From British Canada, where they pretended to tolerate the French side of the dual linguistic nature of the country, to French Canada where it was entirely ignored. Although, having said that, it’s amazing how many of the citizens are fluent in both languages, particularly the younger generation. So much so that it’s actually worse trying to speak French because they can tell you’re not a French speaker just by looking at you (or probably Lea). And you might need to be rescued and get your accidental order of ‘almond’ latés changed back to ‘small’ latés…I still can’t work out how that happened. Or lose all your hair by walking into the dozens of barbiers, that were neither bars nor served any biers.

It really was surprisingly difficult to get a drink in this town. But while there, we were told that it was even harder to get a joint, as 2 days in to their legal weed experiment…the country had run out. That’s why you can’t leave the government in charge of weed supplies, bunch of dopes.

In Montreal we finally managed to try the very French Canadian dish of poutine. It may have been the sound ‘poo’ in the name along with the faint hint of horse crap in the air that didn’t really make this dish seem appealing. Or maybe it was the fact that it’s made of soggy chips covered in cheese curds and a strange gravy. Or maybe it was the similarity of the name to the word ‘putain’ (pardon my French). The difference here is one’s a ‘gros mot’ and the other is just gross.

This was just a very small bite of French Canada (proportional to the size of the bite Lea took of her poutine) and one of the most amazing things to us was the strong tie to French France. We’d tasted incredible wines in BC, but it was tough to find many non-French wines in any restaurants, half the restaurants were French themed (at least in the old town) and the other half seemed Portuguese, which is probably more culturally relevant to Montreal these days. In stark contrast our experience has been that the French French couldn’t give a ‘poutine’ about Canada…nor I guess, anyone. Maybe that’s the egalité they’re always on about.

PS- Despite not having any close encounters with wildlife or anything funny happening in Montreal (see above), it snowed on us for the first time!! So I guess it is kinda cool. Lea also managed her first full cheese dinner for the trip, giving her that sense of being in little Europe and James the familiar feeling of needing to carry a couple of Euros in his pocket in case he needed to find a train station dunny.