A Look Back at a Summer in Montréal

What I learned...
1) Never challenge a security guard at Osheaga, even if it is the last night and everyone is trying to go home (big mistake).
2) Not having a bad girlfriend is worse than having a bad girlfriend.
3) I should have spent more time in the cafés around the city (no money, but I could have sat with that cold coffee and stretched out the daylight).
4) Contract teaching is eating my soul.
5) I should have played my guitar more often (still have the electric in Montréal and I just played a Gibson SG at the St-Laurent street fair).
6) Friends are more valuable than anyone cares to imagine.
7) I am getting a new laptop in two weeks.
8) I need a new laptop today.
9) I should move.
10) I should stop spending so much time on blogging during the last weekend of August.

A Trip to California (Part Nine)

So, would I go back? I would like to take my own family on such a road trip. I would also like a place in the sun that did not belong to dead earth, dead heat and a mentality that avoided intellectualism and deep thought. California belongs to Californians (at least of one generation); America belongs to anyone brave enough to cross it, live it and enjoy it (even an adolescent coming to terms with his new life without a father). I am so grateful for my mother’s gift of travel and discovery.

A Trip to California (Part Eight)

I was almost killed at one point. This happened on my first night in Jennifer’s home. We were sleeping in a spare room, a room that I think was reserved for the husband (Jennifer had her own set up with a bed designed just for her needs and with other apparatuses for more mobility). The house was a one-floor mansion with sliding doors in the living room leading to the front yard and the back yard. I remember that those doors were opened with the screens locked in place and the curtain slightly open. It was still humid (the temperature was 38 Celsius) and we all decided to go straight to bed after such a long trip. But there was one thing I forgot to do before turning in: use the facilities. I had seen the bathroom when we were shown around the house and knew that I would have to walk across the living room to get there. I was quiet as I stepped along the floor, but I still managed to startle Jennifer’s husband. This remains my sharpest memory of the stay; not Disneyland; not the ugly malls we visited; not even the man-made lake we visited where I was made acquainted with a large group of Nathalies (as fake and as irritating as that lake). Remember, I was just a child in a new country that I did not really understand. Nothing else lingers in my memory like that moment.


His hand clearly held a gun. There was some light in that living room and he woke from his sleep with his hand on the barrel of what looked like a weapon Clint Eastwood would have been proud to use in his next Dirty Harry film (they were still making them then). When he saw it was me, he dropped his hand, screwed up his face and asked what I was doing. There was no doubt about me needing a bathroom break now. And there was no apology. I did not mention this to my mother for the rest of the trip and nothing more was said after that night.

A Trip to California (Part Seven)

This section will cover our stay in California. After three days in a van, a part of me expected a real revelation in that well-known state of the union. I knew Hollywood and Disneyland; Ronald Reagan was president and I knew it was his home state (at that age, he was my first real experience of an American president, so I was well-informed). I had heard of Los Angeles, San Francisco, the redwoods, UCLA, the 1960s counterculture, Laurel Canyon (through references to it in the same era’s music and art) and its idea of celebrity and glamour. Very little of what I knew became any sort of reality.


We travelled through the desert of Death Valley to more desert in southern California. Ontario was a dry and burned out and spare town in the middle of expanses of dust and dirt. I never forgot how the patches of dirt were strange next to all of those expensive homes. Front lawns were a true rarity (they seemed to belong to every fourth home). After our stay, we travelled through Los Angeles to reach the airport to take us home, the vision was just as bleak (more so with the poverty and the haze of bodies). This return trip passed us through East LA and I remember it as a film of sepia and human traffic on every available space on the sidewalks and roads.

A Trip to California (Part Six)

There was one thing we did on the road that still surprises me. The white nurse in our van was sitting in the front passenger side and noticed a black hitchhiker. This was in the Midwest and it made me wonder how he ended up in an area where he could have been picked up and jailed as a vagrant. There was some argument about stopping the car for him (not a general vote, but not much support on the nay side). There were six of us, if I consider myself as a potential combatant (Natalie alone could have talked him to death), and that was also on mind. But we still wondered about what would happen for the rest of our trip.

He was very dark, thin, and tall and had a friendly and open look. He told us that he was trying to reconnect with family (or friends; he was not precise about this). He had spent some time in the Midwest with people he did not know very well. Stuck without any money – he had been dropped off by another car a few hours earlier – he was tired but not worried or stressed out. I do not remember talking to him for too long or too often – he napped in the flat area at the back of the van with his small satchel around his chest – and I realized just how silly my concerns for our safety were. He was exhausted and, as my mother discovered, very hungry. She told me later that she had seen him take a doughnut from a box of them that we had with us (I never saw this happen, but I would not have blamed him if I did). I liked having him there. He seemed to be another sign of America’s greatness for me: we trusted him and he trusted us; and we were both on this journey to the West. He only stayed with us up to Nevada (Las Vegas or Reno was his stop), and I regret now that I have no photograph of him (even his name has stepped out of my memory). I hope that he is well and living with a real roof over his head.

A Trip to California (Part Five)

That was a lesson. I would see beautiful wheat fields in the Midwest, but I would also eat the worst Chinese food of my young life in the same setting. I would see Salt Lake City at night from a high mountain pass (easily one of the most beautiful sights in the world; those salt rings in the moonlight are remarkable), and I would pass through Las Vegas in the daytime (the ugliest sight for a dreamer of casino fortunes and stage shows). This was right and fair. Whenever I hear a critic of America preach in Europe, Asia or Africa, I have to wonder and ask out loud: Have these people ever visited and travelled across that land? Do they know what America is really like when they step away from its movies, music and other advertising? It is a country that does not deserve the criticism it receives from total strangers. We slept in that open space when we could have stayed in an inn or a motel and I never lost the feeling that we were like the original pioneers who had to risk our lives to see what that great bulge of land - Jack Kerouac’s wonderful phrase - had to offer. Of course, the internal combustion system and A/C did not hurt either. But we were still out in the rough and raw places of a great and frightening place.

A Trip to California (Part Four)

There was a different world outside of that ride. Once we stopped for breaks and explored where we were, I realized just how different things could be. Soda and candy that I knew back home were still available, but the packaging was different (much smaller, bigger, or with features I never considered before – ex. Pull-off tabs for soda cans). I was given a book to read and noticed immediately the difference in price (about a dollar lower than back home). We once stopped at a convenience store, bought some groceries, and saw a father enter and begin to scream and gesture at his son. The boy had run away from home and the father wanted him to come back immediately. No one in the store moved, except my mother, who took me by the hand and led me outside. But I will never forget that moment or the man. He had a rough beard that was very close to his face, a trucker’s hat, shorts and a dirty t-shirt. The anger we felt pulsing from him was palpable, as if it had its own energy and purpose. The only adults I had seen angry with children in public were teachers and the parents of my cousins and relatives, and their anger did not even approach what I saw in that store.

A Trip to California (Part Three)

I felt it when we crossed the border. That sounds ridiculous, but I did feel something when we crossed the Peace Bridge into New York. It may have been the heat or the thrill of being in a strange vehicle on a road trip to a place I did not know, but I remember a sensation of pressure in my head and on my body, like I was changing atmospheres. I know now that this was also a sensation of fear. What would the trip in this van, with at least four people I did not know, involve? Would we be safe in America (a concern that would be a real problem for me in California, as I will explain eventually)? Did they have the food I liked to eat, the TV shows I liked to watch? I only half understood my own feelings at the time.


You notice the usual things on the road when traveling in a new place: the people and their behaviour, the different types of buildings, the amount of space available to those people and their buildings, the type of weather and the temperature, and so on. It was a warm and dry summer. And America seemed to be full of all of the same things I could find in Canada: the space, the housing, and the people. None of this was different from the point of view of a car seat. The package was the same. And a part of me was disappointed that things were not as strange as I had imagined they would be.

A Trip to California (Part Two)

I think the decision to head to California with them was something my mother planned well ahead of their arrival. She never said a word about driving back with this other family during their stay with us. The plan was a tit for tat one: they had been shown hospitality by us, so why not let them return the favour with some time at their place. We were to share the space in their van for a few days, stay at their place for a few more days (about a week), and then take a flight home from Los Angeles. My mother had an urge to get ourselves out into the world to see different places. I always thought, and I still believe today, that this was to make sure that my memories of that year did not include just a holiday that everyone celebrated with a complete family and the cold irony and misery of not having even that during a time of the year devoted to miracles and second chances. She wanted me to have more.


Was I excited about the trip? I suppose I was. When you look back at moments in your childhood, it involves a strange pairing of exaggeration and denial. The summer of 1984 began with us living in a new place, and the possibility that we could lead new lives. I remember the music I listened to, the toys I played with, and even the clothes I wore as special and unique to me. That is what children do. Their worlds can seem so completely self-contained that other realities no more exist than any other fantasy seen in movies, comic books or TV programs (again, all unique and special for and to me). For all of these reasons, I am very glad that my mother decided on that trip. I had been to the Caribbean to visit family – our last trip had been to bury my father on the island of Curacao – but I had never left my home country for a place where I knew no one; where I had no familial or cultural ties. It was the first time I was exposed to an environment I only half-knew through its powerful and impressive media. It would be a very direct experience of our neighbours to the south.

A Trip to California (Part One)

The year is not completely clear to me, but I do remember the right moments. My father had passed away at the end of 1983, a few days before Christmas, and my mother went through this loss with a determination to live her life as fully as possible. We moved not too far from our old place into a larger home with a larger backyard, basement and more rooms. My own room was the smallest one and had obviously been used for a baby boy (the bottom half of the wall was wallpaper with Paddington Bears in different poses). I did not care about how childish the room was or looked; it was a new place and a new start for us. And there would be more.


In the summer of 1984, a close friend of my mother came to visit us. Jennifer had worked with her in a nursing home for many years before she was seriously injured in a car accident and confined to a wheelchair. I wonder now how she was able to make her way around our new home so easily (there were many levels separated with stairwells). She had a very advanced wheelchair with a motor and a lever to control her motion. Her husband, whose name I cannot remember, was a strong man who helped her when he could. They also had a nurse who bathed and fed her. Finally, they had a younger daughter. Nathalie was a nightmare for a slightly older boy who had a growing interest in girls but no way of approaching them beyond awkward gestures and silly comments.

They now lived in California, in a city called Ontario. It was in the desert, not too far from the heat and aridity of the famous Death Valley area. I did not think it strange at the time that we had guests with such divergent backgrounds: Jennifer was black and West Indian; her husband was a black American with a deep southern accent; the nurse was a white woman who sounded like someone from the Midwestern states; and Nathalie was pure California to me, or what I would think of that state (I had not yet seen the film “Valley Girl,” a 1983 release, but I could guess what it would be like). The fact that they were now in another Ontario was a pleasant symmetry that would stay in my mind as we returned to their place in the West.

Mick Jagger, My Father (Conclusion)

Most records of the band’s touring and work schedule shows them far removed from the great white north. Well, that does not prove anything, either. I look at my mother and that nervous smile on her face and think about the time she told me that my father took me to the islands to visit my relatives soon after I was born, and I got so sick that he vowed never to bring me there again. Was there something in my genetic makeup that would not allow me to bear the weather, the food, the change in climate? A little goat’s head soup may have been just what I needed. At least, that’s what Mick would have wanted.

Mick Jagger, My Father (Part Four)

I know what you may be thinking: it is just a coincidence that Mick and the boys ended up naming their ’73 release after a meal enjoyed by my family. What about the albums that followed? There was 1974’s “It’s Only Rock and Roll” and then “Black and Blue”. This is a fair critique which I can easily dismiss. The former album has an album cover that still resonates with me; not for Guy Paellart’s painting technique – it looks like it was brushed onto black velvet – but for the posture of the band. Put a baby in Mick’s arm and you have as near a reproduction of the early photograph I mentioned, the one where my face is obscured next to my nervous mother. Then there is the latter album, the one where they covered their first reggae song, “Cherry Oh Baby”. Why this sudden urge to connect with a different black musical idiom? There is a lot to be said for covering one’s tracks.