Why is Montreal your home?
An e-mail message yesterday and a Montreal Gazette article this morning brought this question to mind. I hope Herb Auerbach, of Vancouver BC, won’t mind me mentioning his message. This alerted me to a ceremony on October 26 to place a plaque in memory of Vincent Ponte at Place Ville Marie. Mr. Auerbach represents a group called the friends of Vince Ponte. Vince Ponte was the person who created the master plan for Downtown Montreal. A Time Magazine profile in 1970 called him the Multilevel Man, so you’ll understand why he is so important. He felt that Montreal, with New York and San Francisco, were the three North American cities that had the most distinct personalities. He made his home here in 1964 and died earlier this year.
Now the Montreal Gazette this morning has an article about Kent Nagano, the new music director of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra. Its title is ‘In harmony with his new home’. It mentions that he is currently toggling between homes in San Francisco and Paris while working mainly in Montreal and Munich. He is also the music director of the Bavarian State Opera in Munich. He is still making up his mind on whether to have a home here too, but it sounds as though he already feels at home in Montreal. “To feel not a guest, but at home, we have never experienced this before, this sense of openness, of inclusiveness.”
By coincidence I was interviewed by Yves Faguy of the Videotron TV Cable channel, VOX Cablecast about Brand Montreal a week ago. If my comments survive the editing process, it will be part of “Le 514″ a programme about Montreal on Wednesday 27th September at 7:30 pm. Like Vince Ponte and Kent Nagano, I think Montreal has its own very special character, that I’ve dubbed ‘la ville vibrante‘.
Why is Montreal your home?
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Born and raised, in Montreal is where I spend most of my days and most of my life (so far anyway). My friends are here. Half my family is here (the other half is in Vietnam).
But that’s no reason for me to call Montreal home. I don’t even think I can call any place home. Everytime I was away from Montreal, I never felt homesick. And the longest I have been away was 7 weeks. That number will probably increase after I graduate from university.
I guess home has nothing to do with a place, but it’s more about the people around me, the people that I can get in touch with. These days, communication is so easy that I would have to call Earth my home.