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The long-awaited chronicles from my first week or so in Montreal are finally here…

Once again, I had little sleep on an overnight bus-ride. It didn’t help that the bus arrived early on Monday morning, making for a fairly short trip. I spent the morning in the train station, looking around at all the French (trying to make heads or tails of it), waiting for a reasonable hour when someone would definitely be around to welcome me to my room at Hillel Montreal (a branch of the Jewish students services organisation that exists prominently on North American and other campuses). Once I did finally find my way over, I found a great Hillel building, where I met a number of people in the office (including, later, Jonathan, another friend I hadn’t seen in 7 years), and headed up to my room to unwind a little.

The Hillel Montreal building consists of four floors. On the ground floor is the Dizengoff Cafe, which serves Israeli style (primarily meat) meals and will be my lunch and dinner on weekdays, as well as a lounge room with couches, a large television and a foosball (”table soccer”) table. Ignoring the outside deck area, the floor below is home to the caretaker, as well as a small barely-used synagogue space with bookshelves of disarray. Upstairs we find the Hillel offices, meeting rooms, and some rooms with computers and another library. Passing a stained-glass window on your way up the stairs (sorry, no handicapped access), one finally makes it to the door to the home of nine people. The rooms are very spacious and modern, with plenty of space to empty my bags into and buy more to fill the remaining holes. (A bit of a hot topic is that somehow this recently renovated building still doesn’t have mezuzot up yet…)

Day by day over the week I met more of my fellow Hillel residents as they moved in. In the first room are Lory and Jawina (”Yavina”), the last to move in, from Toronto and Amsterdam, then a room with Abby and Rachel, from Seattle and Boston, then John and Elan, from Vancouver and Boston, then my room shared with Emmanuel from France (he wants to learn English, I wouldn’t mind learning French, so we communicate mostly in Hebrew). Alone on its own is another bed, currently occupied by Dara who works in the Hillel offices. A great group who you will surely get to meet a lot more of through my words. To serve us we have three bathrooms, a coin-operated laundry (a Canadian dollar to wash, a Canadian dollar to dry; no Hills hoist; it seems to work on US dollar coins as well, and I might well try an Australian 20c piece on my way out), and a then-understocked kitchen.

I might need to explain how food works. We are fed 5 days a week (breakfast self-served in our kosher dairy kitchen, although not enough weekly milk), the other meals from Yoel in the Cafe (burger and chips, hot dog and chips, felafel and chips, chicken-and-salad baguette and chips, …; I hear there are chips-alternatives like rice available; A weekly cycle makes for exciting lunch options like pasta on Monday, and the food is great even if limited in scope). But this meal plan was only to start with September, and the kitchen only had a few glass plates and bowls, some forks, two microwaves, a toaster oven, a dishwasher (which I didn’t notice for days and I’m not sure we’ll ever need) and an empty fridge.

On Monday I stocked up on a little food, but not on things to eat it with, so I spread the butter and vegemite on my sandwiches with a fork. On Tuesday I acquired some basic kitchen utensils (dish dripping rack, knives, spoons, a cup) from Dollarama, a very frequent dollar (plus tax) shop that sells a few good deals and plenty of rip-offs. The metal among these needed to be dipped in natural water to be drunk from according to Jewish law, so I went with Rachel that evening for a hike up Mount Royal to find its lake. Although it was getting dark, we managed to ask a few people and help us along the way. As we neared what we presumed to be the lake, we heard music playing loudly nearby. I recognised the tune and words as “mi haish…”, a traditional Jewish melody. It turned out a group was enjoying Israeli dancing in a pavillion by the lake. After a few minutes immersing objects in the lake and wondering what passersby must think, one group of passersby decided not to pass us by. So instead we had a conversation with this Hasidic family from Outremont (already reknowned to us as Montreal’s very Hasidic—Satmar, Belz, etc—neighbourhood). Two unexpected encounters by the lake to welcome us to Montreal…

Another unexpected encounter had occurred the night before (my first in town) when I had expected to just go to bed with vegemite sandwiches inside me. It was the first of three marriage-related celebrations for couples I didn’t really know in my first week being here. It was a bachelor party for Hillel’s spiritual guide and rabbi-in-training, Dov, who was to marry that Wednesday evening, and a nice (if somewhat drunken and rowdy) way to get to know some of the youth leaders of Hillel here. It was probably because of Dov’s wedding that I had my second invitation: some former Hillel residents across the road were lacking in numbers at a sheva berachot (week-after-wedding celebratory meal) for another couple. So I went to Yosef and Danny’s apartment just around the corner for a beautiful meal with new and friendly company. The third event was yet another sheva berachot on Sunday when a group of Hillel exectives returned from their planning retreat to celebrate with a meal for the newlywed Dov and his wife Nina. And then there was the barbeque for returned Birthright participants that I socialised and ate at on Thursday evening. So the lack of meal plan was not really so prohibitive, and all this free food actually made it quite hard to get through any good amount of the food I’d bought on arriving in town.

On the topic of social invitations, one of the first people I called on my new phone arrangement was Liss G, a friend from Melbourne who had been studying Yiddish in Amherst, MA, and then had been in Quebec for some KlezKanada Yiddish-klezmer culture camp. In fact, she had earlier been on exchange at McGill and was bound to spend a few days in Montreal. I called her up, and not only did she invite me to join her see a KlezKanada artist perform at a local cafe, but she had also invited Kate B (from Adelaide via Melbourne), who I had been on Machon with in Israel 2002. This was a great surprise, as I had no idea Kate was around. It turns out she will be spending a month learning French in Montreal amid world travels after completing her undergraduate studies. It was even more of a surprise when she later on at synagogue on Friday night introduced me to another long-time-unseen friend, Sarah M (who was a bullfrog), who had run activities for the Hineni group on that same Machon. It turns out that Sarah, after spending a few weeks in Sydney following the completion her MA (in development studies) at Oxford, is now going to be residing in a mansion a few blocks away from me while on a fellowship in this city. It was quite a surprise to have such a strong Australian representation at the Ghetto Shul on Friday evening.

I had often been told about the Ghetto Shul by Australians and Americans long before making it here. They all praised its life and spirit and atmosphere. My first experience of it was its Rabbi coming to Thursday night’s barbecue at Hillel. There, Rabbi Leibish was dressed in a large clown suit (and the more usual curly Breslover peot (payos), beard and wide smile) along with his wife Dena, and introduced themselves as “a couple of clowns from the ghetto”. No, the ghetto in “Ghetto Shul” doesn’t at all refer to Europe, or to Harlem. The neighbourhood to the east of McGill University is nicknamed “the McGill Ghetto”, whose population are vastly English-speaking students while the surrounding community is Francophone (and generally not students).

Friday night was set in the park to the background noise from the Montreal Alouettes playing at a nearby stadium. Otherwise, we stood in a sand pit beside some playground equipment and loudly sang the tunes of kabbalat shabbat while locals and Frosh groups (see below) made their way by. It was the first real Carlebach-style Friday night experience I’ve had since hitting North America, so it was nice to be brought back home (or to camp) a little. It was followed by a dinner at the shul itself, cramped by a large turnout. It was a nice environment to meet not only other freshmen and exchange students, as I’d been doing all week, but also people coming back for their second and third years in the Ghetto. Plenty of singing (as seems to be typical of the congregation) before heading home, fed, spoken, sung, and tired.

But that was not it for the Ghetto Shul for the weekend. I was back there (with most of my fellow Hillel residents) by morning, where I did some of the torah reading (prearranged) and led musaf. Their lunch was probably enough, but still, after a lot of general shmoozing, people finally decided to accept Danny’s invitation back to his apartment. I, on the other hand, wanted sleep. So I walked home a little faster than they did, read a little, and finally rested for 10 minutes until Danny came knocking on the door to wake up Emmanuel (my roommate) and offer him to join them. Annoyingly, I’d already tried this, but Emmanuel too had preferred the nap. Still, I got up and went to join the group at Danny’s for still more food (great food, I should say; Yosef really is a good chef and host). Finally as the evening came, it was time to return yet again to the Ghetto Shul for yet another meal (although at Leibish and Dena’s). Basically, a pretty standard shabbat made up of walking, eating, praying, talking and singing. A little learning too.

And then of course on Saturday night we went out for more food, to some pizza (etc) place that stays open till 5am on Sunday mornings to catch all those kosher partiers on their way out from the clubs, I guess.

While this entry has been a little all over the place, there are a few things to recount back in time. One relates to the French experience. Generally, Montrealers speak English, but won’t readily do so. A few times I’ve been spoken at in French and just nodded. Occasionally my quizzical expression will clue them into switching into an accented dialect of English which at least I understand. It is a lot harder to understand the spoken language than it is to read the words, which still doesn’t always make it obvious. And even in English-speaking neighbourhoods of the city there is a tendency for legislation that mandates French signage (maybe as a stubborn arrogance, and maybe to maintain the unique cultural qualities of this region within its English-dominated surroundings). While KFC in France is KFC, in Quebec the Colonel serves up hot PFK (Poulet Frit Kentucky).

My first big English-speaker’s no-no occurred at a diner with Liss, Kate and Martha (a friend of Liss’s) on Wednesday night… After hearing Liss’s friend’s klezmer performance, we looked for something else to do, and found some diner where we figured to at least get a few cups of coffee. My first mistake was to precede my ordering with “do you speak English?” I’m now told that this is a question never to ask. Assume they all speak English: they’ll tell you if they don’t. She grumpily snorted a “yes”, and took my order: “you only want a drink? tsk!” The not-the-best-hot-chocolate was served with milk slopping in a dribble down the side of the cup.

But at university, most speech is in English, although you hear a lot of French around campus too. The second largest population of international students on campus (beaten by the US) is from France. Presumably many consider this a good environment to learn English. And then there are bilingual Montrealers who also converse on the streets in French, but in the classroom in English.

The campus is also very conveniently close. It is about 30 seconds walk from my front door to a building of McGill that I’ll probably never need to go into. The main campus area, though, is not much more than 2 minutes away by foot. (And while my dorm-mates are saying that they’re walking so much, I’m doing a lot less than at home: it takes me as long to get down to the bus stop, and then 10-15 minutes from Redfern Station to Carslaw.)

We had orientation, entitled “Discover McGill”, there last Thursday. They fit all the first-years and exchange studeents in two lots into a gymnasium and have representatives of the university, sports organisation and student-union (SSMU) talk to the incoming students. We split into small groups and played a name game that would have been better with less noise and more willing participants. By this stage I had already discovered McGill fairly well, so when we left for a tour (having lost a few people at the name-game stage), it wasn’t going to really show me too much. In the end it was a little useful, but mostly gave me an opportunity to meet a few people.

And it was then that I realised the a big difference between the Jewish community on campus and at home. There we have 300. Here 4000. Our communities themselves aren’t so disproportionately sized, but Montreal imports a lot of American students (drinking age is lower). As we were going around in our group of maybe 15, I identified around 6 Jewish members of it. And when everyone sat down for pizza lunch and I had to decide what to do, someone mentioned that there was kosher pizza available. This never happens in Sydney. And as far as pizza goes, it wasn’t bad.

I didn’t continue with the panels and speeches to follow in Discover McGill. I rathered hand out leftover cookies (also kosher) and meet people that way. I ended up sitting on a grass hill talking to a Senegalese-Lebanese-Canadian girl named Nur, about various facets of the city, religion, life, etc.

The afternoon component of the day involved a student fair that was nothing like our USyd O-Day. A relatively small ordeal. Instead they have an Activities Night 1.5 weeks into term—I’m yet to see how that rates up. There were just a handful of stalls to sign up to, some improvised live entertainent, and a few garbage bins full of free second-hand books.

The next day, another form of orientation was to begin. Frosh. Frosh is a term generally synonymous with beer, although more specifically is the welcome for new freshmen to student life. I had considered froshing, but I was more interested in being around to meet the rest of my roommates. Besides, Arts Frosh included, let’s say, 6 meals I wouldn’t eat, a cruise on Friday evening I wouldn’t go on, a party on Friday night I wouldn’t go to, various activities on Saturday which I would avoid, and another club Saturday night that I would only get to late. So basically my $65 for the 3 days would have given me about $10 worth of material—a pub crawl. I had been considering just stalking some real froshers to the pub crawl, but was turned off by the actual sight of the start of frosh, which seemed to just be a competition for the most immodest (while drunk and disorderly). The Science Frosh was somewhat less so, and although indescribable, it’s surprising how differentiable arts and science students are, even when just froshing. I think I was able to find much more affinity with the latter. For the next couple of days, marauding bands of young students plagued the streets of Montreal, vomiting in bars, kicking over temporary roadwork signs, disrupting traffic and demanding (in English) that they honk their horns.

Following faculty frosh is SSMU Frosh, run by the Students’ Society of McGill University. This, running Sunday and Monday (Labour day), was much more suitable for me, and maybe I should have gone, but I didn’t. I braved some rain and explored a little bit more of Montreal on foot, acquiring the ingredients for and cooking a potato salad. In order to help myself brave the rain (which began once I was out of the house), I needed to find a shop to sell me an umbrella on early Sunday morning. The answer? Dollarama, of course. So I picked up my $1 (plus tax) umbrella from the nearest branch and went off to find Israeli-style pickled cucumbers (an essential element of the salad). Within 20 minutes, the umbrella had broken in two different places, and still more of the surrounding flimsy metal was weakening. Thankfully, they sold umbrellas (for $2.50, but much better quality) at the kosher grocery store.