Narnia, Québec

The Hotel de glace is an ice hotel. A hotel of sculptured ice. The solid 4 foot thick walls keep the inside at a cosy - 5C, a welcome respite from today's - 36C and the perfect room temperature for a crisp shot of vodka in an ice glass at the Absolut ice bar.

It's a five star igloo.

The hotel is an extravagant fantasy, with sculptured furnishings to indulge the imagination and play on the romance of mythical ice kingdoms. I have visons of Narnia. The bed frames are intricately carved, lit from within and layered with deer pelts. A huge ice chandelier hangs in the foyer.

The sculptures, by their very transient nature, have an ageless type of beauty, like a sunset or a rainbow. So too, the hotel has a tangible sense of immediacy - all this will be gone by Spring. I imagine the ambience intoxicating the guests.

Absolut, in fact, must be laughing.

* * * * *

I'm having trouble feeling my extremities and am thinking of red wine in fish bowl glasses and an open fire. Juls may have grown up in Australia but I suspect her Hungarian heritage blood has a northern hemisphere advantage. She loans me a bikini and takes me to a nordic spa instead.

At the Silberia Spa, we cook up our bodies in a dry sauna then take a plunge in the ice pool. Yes. An ice pool. It's said to invigorate blood and circulation. It invigorated most of my vital organs.

It's -20C, I'm in a bikini, my hair and eyelashes are frozen and I'm making snow angels in the woods. This was why I came to Canada in winter! Star gazing in the outdoor jacuzzi, I have fallen in love with snow.

"Madness" indeed...

Obscure Tangents

Siberia Station Spa

Dog sledding, -36 C

It is -36 C with the wind chill, and Juls and I are going dog sledding at Sainte Catherine de La Jacques Cartier, north of Quebec City.

Juls has done this before. I'm a bit nervous about being nervous, because I think dogs can smell fear and inadequacy. The dogs look eager for the smell of newcomers and they stand watchful beside their wooden kennels on the snow in the open air. Each kennel bears a name, adding a small, but noticeable, homely touch. I have a great deal of respect for animals who can thrive in extreme weather. I feel rather out of place. Beneath my layers, any healthy colour to betray the sun and Antipodean roots has long gone, yet I know that these dogs know that I know that I don't belong here.

I really am very cold.

Juls has taught me a neat trick to keep my hands warm, but standing among the kennels with arms outstretched swinging in wide alternate circles, although forcing blood to fingertips, our 'windmills' do not help us fit in.

These dogs are on to us.

* * * * *

I'm in the sled under a thick woolen rug and Juls, the first to drive, is standing on the skis behind me. Our five beautiful dogs paw enthusiastically at the snow and nip one another playfully in readiness for a run. But do not be fooled by the youthful demeanor of our mixed mongrel Alaskan husky and malamute pack. At the battle cry "allez allez allez!", our all at once energetic team lurches forward, heaving our sled into action, handles a sharp bend into the forest (Juls' railing the corner with authority), and then, not 20 metres into the thicket, promptly halt, sniff about a bit and take a pee.

“Allez allez allez!!!”, we yell, stifling our hysterics and attempting to command some respect.

I suspect my accent confuses them. French-speaking dogs play their French card.

On losing sight of the convoy ahead, it is only with the resounding sense of urgency in our combined voices, now dropped an octave and yelling, “ALLEZ ALLEZ ALLEZ!!!”, that they take up the trail again.

It's my turn to drive. Our erratic team are clearly out to play. Although I've picked up their tendency to bolt down hills and ease into a casual trot (do dogs trot?) on the level ground, I can't help but feel we're being taken for a ride in more ways than one.

Do I have any control whatsoever?

When I brake, I push one or both feet on the ice grate at the back of the sled, and I maneuver by throwing weight from side to side. All the exertion is in the upper body, it is absolutely freezing and at some stage I lose feeling in my feet.

I have never been so damn cold in my life.

Frozen Lashes, Québec

At -20C, I can measure the cold in dryness. My hair is crispy and I wear it in two Marsha-esc pony tails to curtail the static. At this temperature, my nostril hairs are frozen, and my nose makes a quiet crackle whenever I’m compelled to pinch it.

Juls and her friend Lyal are introducing my body to cross-country skiing. This is a deceptively harmless-looking sport involving keeping one’s skis within neat parallel tracks and applying a set of otherwise redundant arm, leg and buttocks muscles to the laws of motion.

The cross-country skier is poised, balanced and admirably coordinated. The cross-country skier is a master of momentum.

I am not a cross country skier.

On a flat surface, my skis and I grapple with the fundamental physics involved in transferring energy from potential to kinetic; I’m all arms and legs, outstretched and overextended in repeated bursts of enthusiasm. I look like an animated hiker. Meanwhile Juls’ tight buttocks propel her forward in silky smooth motion, into the pine forest and out of sight.

On downhill slopes, my issue now lies with gravity. Having insufficient skills to slow down, (let alone actually stop), I tackle the runs with the bending of knees and tucking of ‘sticks’ under arms and fly past snow-laden pine limbs with the kind of wide-eyed gumption of a novice who has not yet collided with a tree.

So, when Juls and Lyal suggest night skiing, somewhere local, an evening event involving a cookup and alcohol, naturally I do not hesitate to show my enthusiasm and place complete trust in the assumption that my friends would not allow me to come to harm.

* * * * *

I can hear Juls' long high pitched scream somewhere ahead in the darkness. There's no echo, the sound quickly dissipating in the snow, and I know that she's having a ball.

I apply the same blind faith skiing technique I'd been practicing with degrees of success during day, now under the comforting cloak of darkness. I can't see the tracks. I can't see much at all really, except for the white lining of snow on trees silhouetted against a starry sky. The benefit is I’ve no reference point to gauge the speed at which I’m moving. Until, that is, I pass one of the torches lighting a downhill bend with sudden and startling clarity. My inevitable high speed face plants are impressive.

Afterwards we join the crowd of about 30 at the ski club for a traditional Québécois cook-up of soup, tender meats and carafes of wine. It turns out that we were three of only five skiers out on the course; the rest having opted for the more civilised evening recreation of snow-shoeing, and on coming inside we look rosy cheeked and rather maniacal in comparison. I’m the only one with frozen hair and lashes. The wine tastes brilliant.

Juls' wastes no time in telling the DJ that there be Australians in the house and, someplace early in the ceremonies I hear my name amidst an announcement in French, everyone is looking at me and I am applauded as the foreigner stupid enough to ski blind on the very day she had learnt. Blatant attempts to win over the DJ prompts an eclectic series of pop and folk tunes in English, everything from Simon and Garfunkel to Robbie Williams, and at the opening beats of ACDC's Highway to Hell, we start the dance floor in our thermals.

Needless to say, we're the stayers.

Obscure Tangents

Lyal's Mushroom Soup

Fry a heap of finely chopped garlic and onion in olive oil and set aside. Fry two lean slivers of bacon and chop up finely. Fry up butter and olive oil, add chopped fresh dark field mushrooms, then the garlic, onion and bacon. Add pepper, parsley and chives... and serve with a dollop of sour cream. Good like velvet...

Real Snow, Québec City

Juls and I head north to Québec City. We’re staying in the picture-postcard lakeside community of Lac Beauport, where chalets, under layers of “real snow”, look like generously iced ginger bread houses. The snow here has bulk. It has density and mass and feels incredibly labour intensive. Snow that is shoveled in slabs, carved as makeshift steps, ploughed into corrugated hedges; snow that is so damn pretty in a silent and demanding I’ll bury your car and collapse your roof kind of way.

It’s a crisp Friday morning. Juls and I wear our full length International Women of Mystery black coats when we swan into the Chateaux Frotenac for breakfast. The Chateaux, Québec’s most salubrious of hotels, stands with immense dignity on high ground overlooking the Fleuve Saint Laurent like a fairytale castle. Complete with tapering spires in a tasteful aquamarine, it is the unmistakable point of reference and defining landmark of Québec City.

I'm walking around the old city and layers of snow and ice weigh heavily on roofs of the World Heritage Listed buildings. Huge silver icicles hang beneath awnings several storeys high like glass stalactites suspended in time. I watch men work in industrious teams of two’s or three’s. As one leans from a window, maneuvering a long handled broom to break off the ice, a second hovers on the sidewalk with his neck craned skyward, and shoos away tourists in his peripheral vision.

At street level, there are small stop-red signs warning pedestrians of the overhead danger and an occasional loud and unnerving sighing sound betrays the mass movement of shifting snow.

It gets cold. A silent wind slices down rue Sainte-Ursule with a biting urgency, as if gathering speed on the steep iced pavements. I round my shoulders and hide exposed skin, chin into neck, nose into scarf, ears beneath beanie and concentrate on keeping my footing.

The tall wooden doors of Le Petit Coin Latin Cafe are painted red. Through the glass panels, the tiny cafe looks a cosy and immediate refuge. The cafe is empty when I walk in. When the doors swing heavily behind me, I am aware that the silent wind had sound after all. My numb ears are accosted by a sudden stillness and when the man behind the counter greets me, kindly, in French, I think my voice too loud and abrasive, "Oui, je voudrais un menu, s'il vous plait!"

I while away the afternoon here, in hiding, curled up in a window corner reading the delightful 'Epitaph for a Peach: Four Seasons on My Family Farm', by David Mas Masumoto, and listening to the scratchy George Brassens recording. My French is pitiful, but the owner understands sufficient enough to refill my pot of Chamomile tea wordlessly. I grow quietly fond of him.

It's near on 4pm when he approaches my table hesitantly, apologetically, and proceeds to explain with paper scribbles of the big and small hands of the clock that he's closing shortly and will return at 6. I gather he'd grown fond of me too, our lazy afternoon of quiet companionship. Or perhaps he pitied me and my pink nose. Either way he thinks me harmless and says I can stay in, out of the cold, until he returns. Although he must lock the front door. Bless.

It's probably time to move on anyhow. I layer up to meet Juls for a glass of red.

On Ice, Mont Royal

There’s a small park next to the apartment with a swing set half buried in snow and a crude skate rink where I’ve seen local teenagers take to the ice to knock around a puck, as Canadian teenagers are wont to do. I’ve seen kids literally running on skates; kids wider in their padded gear than they are tall. How hard can this be? Okay. Other than one hour of holding hands and skating circles on the mini Christmas rink at London’s Somerset House, I’m guessing that the last time I was on skates I was about 15. There used to be an ice rink in Perth, Mirrabooka. I remember holding the rails.

My first experience at the park is comical. I’ve borrowed Juls’ skates and betray I’m an amateur when I spend too long lacing them and nearly fall off the boundary fence in doing so. The park is empty except for two boys, about 7 or 8, who cut up ice in circles around me in what I like to interpret as endearing interest. They don’t speak English and quite possibly, I wonder, have never seen anyone who can’t skate before. I try to explain that I’m from Australia, that I could swim the padded pants off the both of them, but nearly slip over whilst imitating a kangaroo. It occurs to me that their centre of gravity is lower than mine. Nevertheless within just a few short hours I am still on my feet, heralded by my pint-sized friends as a natural, and they go home.

* * * * *

Feb 22, 2006. The snow is still falling as I walk around Montreal’s old Vieux-Port, making fresh footprints on cobbled streets that attest to 400 years of history. The port began as a fur trading post in the early 17th Century, evolving as the original commercial hub of the city, and the old headquarters of large banks and insurance companies remain imposing buildings today.

It’s near on dusk when I venture to test my virgin skating skills at the promenade du Vieux-Port. At twilight, the ice reflects the deep rose and emerald green shades of the adjacent illuminated Bonsecours Market, a building that lives up to architect William Footner’s design to, “impress upon the traveller's mind an overwhelming image of the beauty and importance of the flourishing City of Montreal”.

I meet Francesco, a French-speaking Italian no doubt amused by my skating prowess as much as my penchant for snow. The snowball that instigates the ensuing fight is thrown in front of the Hotel de Ville on the main thoroughfare; the site of President General de Gaulle's famous 1967 liberation cry, "Long live free Quebec!", which seemed as apt a place as any...

Photographs

From the top - Skaters on Beaver Lake, Mont Royal; the Hotel de Ville; Steph abandoning camera moments before snow fight (by Francesco); Skating at sunset, Beaver Lake (by Francesco).

Trapper's Hats, Montreal

Montreal is in a snowstorm today. Jul’s left early for work and I’m lying in bed on the floor, beneath the ironing board, watching the white feathery stuff fall in delicate whirlpools from the sky and settle in clean layers on the street, on cars and the stairs of apartments across the road.






It’s -10 C when I go for a jog. I wear a cap pulled down low and my face feels fiercely numb and exposed as I blink snowflakes from my eyelashes. I cry involuntarily and have one of those ‘frightened animal baring two rows of teeth’ smiles dented into my cheeks. I leave fresh footprints on empty footpaths and roads. The snow dampens all sound, and I feel like the only person in the world.

* * * * *

Feb 18, 2006. It’s a Saturday morning, the radio is on and we’re layering up for a food orientated excursion to Montreal’s Little Italy when Jul’s warns me that it’s cold out. This concerns me. It was in the scale of -12 C yesterday and I was introduced to the rather nasty winter phenomenon of ice rain and, other than a few cautious words concerning the perils of heeled boots on iced pavements, this is the first time I recall Julianna actually mentioning the weather.

“It’s minus 20,” she says, “It’ll be fresh.”

Yesterday’s ice rain, which is exactly what it sounds like, has left Montreal under a glassy layer of clear ice. Fresh after the snowstorm, the ice has sealed the snow still new and clean on streets, cars and stairs in a smooth crystal-like casing. Icicles hang in parallel drip formations beneath snow-topped handrails and thin, naked limbs of crystallized tree branches. The stairs to Jul’s second storey apartment are one of few in the district that are indoors and I take mild pleasure watching the neighbours venture outside, tentative steps at a time, and scatter salt on treacherous steps and handrails.

The sky is blue, the sun is out and frozen Montreal is extraordinarily beautiful.



Juls and I are wearing official Canadian Turino Winter Olympic Games trapper’s hats. Mine is a knitted, cream ensemble with large red maple leaves and red braided ties that hang from each ear. Juls is sporting a wool box-shaped head piece, featuring the more traditional ear flaps and an embossed ‘CANADA’ emblazoned on her forehead. Juls’ was a Valentine’s present with a very, very long story. Mine was peer pressure. In Montreal, a stronghold for Separatist Quebec supporters, our combined heads shout either Canadian nationalistic pride or “tourist!” Even in the car we turn heads on the street.

We’ve dolled up to see a show as part of the Festival Montreal en Lumiere and meet Juls’ university colleagues first for dinner. I’m introduced to the Head of the Chair of Tourism, Michel, a charming man befitting a brown suit and bowtie, who greets me with the customary two kisses and takes charge of the wine. He’s curious as to what possesses an Australian to travel to Québec in winter and I explain my newfound enthusiasm for snow, snow angels and everything learnt from Calvin and Hobbes. I fall short of illustrating my grand idea for cultural tourism on a napkin (involving backpackers shoveling snow under guise of an authentic Québécois experience…), when Juls eyes the two women seated next to us donning hats in readiness to leave and thought it appropriate to point, yell “trapper’s hats!”, and break into hysterical laughter.

“We really like your hats,” I explain, weakly, the best I could summon to placate an odd situation. It must be the weather.

I know nothing of the show we go to see. Entitled La Pornographie des Âmes (Pornography of the Soul), I best interpret it as an utterly raw expression of body image. The opening says much, if not all; a thirteen strong cast of men and women systematically remove all their clothes and sprint back and forth across the wooden stage. There’s a thudding rhythm and certain symmetry in this, all the pale flesh, pulsing muscles and wobbly bits. A large nude woman performs a moving dance to the Nutcracker’s Sugar Plum Fairy and the limited dialogue is in French. I can’t believe I’m in a skirt when the outside draft is -20 C and to see bare skin is surreal. It’s provocative, to say the least.

Obscure Tangents

Skin Deep (The Montreal Mirror)

Dave St-Pierre & Compagnie (BBC)

Hochelaga Grit, Montreal

I’m sleeping on the laundry floor in Juls’ apartment in the District d’Hochelaga, off Rue Ontario Est near the predominantly French speaking Latin quarter. Although the city is bilingual, I’m impressed with Juls’ deliberate immersion into the French culture.

One morning she is translating aloud from the Québécois newspaper over breakfast; an article quoting Hochelaga as the second poorest district in Montreal with alarmingly high statistics of unemployment, of single parents on benefits, lowest education rates etc. etc. Juls is surprised at this insight into her homely neighborhood. I too had taken an easy liking to the place.

Rue Ontario Est has a boulevard with a crude mix of no frills’ North American diners and Dollarama stores, of tacky pseudo antique and ‘sexy shops’. There’s a second hand clothing megastore opposite the local library, and the specialised chocolate shop and grocery neighbours a selection of boutiques with yellowing manikins in the windows dolled up in miniskirts and tight breasted nylon t-shirts. The prostitutes on the corner of Rue Joliette are part of the community. The local market, Marché Public Maisonneuve, is next to an important looking government building with ample courtyard and a picturesque concrete fountain. The market has a small selection of organic fruit and veg and old men in worn suits drink café au lait in the middle of the day.

The Atomic Café come DVD store becomes a favourite late night haunt. The owner, Gill, a funky David Spade look-alike in skinny black jeans and long streaked hair, has a calm demeanor and hesitant English as he adjusts the café computer’s French settings for me. It’s a retro, laid back place. The DVDs are categorized beyond me (by Director.. or Producer), and the black and white TV, silver bulbous lamps, and Etch a Sketches on the matt-white circular coffee table seem more an indulgence of Gill’s favourite things, rather than any pretension.

To me, Hochelaga feels a bit gritty, but with character, as they say, and it feels safe. Only 15 minutes and a couple of Metro stops east of downtown Montreal, and sharing the quaintly ornate, although somewhat impractical, winding outdoor metal staircases that characterize the nearby trendy art and student District d’Plateau, Hochelaga’s grit is sure to become only more and more palatable (Steph and Jul’s real estate tip of the day), ...although even grit looks pretty in snow.

A few blocks north of the boulevard you can see the looming tower of the Olympic Stadium, Montreal’s white elephant. Built for the 1976 Summer Games, they ran out of money, or a workers strike or something meant that it wasn’t finished on time. The tower that was designed to open the stadium roof apparently stood half finished until the late 80s and the roof not made retractable for another couple of years.

It’s since had other structural challenges (a falling concrete column etc.), been remodeled and the roof replaced a couple of times. The end result is a stadium dome at the total cost to Montreal tax payers somewhere in excess of $1 billion. The roof doesn’t open. I’m not sure Montreal has a professional baseball team anyway. But the aesthetic design and views from the 556 foot high redundant tower are impressive. No doubt the more so if you hadn't paid for it.

Obscure Tangents

Wil Murray's exhibition at the Atomic Cafe - Art that's all colour and candy, vomit and glitter (McGill Daily)

The Atomic Cafe 1982 cult movie in brief

It’s Cold Out, Canada

Duly inspired by the working limitations of my brilliantly titled ‘UK Working Holiday-Maker Visa’, I gave a few weeks notice to CH2M HILL that I would be gone for six weeks or so, and to my Australian friend, Julianna, now living in Montreal, that I was coming over. Juls and I studied our Honours’ year together in Perth and we’re excited about the reunion - a naïve sort of giggly anticipation reminiscent of school girls before a slumber party. I’m 15 again.

From the air, northeastern Québec is a vast land of ice. I'm staring at the grayish blue and white aerial landscape of mountains with rivers solidified into milky cracks and fissures. The flight path tells me we’re over Québec City and I can make out a tiny cluster of lights in a sea of ghostly white that stretches to the horizon. It looks small and vulnerable, like tiny flames the surrounding expanse could smother at will.

Montreal is actually an island, a medium strip between fingers of the Fleuve Saint Laurent. As we fly in low over suburbia, I watch the busy lights of cars and trucks in peak hour traffic leaving dark tracks on soft white roads. The grey square buildings are dusted with white too and it all looks a bit cold (just quietly).

I’m compelled to explain to the girl next to me that the last time I saw snow it was 1984. I was with my family, in a caravan, on the east coast of Australia. Graham and I got a photograph of our identical grins, and a snowman we didn’t build, on the front page of The Australian. I had pink mittens and pink skis and Murray’s bottom lip (age 3) would quiver when Graham and I pushed him, our little brother, down slopes in a toboggan. Dad told us that the ice on the roadside came from people emptying their Eskys.

Juls meets me at the airport. She glides into the foyer in a stylish red coat with flecks of snow still on her shoulders. The elegant wave to the rim of her black fur hat cuts a regal silhouette, and gently shades her face, huge blue eyes and the warmest, toothy smile.

Juls mate, it’s good to see you.

Obscure Tangents

[Esky: Named after the Australian brand of coolers manufactured by Nylex, the Esky is the colloquial name Australians use for any portable cooler, and is the quintessential element of an Aussie bbq.]