On a cold and eventually snowy night in Montreal, the TGOH Whistle Stop Extravaganza more or less packed the house at Concordia's lovely new York Amphitheatre. The highlight, at least for me, was hanging out with friends old and new afterward.
One of those was Taras Grescoe, who was kind enough to agree to introduce me at the York. I'd just finished Taras'
excellent new book Bottomfeeder earlier in the afternoon, and it was great fun trading tales of global research trials & tribulations. Bottomfeeder is out in April, and I can't recommend it more highly (indeed it may feature a jacket blurb from yours truly). At the risk of sounding overly soundbitey, it does for the global seafood industry what Fast Food Nation did for the fast food biz. A word of warning: it'll ruin you for cheap shrimp, maybe forever.
Another guest in attendance was the ever-gracious Shannon Babcock (currently of Montreal's lovely Babar Books). Shannon got the ball rolling on this event, for which I'm much obliged, and I'm even more grateful that she offered to billet me for this stop on the tour at her cozy apartment in the
intriguing St-Henri neighbourhood.
St-Henri is an old working-class district of old brick warehouses and townhouses with second-floor entries fed by
those wicked-cool iron front staircases. Walking around the neighbourhood was a reminder yet again of how much better we were at building the urban landscape to human scale prior to the dawn of the automobile age. Even this neighbourhood - which was probably considered pretty hardscrabble and unattractive at the height of its industrial age - provides a genuine sense of enclosure and community, an unmistakable and unique
vibe.
So now I'm sitting in a cafe on St-Laurent with a belly full of medium-fat from
Schwartz's (the preferred sandwich of
Mordecai Richler's ultimate Montrealer, Barney Panofsky), and I have to declare this an auspicious beginning. I said to my wife before departure that this was the closest I might ever come to that teenage dream of being in a band on tour, so it occurs to me I ought to go find a drink somewhere.
Salut, Montreal! Next stop: Kingston.