Montreal to Toronto

Miles from previous: 330
Total miles travelled: 646

From: Villa Maria Metro Station, Montreal, QC
To: Bayview Metro Station, Toronto, ON

Montreal is a city that I want to like more than I actually do. I like their tidy downtown, their efficient metro, and the usually good musicians I can find there, but the city itself has never made any great impression on me. It's always been a cold and grey city filled with people in dark clothing moving at fast speeds. Those same qualities work in New York and Chicago, but those cities have more of a right to be gloomy Gotham. Maybe its the abundance of art-deco, or just greater size. Montreal has all the cheer of a Soviet bloc prison. Lego-land architecture, stained snow. To be fair, I've never been there in the summer. But I doubt the seasons would much change the inhabitants. The women are alright, but I've found the men to be endlessly boring with their assertions of anglo-oppression.

I caught a ride up from Boston thru Craigslist with a Russian immigrant and a Czech-Canadian national. I got some of that special treatment border guards seem to favor me with - prying questions, searching personal items, though no body scan this time - but as I answered the question "Have you ever been denied entry into Canada?" truthfully (Yes) they let me in.

I didn't have any real reason to get to Montreal other than the general rules of the travel sketch. Someone offered a ride and I took it. But I admit there was a bit more incentive than that. For some years, I'd been referring to a French friend of mine who had relocated to Quebec as 'the love of my life.' The term was a bit facetious, a bit serious. Certainly questioning. I was never sure. There was no great idea behind my visit this time, as though it would be the trip when I would make sure of myself and of her. I just wanted to visit. I like her. I like her very much. She's just one of those people whose life I want to be a part of for what's left of it. You call that love, I think.


It came as a surprise when she used the same words to describe someone else. The 'love of her life' she told me, with some pause, is a man she has known since they were both 6 years old. He had called her the week before to tell her he was moving to Montreal. Not myself. What a relief.

I didn't really expect that I was the love of her life, and now I'm not sure what I would have done if she had told me that I was. But that's not what I got. We had no obligation to each other. It was freeing. I don't think she needed me anymore. And I'm not sure I needed her either. That's supposed to sound tragic, but it didn't feel that way. It felt natural, like one season giving itself into another. We were just moving on. We could walk out of each other's lives whenever we wanted. I went first.

I checked out rideshare. A Belarusian immigrant and his Ukrainian passenger were going to Toronto, another ride with the Eastern Europeans and the same foibles: aggressive driving, impeccably clean interiors, thermoses of hot tea, racist comments the others found innocuous and I found tasteless.

It was comforting to have wheels spinning under me, and the great ribbons of asphalt flowing beneath. Then Toronto came into view, and I got out at the Eastbay station.