From our own Kate Droske, on fellowship at Concordia University for the semester:
This semester I am in Montreal, researching the archives of French-Canadian author Gabrielle Roy. Though born and raised in Saint-Boniface, Manitoba, Roy spent almost all of her literary career in Québec, and she wrote her best-known and first novel, Bonheur d’occasion, in Montreal. The professor who is overseeing my research on Roy teaches at Concordia University here, and I am fortunate to be able to participate in a couple of classes at Concordia this semester that complement my independent research. One of the courses I am taking focuses on Québécois literature before the 1960s, and the other on Québécois literature since the 1980s (leaving the gaping hole of the time of la Révolution Tranquille, though I have enough decades of reading to keep me plenty busy as is…). For the latter, all of the assigned novels are set, at least partially, in Montreal, and it has been a weekly adventure plotting the literary characters within the city’s streets.
I brought my bicycle with me from Minneapolis, and it has been a wonderful way to discover the city, though had I known that Bixi bikes were so prevalent (the company that brings Nice Ride to the Twin Cities originated in Montreal and is very well-established here), I might have left it at home. My commute to Concordia University brings me through downtown Montreal in its busyness and bilingualism. My return ride takes me up the Boulevard Saint-Laurent, the street that divides Montréal into East and West (and, historically, French-speaking and English-speaking). In “Les deux Saint-Laurent”, one of her early newspaper articles published in 1941, Gabrielle Roy traces different waves of immigrants as she heads north on the boulevard, beginning in the Old Port at Ville-Marie and traveling through Chinatown, Little Portugal and Little Italy. Turning East just as you reach Little Italy and continuing about half a kilometer will bring you to the apartment I am subletting. Located in the charming cartier of Rosemont, I am living just a few blocks from the Marché Jean-Talon and surrounded by the multi-colored metal staircases leading up to second story apartments so characteristic of Montreal (though a Montrealer recently told me that it is now illegal to install the steep outdoor staircases as they are so treacherous in the icy winter months).
Thanks for writing, Kate!
