#chinese sailors did not on purpose go to the americas. we know this because the annals would not have shut the fuck up about it.

[diamondnokouzai]

GOOD american history book titled 14x1: 1491, new revelations of america before columbus

BAD american history book titled 14x1: 1421, the year china discovered the world

[intothehoid]

Ok, so I'm not gonna lie. I don't entirely remember the exact order of the days I spent in Beijing. My grasp of linear time is not always the best, so this part might get a little mushy.

The whole point of our time in Beijing was twofold. Most importantly, we had orientation. Now, it's worth mentioning that this program gave a LOT of freedom to its participants. At least, compared to other programs. There were restrictions. They had a no alcohol, no drugs, no dating policy (the first because it is VERY illegal in China. All sorts of BIG TROUBLE. The latter two largely because they'd allowed them before and things got messy and unfortunate and uncomfortable). But the other programs I had looked into were far more restrictive. There was one program that would send me to Russia that I had actually committed to - to the point of submitting a $300 non-refundable deposit - and only found out after I signed the contract that they didn't allow their volunteers to go ANYWHERE alone. At all. I would go nuts. In the end, the final factor was financial. China cost $1300 and Russia would have cost $2500. But the whole not being able to go anywhere (like not even in your neighborhood) alone was a significant factor. China actually ended up costing even less, but I'll get to that. The second purpose of our time in Beijing was as a tour of the capitol!

Anyways, this all goes to say that orientation was not quite as... intense as I thought it would be. The entire teaching structure was not nearly as, well, structured. Orientation mostly consisted of getting ideas for games and teaching exercises from each other and thinking about how to react in different scenarios. There were also some cultural differences that were explained (such as, it's not necessarily appropriate for students to visit teachers at their apartments, depending on the situation, people WILL take pictures of you, DO NOT DRINK THE TAP WATER, DO NOT FLUSH THE TOILET PAPER, etc.). I'll admit, I was worried. The majority of the teachers in our program were teaching in kindergartens and grade schools. I was teaching at a high school so I was worried that the games and the fun things wouldn't be enough, but I decided I would just plan more things later when I was settled into my new home. Orientation was fun and I got to meet some really cool people and that's basically all you really need to know about that.

Now, onto the good part. Cavorting about Beijing!

Ok, one of the first tourist things we did after running around at night was go to the Summer Palace. Contrary to the name, it did not defy the wintery weather and bring warmth. It was still freezing. So much so that the moat was entirely frozen over and a whole host of people were sledding on the ice. Less people were ice skating, but there were still some. It was pretty expensive to rent a sled so I declined. It had been several years since this moat had frozen over enough to skate on so it was very popular. Also, thinking back on it, it probably wasn't nearly as expensive as I thought it was back then. I hadn't gotten a good grasp of how Chinese yuan converted to US dollars, so I probably should have gone for the skating thing, but I guess you live, you learn.

This trip was a momentous occasion for me! It was the first time I had used a squatty potty. It was a bit daunting. I was kind of nervous (mostly because everyone else seemed so nervous about it). The bathroom smelled typical of a Chinese public restroom. That is, nasty with a thin veil of incense. Don't get me wrong. I think that most of them were cleaned fairly regularly. They just smelled bad. Worse than your typical public American restroom. Some public restrooms were outright nasty and others were like entering the worst porta-potty you've ever encountered only worse. One time, I went to pee in a bathroom that was just barely bigger than myself in the back of a restaurant right next to the small, odd-shaped basin where they kept the live fish for cooking. It was an experience. I love China.

It wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be. Honestly. It was much easier to use the squatty potty than I thought and I didn't understand the people who continued to complain excessively. Maybe squatting to go pee just came more naturally to me. Eheheheh... (PSST! The secret if you’re worried about your clothes is to hold them out of the way. Also you have to learn how to squat down with both feet flat on the floor. It’s both a great stretch and if you do it right you can balance squatting down for a long time… both in the bathroom and just anywhere you want to rest and don’t have a seat. In the West/America (My realm of experience is limited to China, Thailand and America, ok!) we generally squat up on the balls of our feet and it’s both harder to balance and more tiring on your muscles. Seriously, guys! Learn how to squat on flat feet, it’s miraculous and life-saving!)

Anyways, the Summer Palace! It was my first close contact with old imperial Chinese architecture. I think, on the first night, I saw one of the old guard towers near Tiananmen Square, but that was from afar. Here I was, walking through centuries old buildings with some of the most intricate detailing I'd ever come across. We went through the front gate. It was very ornate! Very lovely! There were old, worn statues outside and the colors on the gate were beautiful. Then we went inside. This is where I saw the moat and the infamous bathrooms. Then we went across a bridge. The old style Chinese bridges are beautiful. They're made of stone (a LOT of things are made with stone in China. I think it's because there's a lot of stone that's relatively easy to quarry. Even with modern things, a lot of the embellishments will be made of stone styled after traditional designs. Clouds are a very popular design.) and have those big circular cut-out bottoms. This one was different, but still stone and still pretty. There were a bunch of small buildings surrounding the moat. I found out in retrospect this is called Suzhou Street. This is funny because Suzhou is a city down South in the Shanghai area named Suzhou that is really famous for silks and for ancient water towns. Basically, old one-two story, tightly packed towns with canals instead of streets. AKA Venice of China. So, my guess is this street is called Suzhou street because there were old, one-two story buildings surrounding a 'street' of water. From there, we went the Site of Sumeru Temple.

Please keep in mind, I knew very few of these names when I was there. Maps were a little... Hit or miss (another common theme). I also have forgotten many of these names because it's been almost two years since I was there. So I'm doing some research to supplement my names and such.

I wish I could do justice to the architecture with words. I'll include some of the few pictures I managed to post before the computer incident. It was a bit magical. The Site of Sumeru Temple was fronted by a wide courtyard. The temple was raised and two staircases paralleled the foundation it was raised on and formed a sort of triangle leading up to the temple. There were a couple of towers off to the sides of temple. The temple was largely red, white, and yellow (red and white walls, yellow roofs). I remember that the inside of the temple was cool, but apparently not that memorable because I don't really remember it. Oops. But after that we went to the Hall of Buddhist Tenets and that was amazing! (Upon further research, I'm not sure if this building was called the Hall of Buddhist Tenets or the Sea of Wisdom. Like I said, maps were... iffy.)

The inside was cool, but the outside was amazing! It was mostly a deep golden yellow, but inset in emerald green indentations were hundreds upon hundreds of approximately head-sized golden-yellow Buddhas! They were beautiful! I got some really cool pictures sitting up in this large white stone window frame set into the side of the building, but they were lost. (Looks nostalgically into the sunsets whilst inwardly swearing like a sailor at my hard drive... Seriously, I'm still not over this guys.) But there were these little Buddhas just covering the entire building and they were beautiful! Intricate and there were just so many of them!

After that the group I had kind of adopted wandered a bit up and down the walkways. There were some courtyards and cool walls. I remember we went to the back of the Hall of Buddhist Tenets and were exploring the backside. We took some more pictures there and explored some of the nooks and crannies of the building.

The Temple of Buddhist Virtue is one of the crowning pieces of the Summer Palace (that's like saying it's one of the shiny marbles in an entire bucketful. There were a lot of awesome things!) It's a large, rounded pagoda that rises up from a hill overlooking the large lake that borders the palace. It's actually more hexagonal, but those are details. Details. One of my favorite things about Chinese imperial architecture are the details. They're immaculate. Carved wooden designs and three dimensional patterns colored in red, emerald, cobalt blue, gold, and accents of white intertwining around small murals painted in exquisite color.

For some reason we decided not to go into the Temple. It might have been closed, but it didn't really matter because it was stunning from the outside.

We went down the hill to some of the lower portions. There were a lot more people there! It was a cool area. More walls there and it felt more like an... official complex as opposed to a park. The upper area felt more like a park. It was also beautiful and wondrous, just a different feel.

We didn't spend as much time there, so I don't remember as much. The one thing I remember more than any of the lower area is the view of the lake. We got an amazing view of the lake from above.

It was winter so the days were shorter. Even though it was still fairly early the sun was hanging low over the horizon and kissing the world with a red-golden light. Earlier I mentioned that we caught the tail end of Spring Festival. This was such a gift! Not nearly as many of the factories were up and running because people were on holiday so the air was much clearer than it might be at other times of the year! It wasn't consistently clear, but WOW! We got some beautiful days! This was no exception! There were some clouds and haze on the horizon, but - I'm gonna level with you real hard - when there was just a smidge of smog/haze in the air it made the sunsets radiant! Ok, have any of you grown up in an area that gets summer fires? I do, I'm from western Oregon. Lots of trees. Dry summers. Things burn. It's an unfortunately beautiful side effect of such destruction, but the sunsets are beautiful gold and red and the sun turns into a brilliant glowing red ball in the smoke. The air drips with color and saturated light weaves itself through the buildings and trees coloring everything!

It was a bit like this. Not quite as red this afternoon, but the gold of the setting sun was effusive!

A large part of the lake was frozen over as well closer to the shore, but enough of the lake was unfrozen enough for the boats to be out. On the frozen part of the lake, where the ice sparkled in the sunlight, dozens of people were skating and sledding on the ice. The sunlight illuminated the vast spread of the Summer Palace. There was so much that we didn't get to explore.

When I go back to China I would like to go back to some of the places I'd gone during orientation and honestly, spend far more time in these places. I don't know if I'll get a day as overwhelmingly lovely as this was, but I want to see all of the many, many things I missed. This view was breathtaking, both in its beauty and in the array of buildings in the palace area that we didn't get to visit. It's massive. We were there for several hours and I don't think we saw half of it.

After coming up from the lower area (heading back because we were beginning to need to find our meeting place) I ended up with a different group. Not gonna lie, not entirely sure how that happened. Eheheheh.... But they were fun! We decided to visit a couple more places in the palace and make a sort of round about way towards our original entrance because we had more time than we thought.

Our path came to a river and followed it. It was amazing! At first, it started out as just a bit of frozen water in a river-shaped dent in the ground. Then more ice began to appear. Then giants chunks of ice and suddenly, we were walking next to a river that wasn't really a river. It was a river that had been utterly frozen solid and then split into massive pieces of ice with the bottom of river rocks running in between. The river did this delightful thing where there were shelves of ice clinging to the cut stones of the walkway as the very edge. There was a drop of several feet before the frozen ice resumed. It was fascinating!

I loved this part (and not just because I loved the entire thing). We had inadvertently taken a route that found some of the less well-kempt parts of the palace complex. There were the areas tourists didn't normally go. Or maybe they did and they were kept less restored as a reminder.

Regardless of why they were less cared for, it was a bit haunting. In a very enchanting kind of way. I had just been utterly dazzled by this amazing series of perfectly restored architecture on an imperial scale. I had been delightfully bombarded by designs hundreds of years old simultaneously looked hundreds of years old and as if they had been created last week. I had seen buildings older than anything I had ever seen before and everything was fresh and impeccably restored.

And then the illusion faded.

I gradually found myself in a world where time hadn't been recaptured. Instead it was observed through a scratched lens. You could see the grandeur that used to be, but there were imperfections. The paint wasn't as vibrant, in some places it was peeling, in some places it was gone altogether and the wood beneath lay bare to the winter air. It was the same style and the designs were similar if not the same, but it was faded. There weren't as many decorations and these areas were far less colorful. It was magical.

The other areas were like stepping back in time to the moment when these buildings were still alive. This was walking through a half-gone memory. It was a step back in time, but seen through the view of the forgotten places and the spaces that don't shine. Ethereal. Somber. It was like walking through a held breath.

We approached the entrance from the side by the river where people were still skating and walked up behind the wooden buildings bordering the river and across the stone bridge. And that was the Summer Palace.

[outsidespaceblog]

Montréal’s Pot Luck Startup | Canada

by Charles Daly

All the Marrow

It’s Saturday night in late August, typically Montréal’s last month of t-shirt weather. I’m sitting at a picnic bench with group of young Montréalers eating Haitian food off paper plates. My portion is the envy of the table because I got a large bone in it, full of marrow, which my dinner companions are teaching me how to extract. This is my first time having goat. I probe the hollow end timidly with my plastic fork. Finally I’m told have to suck out the marrow—and don’t be shy about making noises.

Tonight is Haiti Night at the Village au Pied-du-Currant, a public space on the banks of the St. Laurence River that has been transformed over the past four summers into an ongoing multicultural festival.

The Village

Built on the gritty sand of an urban beach, the Village is a cluster of land/sea containers converted into galleries, kitchens and bars, purpose built sheds and cabanas, a scaffolding rooftop bar with a view down the river, and open spaces for eating, dancing and playing.

So far this summer the Village has hosted food festivals showcasing West African, East Asian, Mexican, and Brazilian cuisine, South American folklore for kids, movie nights, a night market, community yoga—in collaboration with Lululemon, and a “1990s Brooklyn” themed night that one local described as “the best thing I did all summer.” They finished off the season with a “punky reggae party.”

The Village is built–and rebuilt every summer–on a previously vacant and overgrown lot, separated from the banks of the river by railroad tracks that serve the port and carry functioning land/sea containers to and from cargo ships.

This is “the river” from Leonard Cohen’s “Suzanne.”

The bridge, slightly upstream is named for Jacques Cartier, the founder of Montréal, and is lit up every night this summer in celebration the 375th anniversary of his accomplishment.

Across the water, at La Ronde, an amusement hosts a summer-long international fireworks competition. The Village started as a place to catch the show for free.

The Potluck Startup

The Village and its festivals are the brainchild of La Pépinière, the nursery, a startup that works to connect communities with the city around them in under-utilized public spaces. Their approach is to provide the space and the logistics and empower the community to do the rest. Co-Founder Maxim Bragoli explains, “Most government and civic event planning starts with the funds and the logistics, put something together and hope the people respond. We start with the people.” 

When I spoke with Maxim and Raphaëlle Bilodeau, Pépinière’s executive director, they both objected to the word “event.” To them, an event is a spectacle or a commercial enterprise, something that’s sold to the public from outside for a profit. Raphaëlle describes what they do as “place making.”

One place they made was a public woodworking shop at the Village. Some people used it to make toboggans. Yves Plante, a professional sailor, used the space to teach the art of boat making. He soon launched his own non-profit, Juenes Marins Urbains (young urban sailors.) Their motto: “Changing the world, one boat at a time.”

Pépenière has projects in 8 of Montréal’s 19 boroughs and they are constantly branching out. Their goal is to design a template for action that could work anywhere.

In keeping with their startup ethos, they make improvements to the village, based on feedback, with each seasonal rebuild. The brightly painted land/sea containers double as storage for the Village’s many parts in the winter.

When sourcing food, Pépinière looks for authenticity. They use their community connections to find the best food according to the community it comes from, not just what’s trendy. You know, that one Korean restaurant where they speak Hangul and serve homemade kimchi, not the other one with “dumplings” on the menu and a scorpion bowl happy-hour Thursday nights.

According to Raphaëlle, “our metric for authenticity is inclusion. It’s a public space, so we should see the public there. All types and ages.  Our great fear is that this will just be a hipster thing or just attract whoever.”

Haiti night is a success, if the dance floor is anything to go by. You see a mix of people who clearly knew the songs and the moves, some who wore Haitian flag bandanas, and people of Montréal’s many other backgrounds and colors all having a blast. At midnight, a drum line leads a thousand or so party-goers through the village.

I asked my dinner friends about this. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but the vibe was different from something you’d see south of the border, even in a place like Brooklyn or L.A.

“Diversity just isn’t cliquey here,” says Andolina, my new Chinese-Dominican-Quebecoise friend. Her friend Adam, a native Montréaler can’t find the word in English, but settles on “joyous togetherness” to describe the city’s prevailing attitude.

Maxim calls Montréal “a patch work of inclusion.” He points to the four flowers on the city’s flag for the four nations that founded the city: the fleur de lis for the French, a shamrock for the Irish, the English rose, and Scottish thistle. This year, the city added a white pine at the center of the flag for the first peoples of Montreal, a symbol chosen by that group.

Before there was a restaurant scene or young startups bringing food to the community, Montréalers shared their family recipes and the cuisine of their home countries. Pépinière joins the food-trucks and pop-up restaurants in brining this “pot luck culture” into the 21st century. 

Cultural Entrepreneurship

The culture of inclusion is inseparable from the city’s business ethos. Montréal sees itself as a brand. Their main industry is the city itself and the myriad sights and tastes it offers visitors. This isn’t sanctimony or an effort to stick it to their less tolerant southern neighbors. It’s business. Pépinière joins a tradition of cultural entrepreneurship. Montréal manufactures experiences and connections. Maxim calls it a “city of festivals.” Montréal’s best known export is Cirque du Soleil, the circus reimagined, which spawned a lighting and stagecraft industry that also works with Celine Dion–or simply Celine as she’s known up here–and Quebec’s film industry.

Haiti’s Brain-Drain, Montréal’s gain

Everyone I spoke with at the Village seemed to have some knowledge of Haitian food, this makes sense given the Haitian community’s prominence and long history in Montréal. Haitians fleeing poverty and political turmoil have come to Quebec since the 1960s. The province is popular for its linguistic and cultural commonalities that make assimilation easier. In Canada, immigrants from the poorest country in the western hemisphere found not only a better life but a place in the middle class. As one frequently quoted statistic has it, there have been more Haitian doctors in Canada than in Haiti since the 1970s. According to historian and Haitian-American Maxo Marc, Montréal and Quebec are Haitian cities in the same way Chicago and Boston are Irish. (He points out that Chicago, by the way, was founded by a Haitian, Jean-Baptist-Point Du Sable.)

Unfortunately, new arrivals haven’t been so lucky. The latest wave of Haitian immigrants are coming not from Haiti, but from the United States. Fearing the new administrations immigration policies, and chasing rumors of an open-door policy, thousands are heading north, often crossing illegally. Once in Canada, they face an asylum seeking process that sees about half of applicants deported back to Haiti. They await their fate in “Welcome Centers” (read: shelters.) In Montréal, the Olympic Stadium is a temporary home for hundreds of Haitian asylum seekers.

Pépinière found themselves in a unique position to help the Stadium’s residents. Their space in the public garden is right next to the stadium. They organized a day of activities, food and music in collaboration with Maison d’Haiti. This wasn’t a political act, it was a matter of brining fun and recreation to people who haven’t had much of either in a while. There are plenty of NGOs and government bureaus interested in giving these people handouts and necessities, but Pépinière addresses their need to relax and get their minds off their tenuous situation, if only for a day.

The field day at the stadium was a welcome to Montréal, of sorts. The day included Haitian food, but also showcased the city’s global cuisine.

We’re not in Canada

We wait in line for goat for about an hour. There’s an even longer line for griot. People hold their places in the queue while friends go to bring back fresco—shaved ice—and ti’ punch—a rum cocktail. We talk about food as we wait to eat. Catherine, a child psychologist who works with refugees and immigrants, tells me she waited two hours for jerk chicken on Caribbean night and they ran out by the time it was her turn. We’re told they’re prepared for the demand tonight and there’ll still be plenty when we make it to the grill.

I meet Cordia, Andolina, and Adam in line. Three friends who go on “food crawls” every weekend. They make fast friends with Catherine, debating where the best gnocchi is to be found. They recommend places I must try while I’m here, from a Hungarian butcher, to a new Palestinian spot. “We try not to go to the same place twice,” Cordia tells me, “and we’re not even close to trying every place.” And they probably never will, considering Montréal has the most restaurants per capita of any Canadian city, and is second only to New York in North America. When I ask them to pick a favorite, they can’t.

Catherine teases that my favorites so far have been poutine–Quebec’s answer to chilli cheese fries–and Tim Horton’s coffee. They crack up.

Adam is representing his borough with a t-shirt featuring the neighborhood’s name and the image of a typical Montréal street of balconied triplex apartments.  He says he’s from his borough first, then he’s a Montréaler, then Québécois, and finally Canadian.

In the summer he commutes to work by kayak and I tell him that’s pretty Canadian if you ask me. As a local, he tells me it’s easy to forget all that’s available right in his backyard. He credits his friends from elsewhere with giving him a new take on his hometown. “I discovered Montréal through friends who moved here.”

Cordia moved here from Hong Kong eight years ago. When it came to learning French she says she started with the food words, and that was enough to make friends.    

The post Montréal’s Pot Luck Startup | Canada appeared first on roam.

Montréal’s Pot Luck Startup | Canada published first on http://ift.tt/2uo7aCb

[comfsy]

Montréal’s Pot Luck Startup | Canada

by Charles Daly

All the Marrow

It’s Saturday night in late August, typically Montréal’s last month of t-shirt weather. I’m sitting at a picnic bench with group of young Montréalers eating Haitian food off paper plates. My portion is the envy of the table because I got a large bone in it, full of marrow, which my dinner companions are teaching me how to extract. This is my first time having goat. I probe the hollow end timidly with my plastic fork. Finally I’m told have to suck out the marrow—and don’t be shy about making noises.

Tonight is Haiti Night at the Village au Pied-du-Currant, a public space on the banks of the St. Laurence River that has been transformed over the past four summers into an ongoing multicultural festival.

The Village

Built on the gritty sand of an urban beach, the Village is a cluster of land/sea containers converted into galleries, kitchens and bars, purpose built sheds and cabanas, a scaffolding rooftop bar with a view down the river, and open spaces for eating, dancing and playing.

So far this summer the Village has hosted food festivals showcasing West African, East Asian, Mexican, and Brazilian cuisine, South American folklore for kids, movie nights, a night market, community yoga—in collaboration with Lululemon, and a “1990s Brooklyn” themed night that one local described as “the best thing I did all summer.” They finished off the season with a “punky reggae party.”

The Village is built–and rebuilt every summer–on a previously vacant and overgrown lot, separated from the banks of the river by railroad tracks that serve the port and carry functioning land/sea containers to and from cargo ships.

This is “the river” from Leonard Cohen’s “Suzanne.”

The bridge, slightly upstream is named for Jacques Cartier, the founder of Montréal, and is lit up every night this summer in celebration the 375th anniversary of his accomplishment.

Across the water, at La Ronde, an amusement hosts a summer-long international fireworks competition. The Village started as a place to catch the show for free.

The Potluck Startup

The Village and its festivals are the brainchild of La Pépinière, the nursery, a startup that works to connect communities with the city around them in under-utilized public spaces. Their approach is to provide the space and the logistics and empower the community to do the rest. Co-Founder Maxim Bragoli explains, “Most government and civic event planning starts with the funds and the logistics, put something together and hope the people respond. We start with the people.” 

When I spoke with Maxim and Raphaëlle Bilodeau, Pépinière’s executive director, they both objected to the word “event.” To them, an event is a spectacle or a commercial enterprise, something that’s sold to the public from outside for a profit. Raphaëlle describes what they do as “place making.”

One place they made was a public woodworking shop at the Village. Some people used it to make toboggans. Yves Plante, a professional sailor, used the space to teach the art of boat making. He soon launched his own non-profit, Juenes Marins Urbains (young urban sailors.) Their motto: “Changing the world, one boat at a time.”

Pépenière has projects in 8 of Montréal’s 19 boroughs and they are constantly branching out. Their goal is to design a template for action that could work anywhere.

In keeping with their startup ethos, they make improvements to the village, based on feedback, with each seasonal rebuild. The brightly painted land/sea containers double as storage for the Village’s many parts in the winter.

When sourcing food, Pépinière looks for authenticity. They use their community connections to find the best food according to the community it comes from, not just what’s trendy. You know, that one Korean restaurant where they speak Hangul and serve homemade kimchi, not the other one with “dumplings” on the menu and a scorpion bowl happy-hour Thursday nights.

According to Raphaëlle, “our metric for authenticity is inclusion. It’s a public space, so we should see the public there. All types and ages.  Our great fear is that this will just be a hipster thing or just attract whoever.”

Haiti night is a success, if the dance floor is anything to go by. You see a mix of people who clearly knew the songs and the moves, some who wore Haitian flag bandanas, and people of Montréal’s many other backgrounds and colors all having a blast. At midnight, a drum line leads a thousand or so party-goers through the village.

I asked my dinner friends about this. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but the vibe was different from something you’d see south of the border, even in a place like Brooklyn or L.A.

“Diversity just isn’t cliquey here,” says Andolina, my new Chinese-Dominican-Quebecoise friend. Her friend Adam, a native Montréaler can’t find the word in English, but settles on “joyous togetherness” to describe the city’s prevailing attitude.

Maxim calls Montréal “a patch work of inclusion.” He points to the four flowers on the city’s flag for the four nations that founded the city: the fleur de lis for the French, a shamrock for the Irish, the English rose, and Scottish thistle. This year, the city added a white pine at the center of the flag for the first peoples of Montreal, a symbol chosen by that group.

Before there was a restaurant scene or young startups bringing food to the community, Montréalers shared their family recipes and the cuisine of their home countries. Pépinière joins the food-trucks and pop-up restaurants in brining this “pot luck culture” into the 21st century. 

Cultural Entrepreneurship

The culture of inclusion is inseparable from the city’s business ethos. Montréal sees itself as a brand. Their main industry is the city itself and the myriad sights and tastes it offers visitors. This isn’t sanctimony or an effort to stick it to their less tolerant southern neighbors. It’s business. Pépinière joins a tradition of cultural entrepreneurship. Montréal manufactures experiences and connections. Maxim calls it a “city of festivals.” Montréal’s best known export is Cirque du Soleil, the circus reimagined, which spawned a lighting and stagecraft industry that also works with Celine Dion–or simply Celine as she’s known up here–and Quebec’s film industry.

Haiti’s Brain-Drain, Montréal’s gain

Everyone I spoke with at the Village seemed to have some knowledge of Haitian food, this makes sense given the Haitian community’s prominence and long history in Montréal. Haitians fleeing poverty and political turmoil have come to Quebec since the 1960s. The province is popular for its linguistic and cultural commonalities that make assimilation easier. In Canada, immigrants from the poorest country in the western hemisphere found not only a better life but a place in the middle class. As one frequently quoted statistic has it, there have been more Haitian doctors in Canada than in Haiti since the 1970s. According to historian and Haitian-American Maxo Marc, Montréal and Quebec are Haitian cities in the same way Chicago and Boston are Irish. (He points out that Chicago, by the way, was founded by a Haitian, Jean-Baptist-Point Du Sable.)

Unfortunately, new arrivals haven’t been so lucky. The latest wave of Haitian immigrants are coming not from Haiti, but from the United States. Fearing the new administrations immigration policies, and chasing rumors of an open-door policy, thousands are heading north, often crossing illegally. Once in Canada, they face an asylum seeking process that sees about half of applicants deported back to Haiti. They await their fate in “Welcome Centers” (read: shelters.) In Montréal, the Olympic Stadium is a temporary home for hundreds of Haitian asylum seekers.

Pépinière found themselves in a unique position to help the Stadium’s residents. Their space in the public garden is right next to the stadium. They organized a day of activities, food and music in collaboration with Maison d’Haiti. This wasn’t a political act, it was a matter of brining fun and recreation to people who haven’t had much of either in a while. There are plenty of NGOs and government bureaus interested in giving these people handouts and necessities, but Pépinière addresses their need to relax and get their minds off their tenuous situation, if only for a day.

The field day at the stadium was a welcome to Montréal, of sorts. The day included Haitian food, but also showcased the city’s global cuisine.

We’re not in Canada

We wait in line for goat for about an hour. There’s an even longer line for griot. People hold their places in the queue while friends go to bring back fresco—shaved ice—and ti’ punch—a rum cocktail. We talk about food as we wait to eat. Catherine, a child psychologist who works with refugees and immigrants, tells me she waited two hours for jerk chicken on Caribbean night and they ran out by the time it was her turn. We’re told they’re prepared for the demand tonight and there’ll still be plenty when we make it to the grill.

I meet Cordia, Andolina, and Adam in line. Three friends who go on “food crawls” every weekend. They make fast friends with Catherine, debating where the best gnocchi is to be found. They recommend places I must try while I’m here, from a Hungarian butcher, to a new Palestinian spot. “We try not to go to the same place twice,” Cordia tells me, “and we’re not even close to trying every place.” And they probably never will, considering Montréal has the most restaurants per capita of any Canadian city, and is second only to New York in North America. When I ask them to pick a favorite, they can’t.

Catherine teases that my favorites so far have been poutine–Quebec’s answer to chilli cheese fries–and Tim Horton’s coffee. They crack up.

Adam is representing his borough with a t-shirt featuring the neighborhood’s name and the image of a typical Montréal street of balconied triplex apartments.  He says he’s from his borough first, then he’s a Montréaler, then Québécois, and finally Canadian.

In the summer he commutes to work by kayak and I tell him that’s pretty Canadian if you ask me. As a local, he tells me it’s easy to forget all that’s available right in his backyard. He credits his friends from elsewhere with giving him a new take on his hometown. “I discovered Montréal through friends who moved here.”

Cordia moved here from Hong Kong eight years ago. When it came to learning French she says she started with the food words, and that was enough to make friends.    

The post Montréal’s Pot Luck Startup | Canada appeared first on roam.

Montréal’s Pot Luck Startup | Canada published first on http://ift.tt/2vmoAQU