I have been living in montreal for 4 years before i left for germany. These 4 years, i haven’t been faced with the anglo part of the city, and i never got really interested in knowing about these people who spoke english. I was living in the ‘french’ part of the city, going to a french speaking cegep, mostly always walking around areas such as la petite italie and le plateau. This was 10 years ago.
Things have changed.
I came back to montreal last june after spending 4 years in a country with one main langage: german. Even if half of the country is populated with turkish, indian, french, italians and english folks, all newspapers were in german (beside some indie newspapers of course).
Being back here, i discover hidden treasures about living in a half french half anglo city. Believe me, this is a wonderful thing, beside all the fighting about culture and language differences.
One of these thing being to have french and english newspapers (La Presse, Le Devoir, Ici, Voir, The Gazette, National Post, Hour and Mirror to name a few of them), and even french articles in english written newspapers (reference here is Pascal Montpetit’s chronicles on saturdays).
So people, if you can read french and english, you have a large choice. And if you have been living abroad for some time, you can appreciate to have this choice even more.
I do.
Starting from there, I have been reading La Presse and Le Devoir on the weekend for some time, beside the Ici and Voir on thursdays, until the day i went really bored because i didn’t recognized myself in these newspapers.
From there, i decided to have a look on the other side. What are english speaking people reading? I took 5 bucks and bought weekend issues of The Gazette, The National Post and grabbed the Mirror, and i think this was such a great thing.
I found much more to read about in these in one weekend then in the french newspapers in a month. Here are some topics covered this last weekend, exactly what i was looking for in french newspapers but never found:
– In The Gazette pop culture section, ‘Shouldn’t all music be emotionnal?’, about the roots of Emo music
– ‘Engage your right brain at work’, about creativity at work
– G3, a tech/computer/internet/games related section section
In the National Post:
– Mireille Siclcoff’s music article
– cover story about illustrator Virginai Johnson
– ‘soul matters’ page, about alternative medecines and spirituality in everyday life.
The Mirror last issues had articles about internet radio and some other cool stuff as an article about the pavilion projetcs.
For all this, I definitly prefer english written newspapers. I can relate easily to the topics they choose to cover. Somehow, i feel they are more open minded, with a strong implication in popular culture and trends.
I will still check out on newstands everynow and then to check our newspapers, but for right now, i think i’v found what i was looking for.