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)