Montreal

Montreal, what a cool city. I couchsurfed with some cool Lebanese brothers,  hung out with some friends I made in Ottawa, caught up with my friend Alex I met in New Zeland, spent time at a local co-op, an of course just explored the city. Montreal has a huge park running through it and wall after wall covered in street art. I really liked Montreal and can see myself living there someday... in the summer, because it was freeking cold, but the rent is also ridiculously cheap for being a city. It is a French-Canadian city, but nearly everyone speaks English (however, I did learn to say je ne parle pas français very well)

I was in Montreal for my birthday and I did not do anything outlandish, but I was happily surprised by the kindness of people. As I mentioned I met some people in Ottawa that I ran de vouxed with in Montreal. Chloe` and Bastien are some french students abroad in Montreal, and we made a delicious dinner at their house and this apple tart. They shut off the lights and said it was environmental then came out with the tart and sang happy birthday in French, English and Portuguese (their roommates are from Brazil). It was so nice and I really am so thankful that I had the pleasure to meet such nice people while traveling. 

 The Candles melted a bit into the pie

 My french friends!

 These are some pictures from coop Genereux. They are closely associated with Food not Bombs and are a community space to host events. There is a landlord but this house has been a coop for years and all the rooms were not originally there, they were constructed as you can see below. 

 They were so happy waving to me!

 Poutine! This is a regional specialty that is basically french fries with gravy and cheese curds and this particular variety also has bell peppers and bacon. My other friend I met in Ottawa Florence who is from Germany, took me to the best Poutine joint in town!

 In Montreal there is a house called the Productive House that a Swedish architect designed and is living in. Their energy is largely solar and geothermal. They have a garden and a greenhouse. They have a large gray water system at work and a bakery with a wood burning oven that will become a worker cooperative that will serve the community. Above is a picture of the most visually pleasing part of the house in my opinion.

 At the coop there was a staircase painting party. There were people making plaster molds to make sculptures of body parts that will come out from the walls and people drawing with markers and glitter and painting. I decided to partake... this would be what I left

 This was probably my favorite addition and I had a great talk with the artist. 

This was the coolest bus driver ever! he had his bus decked out in hockey fan gear and had a bowl of free candy where you put in your bus fare that he refilled at red lights. 

 The view of the city from my couchsurfer's apartment 

My couchsurfer used to study architecture and has a ton of little wooden block that he let me use to make a piece of art. that's it!

Ottawa

From Toronto I took a rideshare to Ottawa. I stayed with a lovely newly wed Ukrainian couple. The husband is in training to become a priest (don't worry Ukrainian Catholics can marry as long as it is before priesthood) They were delightful and generous hosts. They taught m a lot about Ukrainian culture and continued to feed me. They took me to a party and we joked that they planned it just for me. 

As for city exploration... it was COLD. Yes i know at home everyone is still enjoying their 80 degree Fahrenheit weather, but here it was snowing! But that isn't enough to stop me. I walked around the town and went into parliament, i even went up the peace tower (where there is a view of the city) after it was closed because i convinced all of the security to let me be an exception. 

I also spent one of the days with a couchsurfing crew. One person from Ottawa, one from Germany and two from France. We took a lovely stroll through Gatineau Park. 

Finally on my last day there I went to the remembrance day ceremony. In Canada Nov. 11 is their equivalent of veterans day and through November people wear red poppies to respect those who have died in war. Now I just so happened to be in the capital of Canada the 11th of November and went to their Remembrance Day ceremony in the center of town. They had veterans march around and they did some speeches, the airforce flew over, and we all went to lunch after. Lastly I went to the museum of civilization (which was free for remembrance day) and that was a really cool museum with a special exhibition in vodou. 

 Still hanging on to the few colors left

 So what it is snowing that shouldn't stop anyone from dancing or jamming out

 Parliament, the center is peace tower

 Remembrance Day

 Please read that sign... yes in the middle of the forest they felt it necessary to post that sign. I guess it was becoming too much of a problem? But as one of the couchsurfers said "you don't need to put a sign up it is too cold to be naked"

Leslie Street Spit

The Leslie Street Spit... Legend has it that Toronto faced a time in their history where they were faced with two dilemmas. The first being they wanted to increase their harbor and the second being they wanted to de-urbanize a bit and get rid of some buildings. So they decided to kill two birds with one stone. They blew up some buildings and and used the rubble to build the leslie street spit which is pretty much a peninsula that expanded their harbor. They covered it in dirt and now it is actually a nature reserve. As someone told me, it is interesting to see what the world would look like in 30 years if we didn't exist and nature took over. The contrast between the rubble and the nature was actually kind of poetic, i thought it looked cool so i decided to dedicate an entire blog post to it! 

 sometimes the rubble looks like a prehistoric sea creature coming up on the land