Montreal, Marijuana, and Masks

This is a report on a Thanksgiving Week trip to Montreal. I arrived on a nonstop flight on Lynx after Nine minutes of Formula 1 glory at the Las Vegas Grand Prix. Being a flight attendant on Lynx is a relaxing job because they don’t serve anything other than water. Seats don’t recline, so there are no passenger fights over space for the FAs to break up. I texted the sign to a friend and he responded “If Joe Biden had ridden Lynx he would say ‘I know how people in Gaza feel about food and water shortages because I spent a few hours on Lynx.'” (“Almost lost my Corvette”)

Once we arrived at CYUL, however, nobody was available to drive the “mobile lounge” out to where we were parked. The excuse was that it was raining. About 45 minutes after landing, we finally entered the terminal. Clearing immigration was quick, but it took another 30 minutes to get my suitcase (I had some actual suits as part of my software expert witness slavery so couldn’t do carry-on). After that, it was a 21-minute C$52 Uber ride to the downtown DoubleTree Hilton (there is a bus, but no train).

Considering that recreational marijuana has been legal in Canada since October 2018, a shocking difference between the Montreal highway and a Boston-area highway is the lack of marijuana billboards. This continued once on the city streets; there were no street-corner advertisements for weed delivery. I asked Professor ChatGPT about this:

In Canada, advertising marijuana is subject to strict regulations under the Cannabis Act, which came into effect on October 17, 2018. These regulations are designed to protect public health and safety, particularly to prevent young people and others who are vulnerable to cannabis-related harms from being encouraged to use cannabis. … The promotion of cannabis, cannabis accessories, or services related to cannabis is generally prohibited unless it is presented in a manner that cannot be seen by a young person. This means that many traditional forms of advertising, such as billboards or television commercials, are often not permissible.

The view from the 37th floor of the downtown tower where I was kept:

I escaped Dame Gothel for a Sunday morning walk around the city. Here’s La Joute, in front of the convention center:

A closer look:

I eventually made my way down to the science museum, where they also have a section on religion:

I’ll save the obligatory Notre-Dame pictures for later in this post.

Montreal is great for outdoor light displays and indoor shopping malls.

The Time Out Market has great food, a lively atmosphere, and four great-condition new Stern pinball machines. What’s not to love?

What about those who don’t have C$25 to spend on dinner at the market? It’s not San Francisco, but there are definitely encampments and homeless people in the city.

Although notable for churches, the city’s religious future seems Islamic. You might see a covered woman every minute or two when walking downtown. Arabic was a commonly overheard language. I wonder how long French can survive in Montreal. Spanish, Haitian Creole, Bangla, and Arabic were all languages that I heard. People with whom I spoke who’d immigrated 10 or more years ago said that they hadn’t learned to speak French and were not interested in learning.

Intersection of Islamic and Western culture: the Uber AI geniuses assign the pronoun “they” to a person named Mohammad:

It is unclear for how long the Rainbow Flag religion and Islam can coexist, but for now they seem to both be popular:

What about Christianity? I went into a few churches and saw only a handful of people doing anything related to this religion. Here’s Notre-Dame:

What about the temples of commerce? Montreal retail seems to have suffered much less from online competition than U.S. urban retail. Much to my delight, there were quite a few old-school camera shops and photo labs!

In addition to my brief stop at the contemporary art museum’s temporary space (see Pussy Riot in Montreal), I stopped into the main art museum. As in a US art museum, Kehinde Wiley is the first and most prominently displayed artist:

Another painting on the important subject of BLM (Beavers’ Lives Matter):

The old building from the new building…

Here’s the Jared Bowman Memorial Door:

Speaking of Capitol Hill, a Mountie meets Elizabeth Warren’s cousin (by David Garneau):

Visitors carefully study how to paint like a 3-year-old who got into all the Halloween candy:

No Greenspun trip report post-2020 is complete without masketology, right? When downtown, I saw someone in a mask roughly every two minutes (including outdoors; #BecauseScience). The people most likely to wear masks were young women, i.e., those whose risk of being injured or killed by COVID-19 is the lowest. Here’s one at CYUL:

After landing at PBI, a family on their way back to New York sports the “adults masked and kid unmasked so that the kid can get infected and then transmit it to the adults a few days later” technique.

That’s the news from Montreal!