Photo Pest: FLASHBACK: Montreal with Thom (2007-2014)

I began this blog after a trip to Montreal with Thom in 2010, but he had taken me along twice before, beginning in 2007.

Thom designed dresses there during the week for several years, commuting from his home in Jackson Heights. His employer put him up at the five-star Hotel Vogue where everyone knew Monsieur Barra and the crisp white sheets had an incredibly high thread count. His accommodations were a big step up from the BOQ, or bachelor officer's quarters in the military where my father stayed when traveling for work in the Army.

Thom even made a local friend.

Manon knew all the best restaurants, and plenty of chefs, too. We dined very well with her guidance. Carnivores thrive in Quebec.

Saint Joseph's Oratory of Mount Royal, Canada's largest church, was a cab ride away from the hotel. Believe it or not, the most serious Catholic pilgrims ascend those steps where Thom is standing--and many more below--on their knees.

It began as a much smaller chapel, where a monk named Brother Andre--now a saint--performed miracles. Inside, hundreds of crutches have been left behind by crippled pilgrims who could walk after their visit.

Brother Andre, a savvy operator, lobbied for the bigger church to honor Joseph, his patron saint and husband of the Virgin Mary. The Great Depression interrupted its construction.

With the Mount Royal Cross looming over downtown, Christianity is pretty much everywhere you look in Montreal. Made of steel, it rises more than a hundred feet from a park designed by Frederick Law Olmstead. LED lighting can change the color of illumination. Purple is used to mark the interregnum between the death of a Pope and the election of a new one.

En route to the city's botanical garden, we passed the Montreal Tower, conceived for the 1976 Olympics but not completed until eleven years later. By then, Bruce Jenner had parlayed his decathlon gold into an altogether different kind of celebrity, less accomplished than obsessive, while still concealing his gender dysphoria.

The garden is huge--nearly 200 acres--and the still cool, mid-May weather cooperated.

Chinese and Japanese influences are pronounced.

We checked out the Insectarium, too. Creepy crawlers continue to fascinate me.

Thom caught some rays in anticipation of another summer in the Pines.

Hockey

Jean Béliveau (1931-2014)

. . . avante garde theater

. . . and protests are a big part of Quebecois life. Both students and gravediggers were demonstrating during our visit.

I spent an afternoon in Notre-Dame-des-Neiges Cemetery where the CSN, a federation of trade unions, drew colorful, if unseemly, attention to a labor dispute.

We saw a wedding, too.

Old Montreal definitely has a European feel.

Areas along the St. Lawrence River have been developed for tourism.

The riverfront promenade offers great people-watching.

Expo '67 put Montreal on the map for my generation. Remaining structures created for the world's fair can be seen across the water. They include the Biosphere (left), for the U.S. pavilion, Alexander Calder's Trois Disques

. . . and Habitat, a distinctive, honeycombed housing complex that first captured my imagination as a teenager. We'd get a lot closer to all of them in trips to come.

By evening, we usually migrated to the gay village to mix with the locals.

Upon seeing this happy hour photo for the first time, I vowed always to get my hair cut prior to taking a trip. Thom was wearing his in a pony tail.

Montreal memorialized its dead from the AIDS epidemic nearly two decades before New York City.

2009

I'll always pose with a VW.

Thom LOVED Le Maison Simons. He shopped like no one else I've ever seen, truly putting the salesmen through their paces, trying on many more pieces of clothing than he bought, and he bought a lot. Lunch in their basement restaurant afterwards was more my speed. It's where I tried quinoa and kale for the first time, mixed together in a delicious salad with cranberries.

I'd also never used a bike share program before. BIXI got us to Parc Jean Drapeau for the Piknic Electronik, where we spent a very chill afternoon among people mostly half our age, and Habitat.

Architect Moshe Safdie used Lego bricks to build early models of the iconic project, which aimed to provide an affordable suburban lifestyle--with gardens, fresh air and privacy--in a densely populated area.

Pre-fabricated concrete forms were used to construct 158 apartments of varying size. Habitat is now a co-op.

2014

We drove to Montreal for the Fourth of July. The colors of my outfit complemented the artwork in front of the Museum of Fine Arts. I do love theme dressing, even when it's unintentional.