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I moved from Montreal to the sprawling suburbs of Washington DC in 1980, and I joke with a friend who came from Russia that same year that we share immigration stories. His is a replica of Bezmozgis or Shteyngart, a Russian Jew plunked down in the vacuous North American suburbs. But I felt just as alien, coming from Montreal into Reaganite America.
I remember the Montreal of my youth as smaller. Everyone knew everybody else, and they all lived in the same neighborhood, which in my case meant Jewish Cote St-Luc. I didn't even know a French speaker, nor do I remember visiting Quebec City or Toronto. It was insular, yes, but there was a closeness to the our community that we could never replicate in America. Friends and relatives would think nothing of showing up at my parents' door at 10 at night for a glass of wine and some gossip. My mother, a native New Yorker, loved the worldliness and culture of Montreal. She and my father were active in Montreal's still excellent Yiddish theater.
I took the bus to school alone starting in second grade on. We went to the Olympics in that hot, hot summer of 1976. And of course, we consumed much smoked meat.
Of course, I am leaving out the grim realities of Montreal in the Seventies. For me, French was something you learned in nursery school. It was watching "Different Strokes" and hearing Arnold say, "Qu'est -ce que tu dis, Willis?" I was not so aware back then of the rising Quebecois nationalism that splintered Montreal's unique polyglot society.
But is the Montreal of my childhood still even the Montreal of today? Living under George Bush, in an ever more yuppified New York, I think fondly back to my childhood in Montreal, even consider moving back with my own family. But I fear that my memories of Montreal -- stirred up once again by this article -- are simply that, memories.
