accommodating us each in a very different way. I kept trying to put an
image to what it was, and decided that it had to be Mama Monty. Give
me your suggestions on what is missing, what you experienced in
Montreal, what Montreal made you experience.
Mama Monty.
She is not young; her heyday was in the 60's and 70's, a firm
protester to all that wasn't funky. In her old age, her hair has grown
wispy, patches of bald can be noticed if you look past the beehive of
gray. She wears groovy glasses to keep in the mischievous glint in her
eye during the day. Her skin is wrinkled and old, her smile is fresh
and beautiful. She is a leftover hippie, donning the leftover clothes,
taking them under her wing and making them feel wanted again, have
them come into their own once more. She is a mishmash of stripes and
stars and spots. She is all colors. Taken individually, the items of
clothing would not match; as an ensemble, the mere fact that she knows
that she can rock it makes it happen.
During the elongated frigid nights, the snow falls like shavings of
every cloud in the sky, as if even the sky had frozen; during those
nights, Mama Monty, the patron Saint of Montreal wanders the streets,
cursing under her breath, never looking anyone in the eye, holding her
true spirit hidden. She recluses. She hides in basements to keep warm.
She retracts into her enormous bosom, chin to chest. She wears a
frumpy, enormous, stained winter coat during the cold months; when the
first hints of (the first round of) spring sprout, she throws it into
the remaining snow defiantly, challenging the winter to continue
against her fierceness.
Spring comes for good eventually. She wakes from her epic seclusion,
and cackles for the whole city to hear. "You thought I would never
stop winter! You had dared to hate me! You fucking spited me!' (she
says this in French as that is the only language she speaks, and will
look on smilingly with a tilted head to any anglophone). And to spite
the residents of Montreal in return, she throws her fairy dust onto
every neighborhood, dusting downtown with smiles, sprinkling warmth
onto the Old Town, inviting bicycles to come out of hibernation in the
Plateau, tickling flowers to show their faces on Mont Royal. She makes
Montrealers wish they had never uttered a single negative comment
about Mama Monty's empire. She sparks everyone's hormones into
ecstasy, driving the youngsters to chase each other through the
streets, through the parks, through the restaurants, through the
clubs, through the sex shops, through the porn shows, all trying to
make as much love as possible while the countless beds of grass are
still fluffy green. Mama Monty cannot hold her laughter back, she
rolls on the floor cracking up at how she had fooled everyone into
thinking that winter would never leave.
Mama Monty spends the warm months talking to people's souls,
conversing them, coaxing them, cajoling them to ease out of their
shell and into the 'Real World' that is Montreal. And how many youths
come to this grand city full of strangers only to talk to Mama Monty
and have her explain who they were better than they knew themselves.
She makes everyone want to dance and smile and be adult in the least
grown up way imaginable. She forces all to take risks, and will cry
out in triumph regardless of the result. She takes all those lost and
confused and holds them all to her warm, enormous, almost grotesque
bosom, where they congregate and can help each other climb out of
their problems. She dances madly all through the day and all through
the night, and ignores the stares because she is just too damn into
her dancing. Her deep voice, scarred from too many cigarettes,
trembles the air with the joy of her cries and laughter. And seeing
her dance, all dance with her. Hearing her laugh, all laugh along to
her contagious rhythm.
