Newsletter

Even the Public Sculptures are Walkable

Can't buy a SIN

B R

B R

— 3 min read

First week in Montréal. Find an apartment. Get a bank account. Get the Canadian equivalent of a Social Security Number, which is known is a Social Insurance Number (SIN).

We’ve barely been able to explore the city at all! But here are some random things anyway.

You will find rarely find the wide sidewalks you will probably never find this many places to just sit down in most North American cities; due to the space needed for car parking and the quantity of people without housing, respectively.
  • Fun fact: credit agencies exist here as well. Actually, exactly the same ones (Equifax et al). But they instantly have amnesia about you the moment you cross the border so our credit scores are back to zero.
What the fuck, even the public sculptures are walkable in this town.
  • Washington State dispensed with state liquor stores a number of years ago under dubious lobbying by monied interests, but they still have them here and they are pretty okay?
We are living right next to St Catherine’s church - not even one of the better known churches nearby (doesn’t even make the relatively long Wikipedia list of St Catherine churches) - is about a decade older than the city of Seattle.
  • Get off in three different metro stops and are likely to find a third language spoken in public (in addition to French and English). At the stop nearest to our new apartment it was Spanish. Two stops before, you’ll hear Yiddish.
“End of the world, end of the month. Same culprits, same fight.”
This is a local cocktail which is - as far as I know - unique to the area. It’s basically a Bloody Mary with Clamato. I did not finish it.
Of course, crossing the border doesn’t change everything.
About 25% of Canadians were born elsewhere, so there are like a dozen villages - Little Burgundy, Little Portugal, Chinatown, Mile’s End (sizable Jewish population), Little Italy (above), and of course The Village (Gay). Somehow there is also an International District??

Read more