I think I’ve mentioned this before, but Montreal is a kind of in-between city: North Americans find it oh-so-European, but Europeans find it disappointingly North American.  You could probably resort to the traditional retort: it is not Canada, it is Québec.

That said, it seems like many of the signs of summer and warm weather that I’ve noticed have their own distinctly un-middle-American spin on them. F’r example, sometime in April, the cars start re-appearing.  I don’t mean the salt-stained little Toyotas and Volvos that have been suffering on the street all winter, or even the Smart Cars and Mini Coopers which comprise, I’m pretty sure, a good 1/3 of the vehicles I see daily.  Instead, on-street parking and even the elementary school parent pick-up queue becomes speckled with liberal numbers of Jaguars, Ferraris, the occasional Lotus, tons of Porsches, and the odd rickety European import proudly bearing its rectangular EU license plate in the front.  It’s a distinct, visible seasonal shift: here comes summer, and here comes the Lambo.  Furthermore, I’m starting to see business men on the street dressed in fitted white dress pants, linen jackets, and pointy-toed white leather shoes, and when I was at the YMCA last week during the Baby / Parent swim hour I saw several fathers escorting their dripping infants while wearing Bond trunks.

During the past year that we’ve been here — a year!  A whole year!  Though I don’t know if I’ll ever really put the whole moving ordeal behind me — I’ve gained a thorough appreciation for how, in a city where a great number of the residents are car-less, everybody does delivery, and I’m not just talking about food.  While I’m all about the instant gratification and always choose to lug my groceries the 5-minute walk home from the store, I am also all about the pet food store’s delivery.  Sure, I could borrow a car to pick up a jumbo-sized bag or two of kitty litter, but it is undeniably convenient and well neigh luxurious to have 66 lbs of the stuff lugged up three flights of stairs during a specified two-hour window and cheerfully delivered through my apartment door for an extra $2.

There are still a few cultural details that remind me that I am not, as most would assume in these parts, a native Ontarian, but a latent American.  Last night in French class our teacher translated how large a 6×8 foot room would be in meters, and I still run up against the odd Canadian (English) spelling that initially strikes me as a typo.  Also, some native Canadians have found my references to “dollar coins” to be hee-larious.  See, all dollars are dollar coins, but I just can’t break the urge to specify.  Going up to the bank teller and asking for three rolls of… dollars?  Just ain’t right.

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