In Girl Unwrapped readers follow Toni all the way from her seven-year-old tomboy beginnings, spent mucking about on Mont-Royal, to her first crush at Camp Tikvah to the trials of high school and on to Israel after the Six-Day War. Every stop on her life’s path adds to her complexity as a character. By the time Toni returns home after her travels, she has become more independent, more determined, and she begins to carve out a place for herself in the city. She creates a life that allows her to be true to her passions, her principles, and her roots.

Goliger does an amazing job of taking readers with Toni on this journey: every place and person she describes comes to life in the kind of detail that makes Toni’s story feel as though it might be one’s own memories. Toni’s recollections of her family, neighbours and nemeses, her friends, crushes and girlfriends reveal so much about her—her interpretations of these people tell us at least as much about Toni as about them. On finishing this book, I imagined what it would be like to track Toni down now to find out what has happened in her life in the decades since the close of the story—she’s just one of those characters who ends up feels like someone you once knew.

Montreal landmarks in Girl Unwrapped: Outremont, the mountain, Snowdon, Dorchester Avenue (now René Lévesque Boulevard), McGill University, the McGill “Ghetto” (i.e., Milton-Parc), Old Montreal, Schwartz’s, Phillips Square

Gabriella Goliger was born in Italy and grew up in Montreal. She has also lived in Israel; the Eastern Arctic; Victoria, BC; and Ottawa, ON, where she now lives.

Next up: Bone and Bread by Saleema Nawaz.

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¹ Fagan, Noreen. “Gabriella Goliger’s novel goes deep on lesbian and Jewish identity” in Daily Xtra. Feb 3, 2014.

Photo credit: unknown

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disburse 1. v. to pay out (esp. from a fund), to pay (e.g., a bill).

disperse 1. v. to break up, to spread something over an area, to make something evaporate.

Words in the Wild: When the bank refused to disburse their life savings to the townsfolk, George had to call the police to disperse the angry mob.

I came across this lexical vexation in a recent edit: a crowd that was supposed to be dispersed was instead disbursed. These two words sound incredibly similar, making this an easy mistake to make, especially when you’re on a roll and your hands are typing as fast as you can think. And, as is so often the case, spell checkers won’t help you uncover one of these errors. But if you remember that the -burse in disburse is also found in bursary, that’ll help. (By the way, the -sperse in disperse goes way back to the Latin spargĕre, meaning to sprinkle.)

Still vexed? You can find a complete list of the Word Blog’s lexical vexations here.

E’gotheism, n. deification of self.

vicious 1. adj. cruel or violent.

viscous 1. adj. gluey, thick, slow moving (used to describe liquids).

Words in the Wild: The vicious baker punished her misshapen gingerbread people by drowning them in sweet, viscous icing.

When I edit, I sometimes see these words standing in for one another, often to comic effect. I now know that one must watch out for cruel glue as well as gooey serial killers. These words look very similar on the page, and autocorrect has no idea, of course, which one is correct in a given situation. This is another tricky pair you’ll want to keep an eye on.

Still vexed? You can find a complete list of the Word Blog’s lexical vexations here.

If your appetite for typographical info still isn’t sated, you can always watch this animated film short about the history of typography or check out one of these excellent books on the subject:

Hochelaga Revisited was an art exhibition at the MAI (Montréal, arts interculturels), which has become an important centre for culturally diverse artistic expression in Montreal. And while we’ve lost our chance to attend this exhibition in person, we can still check out the bilingual exhibition catalogue from the Montreal Public Libraries Network.

This 2009 exhibition set out to display works by a group of artists interested in exploring “Montreal as First Nations urban territory. Refuting Hochelaga’s vanishing narrative, they depict personal experiences that cast a light on the still existent – yet often ignored and marginalized – Indigenous presence in the city.”1

Histories of the European settlement of Montreal typically include some account of the indigenous village of Hochelaga found by Jacques Cartier in 1535 on what is now the Island of Montreal. He published his description of the village in his Bref Récit et succincte narration de la navigation faite en 1535 et 1536, and it tells of a sizeable village surrounded by fields of corn very near the slopes of Mont-Royal. However, Cartier’s description is considered to be inaccurate and biased by scholars, reflecting as it does “the European perspective on urban planning during the Italian Renaissance.”2 Cartier’s village bears no resemblance to other villages from that time that have been found by archaeologists. Even as he’s reporting on the culture he’s encountered in his voyages, Cartier is already overwriting their culture.

Sadly this tradition of overwriting indigenous culture in Montreal was just getting started. As Ryan Rice points out in his essay in Hochelaga Revisited, “Montreal is a city admired for its melding of old-world sophistication and charm, technological savvy, and multicultural and distinct societies.…However, colonial strategies of erasure and dominant settler narratives have excluded, ignored and removed its original occupants….Hochelaga Revisited reaffirms an enduring indigenous presence….often absent from official histories of this gathering place.”³

The Artists:

Jason Baerg’s large-scale 5-panel painting Flourish combines colour fields, graffiti and graphics.

Lori Blondeau opened the exhibition with her performance as Cosmosquaw, and contributed her poster-sized photograph I Fall to Pieces to the show.

Martin Loft contributed black and white photography from his Montreal Urban Native Portrait Project series.

Cathy Mattes’s installation Le Twist invites viewers to recognize the cultural contortions demanded of indigenous citizens of Montreal.

Nadia Myre engages with Canada’s national anthem in her video Rethinking Anthem.

Ariel Lightningchild Smith shot her video titled Lessons in Conquest in Montreal

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Next up: Girl Unwrapped by Gabriella Goliger

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¹ Rice, Ryan. Hochelaga Revisited. MAI (Montréal, arts interculturels), 2009. p. 12–13.

² Gagné, Michel. “Hochelaga.” The Canadian Encyclopedia. Last updated April 2015. Accessed November 2015.

³ Rice, Ryan. Hochelaga Revisited. MAI (Montréal, arts interculturels), 2009. p. 12.

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No Crystal Stair, set in the neighbourhood of Little Burgundy in the early 1940s, tells the story of Marion Willow as she tries to give her girls the confidence and refinement they’ll need to rise up in the world, even if she knows that “to be coloured is to be at the bottom of the ladder” in Montreal.

The diverse characters Sarsfield draws in No Crystal Stair are forging their identities and communities in the shadow of the Second World War. The war has taken many men from Montreal households but also created a labour vaccuum, giving Black men access to better quality jobs. The question of what will happen when the soldiers return leaves those workers with little security. And, while Quebec women got the vote in 1940, this is still a Montreal where “No woman, not even the wealthiest woman in Westmount, is permitted to sign for utilities” or sign leases, and widowed Marion must find men in the community to sign for her.

It is, ultimately, the bonds within and without the community that help Marion and her girls to succeed. In fact this story is really more about the community than any one person or family— it’s about Torrie, the worldly sophisticate from down the street; Emily, Marion’s adoptive daughter, and her two girls themselves; the women of the Coloured Ladies Club; the flock at the Union United Congregational Church; railway porter and union organizer Otis; and Poppa Dad. It’s about the provincial citizens of Chatsworth, Quebec; the francophone butcher’s boy from across the way; the Scottish manager where Marion works; the Russian emigrés at the ballet school; and a well-meaning if stubbornly race blind feminist in Westmount. Marion takes care of all of them and they look after her girls and her in turn.

In No Crystal Stair readers are introduced to Montreal through many characters’ eyes. Here’s Redd Foxx’s Montreal:

 “It’s the Paris of the New World. They speak French, play hockey—and it’s got a great Negro nightclub! Canadians didn’t suffer during Prohibition—they prospered. It’s a racy town—you gotta see those de Montigny Street bordellos. Whoo-ee! Not many coloured folks there, though.”¹

Montreal landmarks in No Crystal Stair: Little Burgundy, the Westmount Y,  Rockhead’s Paradise, Ogilvy’s, Chinatown, Mont-Royal Park, Ben’s Deli

Mairuth Sarsfield (1925–2013) was born and raised in Montreal, and over the years, she worked for CBC Canada, TV Ontario and CTV. She also worked for the Canadian External Affairs Department, where she was involved with Montreal’s Expo ’67. While working for the UN as senior information officer for the United Nations Environment Programme, she developed the “For Every Child a Tree” program. She received the Chevalier à L’Ordre National du Québec in 1985, and, in 1997, the National Congress of Black Women Foundation’s First Literary Award for No Crystal Stair.

Next up: Hochelaga Revisited, text by Ryan Rice

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¹ Sarsfield, Mairuth. No Crystal Stair. Women’s Press, 2004. p. 80. (first published in 1997 by Moulin Publishing)

Photo credit: unknown

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Ru, first published in French and translated into English, is an autobiographical novel by Kim Thúy. In Vietnamese ru means lullaby; in French it is a stream, often a metaphorical flow of money, tears or blood. This is the story of a girl and her family who were among the many refugees who boarded boats to flee postwar Vietnam in the 1970s. They left in hopes of finding safer shores on the other side of very dangerous seas.

Kim Thúy tells her story in a series of vignettes that jump forward and back through the life of her protagonist, Nguyễn An Tịhn. An adult Nguyễn remembers how her family made landfall in Malaysia where they lived in a refugee camp until they were able to continue their journey to Canada. She remembers their plane landing in Montreal, where they were met by alien vistas of snow, and she remembers her younger self in nearby Granby navigating the ins and outs of lunch hours at the neighbours’, membership in an anglophone cadets corp, and after-school jobs. She remembers, too, the life in Saigon she and her family left behind and how it has informed the way she’s raised her own sons.

Much like memories breaking the surface of one’s mind only to bob down again, replaced with a memory from another time and place, Ru’s chapters, though short and out of sequence, organically assemble themselves into a life remembered. Kim Thúy’s writing is spare and objective, compelling readers to tap their own feelings when confronted with the dangers and kindness Nguyễn encounters rather than borrowing hers.

For readers who are learning French, this is a great read. I’d characterize myself as an intermediate-level reader, and this book’s short length, spare language, and short chapters combined with its beautiful writing and serious themes make it an accessible and engaging read for adult FSL readers.

Montreal (and environs) landmarks in Ru: chemin de la Côte-des-Neiges, Mirabel International Airport, Granby, Granby Zoo

Kim Thúy Ly Thanh arrived in Canada as a Vietnamese refugee in 1979 at the age of 10. Since then she’s worked as a vegetable picker, seamstress, cashier, food commentator, and restaurant owner. With her degrees in law and in linguistics and translation from the Université de Montréal, she has also worked as a lawyer, translator, and interpreter. Ru was her debut novel; she has since written À toi (with co-author Pascal Janovjak) and Mãn.

Kim Thúy’s first impressions of Montreal: “It was a new birth really and that purity, you know, when you come from a country at war…with men in uniforms and curfews, and we didn’t see blood as such but still it was on our mind—that was the background of Vietnam. And then afterwards we were in the refugee camp in Malaysia and we were surrounded by dirt, basically, and [pit latrines] and when we got here it was all white from the plane and that purity really gave us a second birth.”¹

Next up: No Crystal Stair by Mairuth Sarsfield

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¹ Ly Thanh, Kim Thúy. from “A Refugee’s Multilayered Experience in Ru.” NPR, November 24, 2012.

Photo credit: Asclepias

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Direp’tion, n. the art of plundering.

Serafim leaves Portugal to escape the stratified social circles that have shut the door against his misplaced ardour for an aristocratic young woman. He takes his portable Leica camera with him as he sails for a new world where people will surely appreciate the value of his candid action shots over stiffly composed portraiture.

But neither Claire nor Serafim can pursue the pure aesthetism of their art in the social roil of 1920s Montreal—they are buffeted on all sides by the realities of the post-war city. Sexual violence, Italian fascism, women’s suffrage, English-French tensions, abortion politics, police corruption, and poverty swirl around them, demanding their attention. Perhaps they could rise above it all with one daring scheme, but will their scheme cost them everything?

Montreal landmarks in Serafim and Claire: the Golden Square Mile, the red-light district

Mark Lavorato, grew up in the Canadian prairies, but as an adult he has travelled and lived in countries throughout Central and North America, the Caribbean, and Europe. He now lives in Montreal with his wife. In addition to being the author of several volumes of fiction and poetry, Lavorato is also a photographer, a passion he caught while researching the character of Serafim. 

Lavorato on Montreal in the 1920s: “They were letting loose and it was this kind of party town. Of course, prohibition was happening in the United States in the 1920s and that meant there were huge trainloads of citizens who would come up from New York, Philadelphia, Boston just for the weekend to be able to party legally here in this…sinful city…. The politics were even more corrupt than they are now—there was free-flowing money and there were all kind of scams to make that money because of this strange mix of legal sin and illegal sin. And in this kind of naive time, there were also these incredibly naive idealists who came out of the swath of immigrants who were in the city, and they were proponents of big new ideas….”¹

Next up: Ru by Kim Thúy

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¹ Lavorato, Mark. “Historic Montreal in Fact and Fiction.” Ideas. CBC, 2014.

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