly be on his way to China. Instead rapids blocked his path upriver and Montreal instead becomes a converging point for the fur trade.
The mornings are quiet, with little open before 11 except one shop selling Inuit art and an astonishing range of furs including polar bear, wolves, reindeer, beavers, every critter that has ever seen snow seems to have given up its coat to this shop. It's surprising to find so many skins but its not an illegal trade and many of these animals, even the bears - technically - are not actually endangered (yet), it still feels a little uncomfortable though.
It's not difficult to find your way around the grid layout of the town but the free, fast wifi allows you to double check your location easily and without giving your email address or signing up to anything. (This is something we've found across the world now and the U.K. just needs to sort it out: wifi should be free and fast for everyone, then we can consign the Telcos to history once and for all.)
The roads are all named after city founders or French Saints. The blend of architecture brings some depth and variety to the young city and the museum of Archeology and History allows you to explore the site of those first settlers retelling their struggles to trade with (and convert - they were catholics) the Iroquois Indians who had welcomed them and kept Paris supplied with fur hats.
It's a short but interesting history but the science museum is opposite and has a dinosaur exhibit, many your favourite bones are found just north of here (T-Rex now thought to have had feathers, at least as a juvenile!) and the rest of the displays are much better than they should be: We quickly outwit the visiting school kids to take over the interactive games before deciding on where next for lunch.
It's pancake day but that doesn't help narrow down the options as everywhere has a crepe on the menu but Canadians celebrated it a week earlier than they should have, apparently it's locally associated with Mardi Gras instead of lent, meaning they'll need to give up something for a week longer than they need to... Weird
1976, Montreal hosted the Olympics and built a space ship of a stadium the cost of which seems to be a local joke, come embarrassment - well we know that feeling! But the park now hosts botanical gardens, not much to see under the snow except for the fearless squirrels who come up and investigate you.
It also has a Biodome, essentially a zoo but it's well done as many climates are accommodated within the squashed bauble shaped theatre and winter Canadian animals are housed along with those from much warmer climes.
Montreal is a fantastic city proudly wearing its origins and it's been great to spend a week here. Tomorrow we fly to Winnipeg and I don't think many people do that, the Barcelona supporting barman and also this evenings waiter is silenced as they try to work out why we might be going there, because, well there is nothing there... exactly!
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