Way back in early graduate school, I attended a history of medicine conference in Montreal. However, to my lasting regret, I only left the hotel once, to get drinks with a group, and I never saw the city itself. I rectified that lack of curiosity at the most recent German studies conference, arriving early to have a half day of sightseeing, and planning my schedule to leave time to catch up with friends new and old.
The conference hotel was in the more-English-speaking part of downtown Montreal, and it impressed me as an urban space (with a Metro!) unlike Pittsburgh, which seems gritty in some specifically American way, whereas this is clearly a European-inflected place, from the architecture to the buskers.
After checking in, I took myself to lunch at the Jean-Talon Marché, named for the first French administrator, Jean Talon (1726-1694). Marveling at the stalls with their produce, cheese, meats, books, flowers, etc., somehow the cartons of tomatoes, potatoes, lemons and limes, or onions were equally beautiful whether there were arranged with like colors or in alternating bands. I thought of Emile Zola's novel The Belly of Paris (1873) and hoped there was a lot less despair and intrigue. It certainly helped that it was sunny and above 80F/30C.
I had a salmon pie for lunch, picked up apples and clementines for snacks and breakfasts, and selected some baclava for dinner with a friend the next night. With a strategic purchase from Starbucks so I only had to stand in that long, snaking line once, granola bars from home, cookies from the airplane, and free tea from the hotel, I hoped to have to buy myself lunches and the occasional dinner, depending on the robustness of the evening receptions.
Then I made my way to and through the Old Town (Veaux Ville). There was a brass band playing in the middle of Place Jacques-Cartier, at the foot of the monument in the middle of this shot. I stopped by the Chateau Ramezay, the first historical building in Montreal which had served as governor's residence, business headquarters, army billeting, courthouse, normal school, university, and coin museum.
I had planned to catch the 2pm tour in English, but a colleague wanted to meet at the Ferris wheel (La Grand Roue de Montreal) in the Old Port at 3pm, so I just buzzed through the gift shop and walked the garden (pictured).
Old Port of Montreal
The leaves have started changing colors, but the sky was blue and the temperature warm. We caught each other up on our lives since our joint publication came out in February/March while enjoying great views of the city and port beneath us.
Then we walked to the Notre-Dame Basilica. It was built in the 1820 and the interior redecorated in the 1870s. Inside the brilliant blue ceiling stands out, but all of the walls are painted and gilded, and there are statuary everywhere, even Ezekial and Jeremiah carved into the base of the pulpit, which hasn't been used since Vatican II. Here's also a photo of the 1891 Casavant Freres organ for Dear Husband; has 7,000 pipes from 1/4 inch to 32 feet feet tall. It was quite dark inside, and we wondered how the congregation could have seen or appreciated all these details with sunlight through the few windows and then candle or gaslights. Now the cathedral hosts a music and light show in the evenings for twice what we paid to see the interior during the day.
The alter has Jesus on the cross at the center and is flanked by 4-5 other "altar scenes": Moses prays over the Ark of the Covenant, Aaron immolates a lamb, Abraham sacrifices Isaac, and Melchizedek offers bread and wine, and below all that is The Last Supper.
The stained-glass windows from the 1920s (and some of the statues) feature important citizens in Montreal's past, including a number of women.
Then we joined the rush-hour traffic on the Metro back to the hotel for the opening reception, where I bought a couple of books and chatted up the representative of the junior-year-abroad program through which my parents met and which is still going strong in Munich.
Finally, I joined Arts Night, a very good presentation about a new graphic novel about 4 children's Holocaust stories, illustrated from survivors' stories. I bought myself the book and read it during down times at the conference.
20-ingredient salad from Siam [Thai Restaurant]
It truly was wonderful to feed the scholarly and friendship parts of my soul. Somebody I had just met asked if I didn't attend very often because this is (no longer) my primary job, but I told her that, on the contrary, it was that much more important for me to do. I attended panels on women in interwar Vienna, diversity in language instruction, domestic design in the early 20th century, Asian-German comics, how to hold an accessible conference, non-White embodiment, ETA Hoffman's fairy tales, medieval illustrations, and 21st-century German streaming "tv."
Not pictured: baklava that was worth waiting to eat.
Progress on a new "miscounted cross-stitch design of a brain and flowers"
The one regret I have is that the representative from the University of Toronto Press did not bring hard copies of the journal issue I co-edited that was published early this year. Because my dissertation / book project has been on the back burner for so long that it threatens to evaporate, I wanted to have a photo of proof of my productivity, as a URL just isn't the same. No luck.
I delivered the commentary on one of the last panels of the day and then left before the last question had been answered to make it to the airport for the last flight toward home.
Next year: Atlanta. Maybe I'll have a(nother) book by the time we get back to Washington, DC?
