christmas in canada.

The celebration of the birth of our buddy Jesus came and went and, as expected, it didn’t feel much like it usually does. Not that it really mattered, a good time was had on my winter travels. All three cities I visited made Hamilton look very, very pale in comparison. Particularly Montreal, which made me wonder why I didn’t apply to go to McGill University. I think it made me realise the main advantage of being in Hamilton is that it’s a hell of a lot warmer, the snow is only a fraction of what I saw in Quebec and Ottawa. I hadn’t known wet feet until I spent whole days traipsing around Quebec City. There usually had to be a sock change pit stop around the time for afternoon tea, quickly before trench foot set in. Nor had I seen snow in such quantities as well, 10ft high hillocks in the corner of car parks were the norm. What I couldn’t quite get my head around was that the snow was going to be there until April. So… it just keeps on accumulating? Yep. I don’t understand how Canadians do it every year. Snow is such a hassle. Not to mention my moustache froze…

Although I was quick to discover one benefit: 5 months of round the clock sledgding at one’s disposal. Sledgding in the witching hours of Christmas Day in Ottawa might well have been the most unadulterated fun I’ve had in a long, long time. The bottle of whiskey made it that bit more adulterated, but when’s it’s 15 below you need something to keep you warm. Seriously though, Canadians have mental sledges with wheels and rudders and tracks and brakes. Ask any Canadian about their GT and they’ll probably develop some kind of shit eating grin as they recall their exuberant youth. It’s like their speedy version of a hockey stick. I also discovered that falling off the sledge is absolutely crucial for maximum fun. The boring sense of realisation that you made it down some death-defying slope only to slowly come to halt at the bottom is completely unrewarding. Speeding down, meeting a jump, coming un-sledged mid-air, face planting the snow and rolling for 15 metres is where the thrills can be found. The black eye was a testament to the tom-foolery.

The Foremans looked after me very well over time I spent in Ottawa. It was slightly alienating being at a Christian household for Christmas, although it never made me feel unwelcome. I can’t remember the last meal I was at where grace was spoken at the beginning, nor the last time I went to Church. I can appreciate the sense of community that religion provides for those involved, but it’s completely not my idea of how to fulfill life and seeing it first hand only affirmed this. But, I guess at the age of 21, two trips to the church isn’t exactly going to change my views on faith. It’s a bit late for religious conditioning. The post-Boxing Day Sunday service was an hour of my life I’d never like to repeat. Sitting on a pew with uncontrollable shakes, making a terrible effort to sing hymns (and shit me, can a congregation sure sing) whilst trying to hide the fact that I was car parked the night before, having been thrown out of a club and involved in an altercation with a particularly anti-British Canadian. I think I succeeded, just about.

Ottawa did also provide me the opportunity to just generally be excessively Canadian. I shoveled Matt’s drive of snow, played street hockey and beat Matt 5-4 in overtime on NHL 10 – particularly satisfying. Matt and his friends (namely Scott) might be the biggest perpetrators of beer pressure I’ve ever come across. To say I spoilt my liver in Ottawa would be an understatement.

Next stop: Quebec City. I defeated the seven hour dinner date with the Greyhound and was met in Quebec City by what seemed to be a small French city on a hill, by a river. And that was before I had spoken to anyone. Being established in 1608, 259 years before Canada became the moose loving nation that it is, means that the architecture and town planning is less functional and slightly more organic. The city even boasts one of the narrowest streets in North America, the Rue Du Petit-Champlain, but that was just a tourist trap of shops that exclusively sold tat. High end tat, mind, like fake Indigenous clothing and strange foodstuffs involving excessive use of maple syrup. The St. Lawrence River is a beautiful sight, especially with all the ice litters its surface in winter. Château Frontenac is also quite the sight, a hotel that opened in 1893. In general, it’s just a real pretty city and Southern Ontario has nothing, that I’ve seen, that comes even close to comparing. I had my first attempt at ice skating in what is probably about 10 years by now, and got to do it outside on a cold Quebec City evening, which was rather quaint. Turns out it comes back pretty easily. Although my style is somewhat clumsy yet dedicated; ergo, it looks like I’m constantly going to fall over, but somehow I don’t and skate pretty darn fast at the same time.

New Years Eve 2010. Destination: Montreal. We had a big plan all along to make sure that our New Years in Montreal was going to be something special. We weren’t going to go to some shit club with, a $50 door tax, $10 drinks and be surrounded by bell ends, whose idea of fun is grinding down to shit R&B music. We wanted to do something that we couldn’t do in any other city, even if it meant just hanging out in a proper local bar and drinking till we couldn’t see. In the end, that all came to nothing and we end up in a grotty night club,called Le Saint-Sulpice, in the more French bit of downtown Montreal. Whilst it wasn’t the most cultured of New Years Eves, I think vision was certainly not 20/20 by the end of the night and it wasn’t exactly one to forget. A six floor sausage party certainly provides talking points. The nigh-on rape of a 25 year old woman by a 15 year old boy in a New Era hat was a particular highlight. This said woman had previously got all and sundry out (chest-wise) and was staggering about the bar like a lost, blind woman. Obviously this young whipper snapper spied an opportunity and, boy, did he take it.

Coming back to Hamilton on the 2 January 2010 was a bit of return to reality. Two dollars to my name (cheers, Montreal, for your $7+tip pints), another semester of easy, yet monotonous work and the stark realisation that I get every year, the one that before the year is out I will be 22 years old; when I barely feel 20. I’ll miss Montreal too. The way that it is an amalgamation of Quebec City and Toronto by taking the visual aesthetic of QC whilst having the vibrant, city atmosphere of Ontario’s finest suits it very well. I hope to make it back.