Quote:
Originally Posted by Acajack
This almost sounds like Paris Depression Syndrome suffered by Japanese tourists.  |
I know, I know
Thing was, this was a very unique trip as it occurred right at a real juncture in life. It was the first time my fiancee had been to either Canadian metropolis and circumstances meant that each city was essentially auditioning for a role in our future with Stockholm and Copenhagen as the contenders.
Toronto was a city that I knew I enjoyed, but was mainly included for the sake of friends and family there. Montreal was the main event, and a city we had really been discussing. After all, it has the better bones, the better real estate market, and unlike Toronto, Stockholm, or Copenhagen, it's not a bubble economy. It has an enormous reputation in certain relevant artistic fields.
I had thought the visit almost a formality; Montreal was
obviously 'Canada' for us.
The shock and severity of the upset brought about a lot of emotions. I read my replies in the thread and see I am still vacillating on certain levels, still qualifying and hedging and lashing out.
But it was a blowout.
I mean, we were
on realtor.ca. We were mortgage calculating and salary reviewing. We were bringing in everyone we know to get a sense of how they'd made it work for them in each city.
Toronto, Stockholm, and Copenhagen are hard towns. Resentably so...
...but that deadness. Like I said, I turned on the place a bit. It let me down. I tried to show it off, this place that unlike all the others was
mine, and it kept stepping on its dick.
I don't really give a shit if this seems like it's about Icelandic moss tacos or whatever. It isn't, but it
is about my life and as such it's pretty particular to me and I am just sharing it for fun and because of what the word 'forum' means.
On Prince-Arthur around 7 p.m., and at Saint-Laurent near Saint-Viateur around 9, I felt cause to mutter "c't'un espèce de ville B.S.".
But it's not really Montreal's low-rent quality; Toronto can be plenty low-rent. There is no shortage of zombie-stagger on, say, Parliament or Sherbourne.
It's that emptiness.
Notre-Dame between McGill and Guy. Saint Laurent from Laurier to Bernard. Atwater. Saint-Denis from Rachel to Sherbrooke, and above Saint-Joseph too. Saint-Laurent below Sherbrooke. Saint-Laurent the whole way, fuck.
Saint-Antoine. Saint-Jacques.
Sainte-Catherine is certainly a step above Yonge (which is really strange right now as condo towers are starting to destroy its haphazard quality for whole stretches) but where is her Queen stretching miles in each perpendicular direction? Where is her Bloor?
Sainte-Catherine exists in isolation while Yonge is just the spine of a whole ecosystem.
Montreal feels empty. It's like there's not enough business activity to fill its streets. And I don't know why that is. I am prepared to accept the toll taken by the construction; on paper, again, everything seems a lot better than it did when I celebrated the city as Canada's only
really/historically legit metropolis on here between 2004-2010.
I really don't know what happened or what to think.