Montreal is an hour away and impressively we get there in less time than it takes to cross London. My first impression – if I’m honest – is of a slight pervading French naffness: they seem to have imported the culture wholesale. We see a lot of soul patches, white boys with dreadlocks, women who are twenty but dress fifty. And the clown-density is above my comfort level. Reminding myself this might be because the Just For Laughs festival is on, I check the cultural programme and recoil at the pictures of comedians posing with red noses, singers in chiffon and Jimmy Carr’s smug mug gurning back at me. I don’t feel like this is the hipster haven I was expecting.
Over the next few days the city grows and grows on me. I get into Québécois cinema - which seems to combine the depth of French film with the edginess of the US indie film scene. I also discover that Montreal has many things I assumed were entirely unattainable in North America: good bread, strong beer, nice airport staff, a thriving bike culture. Best of all we get to grips with the terrasse culture – another French import – where you can pull up your Bixi bike (Boris bike to Londoners) almost anywhere and find a leafy backyard or terrace in which to nurse a strong beer and watch the world go by.
The heatwave finally broke, as we were flying back to Montreal from a weekend in New York – watch this video and bear in mind that we were watching this from ABOVE the storm, in a twenty-seater tin can plane, just slightly freaking out. We had been blissfully unaware until the abnormally friendly flight staff bade us to open the window shutter and ”Look oot-side at the awesome view”. Yikes.
All in all I think this will be the first of many visits to country no. 33.
