Check out the new Montreal page

After 3 years of making Indyish here in Montreal; and lifetimes of growing up and being trained in the ways and rites and waves of this amazing city; in a time when it feels like nationalism has shifted for most urbanites (if they ever really felt it) into a pride and patriotism of more of city then state; just a few months after our move from the Plateau Mont-Royal neighborhood to Little Italy; we are run through with love of Montreal and have created a page to gather and share of it.

Because you too can be a Montrealer, whether you live here or not. We have signs up around town that say “un Montrealais c’est quel qu’un qui reste a Montreal” – in other words, you don’t need to be from here to be of here, just stay and we will happily absorb you into the fabric of the Montrealais. Just stay. The meaning is multiple – it is a very friendly, open armed gesture toward all the tourists and travellers who come through, because on the one hand “quel qu’un qui reste a Montreal” can mean that anyone who stays here for even a week, even a day, becomes a Montrealer. And in a way, I think that’s true.

Montreal soaks your heart in something within hours of you coming here and looking around and when you return, even later, it can feel oddly like coming home.

But the slogan (actually part of a campaign against suburban flight – thanks Spacing!) is also subtle in the way it works on the minds of those who have stayed a longer time, because for us it evokes the times of flight, pre-referendum, for example, when everyone left. Not everyone, of course, but every day you heard more stories of people packing up, moving on, taking that job out of province, finally heading up and out to the bigger city – to Toronto or New York or Paris – like leaping off a sinking ship, worried that a vote would overthrow the dollar and the order that kept trains running on time, and anglo and allophones feeling welcome.

Even after the threat of separation seems to have abated some, you can’t ignore the fact that it can be hard to work here if you are not bilingual; or that a huge proportion of our population are students only ever planning on being here temporarily in the first place. They come, they fall in love, but in the end they mostly leave.

We feel it most now in August, the city emptied out by the end of the school year and the end of festival season. It’s quieter. We are “reste”ing here in the sense of stay, but also in the reality of rest. The air is syrupy. We run into friends moving in slow, sunny, packs, roaming from the free pool in the park to a picnic, to a BBQ, to a show. The secret is: this is when we love the city most.

So anyway,

we made this Montreal page…

Please consider it a starting point for a love map we can make more accurate and useful together. Currently it features info on some of the major as well as more indie attractions, plus a venue list, and a video playlist with over 100 videos from arts around town. Hopefully more reasons for you to come and rest and stick around, or at least to follow the goings on of this strange lovely cityish, through the eyes of the artists on Indyish.