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.

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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).