Yes, I know. It was Easter weekend. I should be writing about how warm it was and how my second weekend outdoor ride went.

Mont Tremblant is in an alternate universe. At least, I don’t think it’s in Quebec. We ran up Friday (big mistake) to ski Tremblant. First time in close to 20 years. I had seen the changes, just never skied there since. What a zoo.

1. Wait in line for a bus to take you to the hill.
2. Wait in line for 40 minutes to buy your lift ticket (70 bucks)
3. Wait in line for another 40 minutes to get to the top via the gondola.

It wasn’t like that 20 years ago! When I first skied Tremblant as a kid, I remember the single chairlift on the North Side. I even remember taking it..

Chalk full of tourists.. Lots of Americans and British. All the staff speak to you in English with accents. It’s so bizare. It’s Quebec, yet not quite.  Tourists who routinely ask you how you are doing.. Whoa, again, we don’t do that in Quebec!

Winds at the top were insane. If you slid down with your arms out, the wind would stop you from moving. Conditions however were still excellent. Mid winter stuff, yet on Easter Weekend.

Sunday was a quick trip to Sauveur. No one there. No one. Skied all morning without having to wait for a chair. Conditions there too were the best I have seen all year.

Next weekend is the famous Pond Crossing at Morin Heights.  If this weather holds up, they are going to have a hard time keeping that water from freezing.

I get out of the house and head for the metro station. I pass the (how do you say tourniquet in English?) and I see two girls (women? They looked like teenagers) with a trolley and there was a real living baby inside.

One of the girls could either be the mother or the sister, but that’s not important. The two women were lifting the carriage from either extremities and as they were clumsily going down the stairs, the trolley was continuously swinging front and back.

Of course, the only thought in my mind was that the baby was going to fly which is very cool to see in movies.

The worst didn’t happen, so this is just a little story without a bad ending.

Everything in the world is wrong, right? Wrong! It’s just people who keep focusing on things that are wrong and in the process, they destroy everything that is right.

Since the end of last summer, I started going to comedy clubs. I saw stand-up comics on YouTube and on TV (Comedy Central Presents and Last Comic Standing) and I figured that there must be some place in Montreal with stand-up comedy. How could a city host the Just For Laughs festival without having events dedicated to comedy?

On this winter day, I give you a few stand-up comedy events that are happening in Montreal, every week and every month.
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The French language seems to have become a big concern since the news came out that a journalist got 15 jobs downtown without needing to speak French. Personally, I don’t pay attention to the language I use, the bottom line is communicating and understanding. Too much bad has happened because of the lack of that.

I just read this article which I found pretty funny, even though it’s pretty easy to guess the punch line.

It’s definitely exagerated to show a point, because I never anybody say “Qu’est-ce qu’on fait tonight?” I never heard anybody use the word “tonight” in a French context. And in this sentence, “Calm down Manon, take it easy!”, there is way too much English for a person who is trying to speak French.

It’s an ironic scenario and those two characters are definitely stupid.

As a response to the anti-immigrant sentiments expressed at the “reasonable accommodation” hearings, Université de Montréal doctoral student Caroline Allard has written an open letter which she invites “Québécois de souche” to sign. An excerpt from the English translation:

We are preoccupied with the fact some testimony before the Bouchard-Taylor Commission, testimony that is intolerant and harsh toward cultural minorities, could be interpreted as reflecting the opinion of a majority of so-called old-stock francophones. We think, rather, that this testimony, which caricatures the practices of other cultures, reveals a profound ignorance of the reality of people from different cultural communities. What’s more, this ignorance feeds a close-mindedness about the connections that it is possible to make among Quebecers, old and new. We want to make clear our openness to cultural communities and to dissociate ourselves clearly from some of what has been said before the commission. Just because some things were said in public does not, we insist, mean they represent the state of mind of the majority of “old-stock” Quebecers.

The letter currently has 3076 signatures and will be formally presented to the Bouchard-Taylor Commission in several weeks time. The original French text is available at contrelintolerance.blogspot.com; an English translation was published in Friday’s Montreal Gazette and can be found here. To add your signature to the letter, click here.

Like slavery and apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is man-made and can be overcome and eradicated by the actions of human beings.

–Nelson Mandela

Today is the United Nations Day for the Eradication of Poverty, which is being marked by a global day of action sponsored by a coalition of anti-poverty groups working under the name Make Poverty History. The coalition is calling on Canadians to “STAND UP and SPEAK OUT” at events being held across the country, the purpose of which is to demand trade justice, increased international aid, debt cancellation for poor countries, and an end to child poverty in Canada.

Click here for a list of events happening in and around Montreal, and here to endorse the campaign.

I was leaving the fancy Caisse de Depot building downtown yesterday where I had just given an English class. A couple of years ago, Place Jean Paul Riopelle was erected between this building and the Palais des Congres. The park is lovely with a fountain and sculptures. During the summer, misters installed underground come to life, creating a spooky scene. In the evenings, fire dances around the fountain as “smoke” pours out everywhere. (Read about the full sequence here.) It’s quite a show. But as I was sitting there yesterday, I thought about what a colossal waste of money this is, and wondered how much it costs to maintain the infrastructure for such a park. It’s not surprising that we find this park amongst the most well-heeled wheelers and dealers in town. Oh and it’s impressive for tourists. But with bridges falling down and metro tunnels leaking, it sure seems like some of our public money is being unwisely spent.

Yulblog is a monthly gathering of Montreal bloggers. I’ve known about it since before I started writing on Metroblogging Montreal in December 2004. It’s odd that my first attendance is almost three years later. I actually wrote the second post ever on this blog which makes me the longest runner on this thing, but I think I might just be the youngest (23) blogger here. How ironic!
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More blogging en français in Montreal is when I started writing des textes en French.

I have been enjoying writing in French. I’ve also been enjoying the interaction that comes out of it. There’s a few posts I wrote in French and the comments are mixed up in two languages which I find very cool. A true testimony of a great cultural side of Montreal. Sure, there are a few exceptions where all the comments turn out to be in English even though the post is in French. The one thing that hasn’t happened yet is an English post getting French comments… or maybe I just missed it when it happened.

That’s the online world. Out in the streets, it’s pretty much the same thing. I was at a restaurant last week. We were speaking English to each other, the waitress came and everybody was suddenly speaking French. I was actually observing that and it was… wow. It’s incredible to speak two languages and switch from one to the other as if they were one.

The same thing happens at the office. We’re all bilingual here with a lady that speaks Spanish on the phone all the time. There’s one guy who always speaks French no matter what other people say. The others keep switching languages back and forth. That’s cool.

Et voilà Montréal. Comprendre est plus important que le choix de langue. Personally, I have no preference when talking, mais je préfère tapper en anglais. All the accents in French (é, è, à, ç, ë, ô) are just a pain in the ass to type. Alors pourquoi est-ce que je tappe en français sur Metroblogging Montreal? Le bilinguisme est une caractéristique culturelle importante de Montréal. You take that out and you’ve got no Montreal.

The drawback of this is that these things can get confusing. The graphic design of that sign is so bad that it’s horrible.

According to local media reports, an agreement in principle has been reached between the STM and the Syndicat du transport de Montréal. Both sides must still ratify the agreement, which would end the four-day old transit strike.

In other news, a protest called yesterday to denounce the striking STM workers drew exactly three people: the organizer and two of his friends. Maybe if they had offered to provide transportation…?

UPDATE: The agreement has been ratified. According to the STM, bus and metro service is being gradually resumed and will return to full service by Saturday morning. Negotiations between the STM and the union will continue with conciliator Jean-Pierre Gosselin.