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Anticapitaliste Rage Manifestation

We Live In A Société

B R

B R

— 3 min read

The city of Montreal was established in 381 years ago, in 1642.1 The oldest part of this old (for post-”discovery” North America) city is named appropriately enough - the Old City.

Another church of Notre Dame. Catholics seem as enamored with the virgin Mary as much as American evangelicals are with baby Jesus. The statue is of the guy hired to found the city and became its first governor, Paul de Chomedey, sieur de Maisonneuve.

The founding of the city, like most colonial projects2, was a violent affair. While the settlers maintained some peaceful relations with the Algonquin, the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) were another matter. In fact, the place was almost wiped out by 1653. Barely 50 Europeans remained when the founder returned from France with another 100 people he had managed to convince to give it a go.

They managed to keep it going and Quebec (and Canada generally) has tended to have  looser immigration policies compared to the United States. Barely half a mile away, there is the Chinatown of Montreal.

This is Sun Yat-sen Parc, named after maybe the only revolutionary leader both mainland China and Taiwan have a positive opinion of: Sun Yat-sen. Sun has a fascinating story that reminds me a lot of Simón Bolívar, in that he was actually pretty complicated, dealt with constant internal dissent, and failed a lot…until he succeeded.

You can’t really walk more than three blocks in Old or Downtown (Ville Marie) Montreal without running into something. Oh, there is a public square where tens of thousands have gathered to demand a ceasefire or actual climate action.

I’d say English could rip off more words from French but actually that might not be possible.

Or it’s a 300 year old church. Or in the Old City, they project kinda-creepy historical reenactments of people and events on the side of buildings.

Then you’ll stumble upon some big art installation:

The Ring at Place Ville Marie is relatively new. 50,000 pounds of stainless steel that is a cool window capturing chunks of the modern buildings, the famous McGill university, and a slice of the 750ft Mont Royal - a big mountain park right in the middle of the city that is going automobile-free next year.

One thing you generally won’t have to look too far to find in most of the city: a place to buy recreational substances. These are strictly controlled and - as far as I could discern - exclusively sold by the government.

The Société des alcools du Québec (SAQ) is the provincial crown corporation with a monopoly on liquor, with its subsidiary Société québécoise du cannabis (SQDC) acting as the sole seller of cannabis. Same-day delivery is offered for those in the greater Montreal region, but the stores are all over - the nearest one to our new place is less than a 10 minute walk.

As one can see from their website, the shops have basically similar stuff to what you might find in a store in a US state where cannabis is legal. The big differences are (1) it seems slightly cheaper and (2) there are no candies - gummies, chocolates, etc - of any kind for fear of attracting children. Instead they focus on flower, beverages, and straight up capsules.

Next week, I’ll talk more about the neighborhood we ended up in: Villeray.

  1. The same year as the start of the English Civil War - an event that almost no one seems to remember but basically kicked off the British Empire and, arguably, the state capitalism that now dominates the globe. ↩

  2. Then and now, as regular news readers are no doubt aware. ↩

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