Montreal | Jinny's Occasional Poems

Tag Archives: Montreal

Of Smokestacks and Cliffs

Posted on August 2, 2024 | Leave a comment

As we approach the shank of summer, I’ve been reminiscing about a long-ago summer I spent at a magical place, Montreal’s “Expo 67.” It was my first summer away from home and on my own. I was just out of my teens, in a serious relationship, not sure what to do about it. My boyfriend was hundreds of miles away, working at a summer camp in Pennsylvania. In those pre-internet days, we wrote postal letters back and forth, sometimes emboldened to share by mail what we’d shied away from in person.

The world was in turmoil, perhaps a bit more than usual. I was somewhat bewildered, but hopeful about prospects for a better society. Expo 67 was a perfect vantage point for viewing new possibilities.

Because I’d also fallen in love with the French language, at first I’d considered dropping out of college to spend the entire April-October interval of the fair as a participant-observer. I thought that a prolonged stay in French-speaking Québec province would improve my language skills beyond what I was getting in coursework at my small liberal arts college in Virginia. Our academic dean suggested an alternative—why not apply to work just for the length of my summer break, when visitors to the fair would be at their peak, the need for extra staff most urgent? That way I could get almost the same exposure to French language and culture without interrupting my college education.

Of the hundred or so application letters I sent out, only one produced a definite job offer—preparing and selling Belgian waffles at one of the fair’s many snack bars. I jumped at the chance. Once school let out, I boarded a bus headed north across the border. It took an intervention by my soon-to-be boss to prevent me from becoming an undocumented worker. There were many in Montreal that summer—American young men evading the military draft, or newcomers from elsewhere fleeing disasters, disorder, or worse in their countries of origin.

Over time I became one of Smitty’s Waffles best strawberry cappers. I earned a pittance, but was surrounded by others in the same situation. We shared low-cost housing tips. We traded end-of-shift free food among the half dozen or so snack bars in our cluster. Sometimes this included freshly whipped butter, made in our gigantic electric mixer by whipping the cream that topped our waffles for just a little too long (and substituting a little salt for the sugar).

Montreal had extended its public transportation system for the fair. A monthly pass for the Metro was affordable, even at minimum wage. Best of all, on my days off, I got free entry to the fair. An exhibit I sampled multiple times was sponsored by Canada’s telephone companies. It featured a trans-Canada travel film, the first in immersive Imax, a genre many of us have come to enjoy since. Though I haven’t located an online archive of the film, I can remember snatches of scenery, from the easternmost stretches of the Maritime Provinces along the Atlantic to British Columbia on the Pacific. However, it’s two scenes from Canada’s interior that linger most vividly in my mind.

The first is an aerial panorama of a huge steel mill complex near Sudbury, Ontario, belching smoke. Back in 1967, making steel was seen as a hallmark of industrial might, with smokestack pollution a bothersome but necessary byproduct.

The second snippet is slightly longer—several young people joyriding in an open jeep across a vast plain, with no other traffic in sight. Abruptly, the vehicle brakes to a stop, just as the celebrants reach the edge of a thousand foot drop. Even after several viewings, I still gasped at the sudden halt and the averted plunge to oblivion.

Since 1967, industrialized countries have reduced some of our smokestack pollution, viewing it as a health threat. Since 1967, we’ve also gotten increasingly concerned about a global “cliff” of climate change, caused by humanity’s net emissions of greenhouse gases. We humans have yet to master satisfying our needs and wants without endangering our long-term survival as a species. The 2015 Paris International Climate Agreement may be a small start toward solutions. It’s been signed by over 190 countries that produce 98% of the globe’s greenhouse gases. The U.S. is currently a signatory. We are reducing our greenhouse gas emissions, if not yet quite as fast as climate accords targets. I’m trying to play my part. I’m also rooting for those young joyriders. I want us to apply our collective human brakes fast enough and creatively enough to keep us from plunging over the edge of a climate cliff.

Life Plans A to Z

Posted on March 30, 2024 | Leave a comment

According to an essay I wrote in eighth grade, I wanted to grow up to become an airline stewardess or a simultaneous translator for the United Nations or a circus trapeze artist. As I got older, I began to realize that these initial dreams were unlikely to get fulfilled, at least not in the way my thirteen-year-old self had imagined. I might need to create alternatives.

For starters, stewardesses (the profession then was almost entirely women) were required to have 20/20 vision without eyeglasses. In those days before the availability of contact lenses, my severe myopia would disqualify me as a prospective flight attendant. Later in high school, I began to meet other students who had been raised bilingually. It gradually sank in to me that my simultaneous translation prospects were slim. Regardless of how much I studied, I was unlikely to become as proficient as others who’d learned two languages (or sometimes more) from birth. Finally, although I’d been a “queen of the jungle gym” in elementary school and loved going to the circus, I began to appreciate how much additional training I’d need to reach professional level on a trapeze. I also noticed that over time circus crowds were getting sparser. More and more “big tops” were folding.

So I began formulating “Plan B’s.” Even if I couldn’t become a stewardess, I might be able to arrange other ways to travel widely as an adult. I might not be able to do simultaneous translations, but perhaps I could teach foreign language skills to those with less exposure than I had. I might not ever become a circus entertainer, but I could create verbal sketches and skits to amuse people.

By the time I completed college, I’d had my first international work experience—preparing and selling Belgian waffles at a bilingual snack bar at the 1967 World’s Fair in Montreal, Québec, Canada. I’d enrolled in an advanced program to get a teaching credential for French language instruction. From Montreal, I’d sent a summer’s worth of weekly humorous travel sketches to our small-town Maryland newspaper.

I was about to become a newlywed, at a time when American young men were susceptible to being drafted into the military. Some of them were then sent to participate in a far-off war in Vietnam. A few days before our wedding, my groom-to-be got his notice to report for induction into the army. Rats! Time for “Plan C.”

My only future brother-in-law was already serving in Vietnam. Worst case, my future husband might soon join him. Knowing my tendency to “awfulize,” I figured I could keep my stress level somewhat in check by staying busy. I applied for and got a part-time clerical job in addition to my full-time academic course load.

Several weeks later, a surprise phone call from my now-husband relayed most welcome news: a minor congenital back abnormality had reclassified him as less fit for military service. He could return home and resume his non-military career. “Plan D” found both of us happy to be together, but very, very busy. I made it through a hellish school year of teaching beginning French to 187 rambunctious adolescents, then embarked on “Plan E,” what turned out to be a lengthy career in commercial information systems.

Over the course of the next fifty years or so, I fulfilled additional alternate versions of my adolescent dreams: for a couple of years in my thirties, I was on the staff of the U.N. in a French-speaking African country; in my forties, I created holiday programs spoofing local politics for an area non-profit; in my fifties, I survived a serious health scare partly by becoming more adept at yoga and a graceful Asian exercise practice called “qi gong.” I also traveled widely and spent multiple semesters teaching English as a foreign language in rural China.

At my current life stage, I get much incoming mail either promoting various burial services or suggesting worthy causes I should include in my “estate plans.” As the end of my planning alphabet approaches, I face ongoing uncertainties and anxieties, including pandemics, climate change, massive human migrations, escalating housing costs and homelessness. My coping skills are sometimes challenged. I hope that younger generations will expand newer coping tools and use them wisely.

Should anyone ask, I’d suggest that it’s great both to have dreams and to have some “plan B’s” (and C’s, D’s, etc.). Life is apt to adjust your original plans over and over again.