Scenes from a suburb: final instalment

At lunch time today, I walked down to the front entrance of our office building, and stepped out into brilliant warm sunshine. Spring is here, at last there is no doubt. People are outside again, having cigarettes in their lunch breaks. I’ve no idea where they all went in the winter; perhaps addicted Québecois have worked out how to quit for the three coldest months?

Away in the distance, the skyline of downtown Montréal was shimmering: fifty storey skyscrapers daring to match the height of the Mount Royal. My five month sojourn in the suburbs concludes today. I’ve handed in my notice to my employers, and to the agency that handles me. The former will have to manage without my skills in Microsoft Excel; the latter have to manage without a 53% mark-up on my salary. Another interesting and wholly different job has come to an end, and I can now add Excel-wizard to my list of previous occupations (petrol station attendant, delivery driver, printer technician, architect, supermarket stocker, barman, assistant librarian, call centre monkey etc etc etc).

I crossed Jean-Talon Est to the Marché Galleries d’Anjou for the last time, and did a final farewell to the commercial lots that have distracted me most days from 12:00 until 12:30 … a few Dollarama purchases were made as a final gesture (some baby wipes and a sudoku book for a certain long journey that lies ahead).

My life has generally undergone a major change every six to nine months in recent years. Something happens and a change of scenery or circumstances follows. The next month will not just be a stand-alone holiday, but could also mark the change of my personal situation. Doors close, doors open, and James carries on exploring.

*j*

Time lapse: where’s the poutine?

Snapshot: There’s the poutine :-)

My my my, was it good…

*j*

Rumours of my departure are greatly exagerated

A pleasant surprise was experienced at the ‘guichet’ today, when the pay off from several weeks of penny pinching was felt with a significantly healthier looking bank balance. This will give me a budget for my forth coming trip of about C$30 a day. Not much at all, but considering that I’ve already paid for all the travel, and that with only one exception, my accomodation is now sorted from coast to coast, that’s not too bad at all. This time next week I will be on board the first train of fifteen, heading south towards Schenectady, NY, where the second will pick me up a few hours later.

So, for those of you were surprised to see me or hear me answer the telephone this week, and who are still confused, I’m not leaving until next Friday.

During my commute this week, I’ve been reading a dog-eared paperback book I found in a second hand bookstore in Plattsburg a few weeks ago. It’s an old edition of Sticks & Stones: A Study of American Architecture and Civilization by Lewis Mumford, first published in 1924. This edition was revised by the author in the fifties. From time to time, certain extracts jump from the page and hit me between the eyes, for what was written more than eighty years ago by a naïve young architecture critic about North American architecture remains true and valid today.

One of the fundamental problems I have with the modern vernacular in North American planning and architecture is the fatal grid system. It’s left it’s mark on three quarters of this continent, from downtown Chicago to prairie Alberta: 90 degree angles as far as the eye can see, and a system designed to apportion land before it had been developed or farmed. Nothing quite sums up the difference between the European and American city than the simple difference you’ll see on two maps… North American cities were planned with engineers and developers, each holding a straight edge and with a keen eye for a fast, direct, impressive straight line. The rush to settle and develop the land from east coast to west coast was not held up by architecture: this fundamental approach to designing field boundaries, villages and towns could be laid down as fast as the horses could get you there.

Mumford explains:

If the older cities of the sea-board were limited in their attempts to become metropolises by the fact that their downtown sections were originally laid out for villages, the villages of the middle west labored under just the opposite handicap; they had frequently acquired the framework of a metropolis before they had passed out of the physical state of a village. The gridiron plan was a sort of hand-me-down which the juvenile city was supposed to grow into and fill. That a city had any other purpose than to attract trade, to increase land values, and to grow is something that, if it uneasily entered the mind of an occasional Whitman, never exercised any hold upon the minds of the majority of the countrymen. For them, the place where the great city stands is the place of stretched wharves, and markets, and ships bringing goods from the ends of the earth; that, and nothing else.

*j*

Interpret this as you will…

For absent friends. We are thinking of you every moment.

This afternoon I left work as usual just before five o’clock. Leaving the office, swiping out and descending the grim service stairs to the street takes about three minutes. Walking to the intersection of Jean-Talon and Galeries D’Anjou takes another thirty seconds. Therefore, I don’t usually make the bus the passes my stop at one minute past five. Sometimes, if there is heavy traffic and the lights have changed to red before everyone has boarded, I can get on board. Others, I see it pulling away just as I leave the building.

The more that I think about it, this sight is not particularly new to me. I’ve pretty much always lived or worked close, but never right next to bus stops. In every case there has been the possibility of leaving my home or place of work to just see a bus stopping or pulling away. In both cases, there’s no point running - you just won’t make it. You just have to walk towards it calmly knowing it’s already gone.

This approach doesn’t usually let me down, especially since it allows a smug sense of self rightous satisfaction when people run past me to catch a bus metro train and miss it. If it were a trans-Atlantic flight or a VIA Rail train that only runs three times a week, then I’d understand. But it’s not. And there’ll be another one in a few minutes.

Today, however, when I saw the bus (still waiting for the lights to turn) I decided to break my normal composure and run for it. A lady was waiting at the intersection to cross Jean Talon. She saw me approaching, and realised fairly quickly it was the bus I was running for (there not being much else worth running towards in the area where I work). So she turned and did something very kind. She walked over the bus, and knocked on the side window that is in front of the front set of doors to get the driver’s attention. And when she pointed to my heaving sweating figure, the driver opened his doors for me. As I flew past the woman, we exchanged smiles, I expressed a breathless ‘merci’. She smiled a smile that was probably wider than mine, and replied ‘Bienvenue’. I hopped on board, and we pulled away before the doors were even closed.

Following a phone call that had punched me hard in the chest earlier that afternoon, I was already buzzing with troubled thoughts about the importance of the smallest impulses and decisions in our lives. They can bring so much happiness, and they can bring even more sadness. We make these decisions every second or every day, never capable of comprehending the consequences. And then, one time in a million, the consequences are worse than our most secret nightmares.

Now is the time for forgeting the regretable decisions, and celebrating the joyous, exciting and brilliant choices. Without them, there would be no life to celebrate.

*j*