Montreal Guidebook Nightmares
Rue St. Denis in Montreal’s Quartier Latin, Latin Quarter
"A walking tour of Plateau Mont Royal? How can it even be work?" my friend Benoit Ethier exclaimed in words that he would one day eat. The young Montreal actor in-between shows had eagerly agreed to work as my assistant, gathering information for a walking/shopping tour of Plateau Mont Royal for a U.S. guidebook publisher.
Montreal candy store
The task required him to walk the length and breadth of St.Laurent Blvd., St. Denis St., Prince Arthur St., Duluth St. and Laurier St., gathering menus and matchbooks, leaflets and fliers, querying shop owners, jotting and taping notes on merchandise, designs and decors and cuisine - to capture the ambience, uniqueness, essence, aroma and soul of each of some 300 odd cafes, restaurants, bars and boutiques. A task he set out upon with the greatest of enthusiasm.
As it was, I was the one who initially took on this same task of researching and producing a 50-page Plateau chapter in 10 days - afeat that promised adventure, intriguing "rencontres" and good pay. But after two days and 17 hours of foot work ("we need it fast—all 300 pages in six weeks—so you'll have to hit the ground running," the guidebook editor blasted), this writer sub-contracted the hit-and-run research out to her younger-legged, stronger-backed, meticulous, reliable friend.
Posing as a tourist
I asked my francophone friend Benoit to conduct the research in English, even pose as a Yankee tourist if it felt right. Since he was an actor he took on the part and dressed himself up in plaid shorts, Birkenstock sandals, a T-shirt, backpack and beanie. What happened to this Innocent Abroad out there in the guidebook jungle is the stuff of which cheap travel memoirs are made.
Near the end of his nine days of walking, he told me he awoke one night in his Plateau Mont Royal apartment in a sweat, dreaming that the Dijon mustard-yellow textured walls were caving in on him, while soldiers in chain-mail brassieres and mini-skirts were whizzing at him on roller blades, receiving commands from a Mother Walkman.
Covered with Lise Wattier salon makeup and reeking of cabbage rolls and chicken fajitas, they wore sandwich-board menus scribbled in strange tongues, and wielded gigantic, variously colored business cards as shields.
Montreal Quartier Latin mural
A cavalry mounted on fleet-footed fibreglass pelicans lead the charge, and as the attack advanced, a rain of deadly weapons filled the air— gigantic fondue forks and Greek shishkebab skewers, Chinese cleavers, rolling pins, egg beaters and French whisks, candlesticks and floor-length halogen lamps.
A din of taunts and jeers and bad Flamenco guitar echoed in the melée, growing louder ... and louder until Benoit heard his own voice screaming into the night - "LOOK - HE'S TAPING US!"
Nightmares, yes.
Benoit started out conscientious and excited about the project and came back a broken man. He confessed that at the last shop he visited, a Breton fisherman- sweater boutique doing a sideline in maple syrup, he stifled his impulse to throw maple syrup all over the sweaters. (Snobby shopowner story.)
Benoit set out his first day as a meek pur laine mouton and returned as an African lion, or Bengal tiger, or he wasn't sure what, suffering from such culture shock after his immersion in the multi-ethnic Main—Boulevard St. Laurent— that he began asking such existential questions as "Who am I?" "What is Quebec?"
Post research de-briefing
"So what are your conclusions, Benoit?" I said over jousting fondue forks at our post-research dinner in a St. Denis St. restaurant.
“ Well Nancy, that Dijon mustard-colored textured walls are in on the Main. Red and turquoise textured are also hot, and black floors, definitely. That the body-painting wig parties at the Bar Lézard are definitely weird. That it's hard to make the Taverne Grecque and the Cabane Grecque and Caverne Grecque and the Jardin Grec all sound different. I would suggest you lump them all under the heading Rue Prince Arthur.'
Taping can be dangerous
"And Nancy - taking notes with a tape recorder can be frustrating and even dangerous. I was having a cheap lunch at a Mexican restaurant when a young woman started screaming hysterically, `He's taping us!' - I was describing the decor and the tortillas. And they threw me out. And the worst day was when I discovered that I'd taped a whole kilometre of Rue St. Denis with weak batteries. When I played it back it sounded like a growling dog. I had to do it all over. I was in tears."
"Yes I noticed that sometimes we have the description of the place, but the name of the establishment got cut off. That could pose problems." "Don't worry, I'll patch it up."
"Well how did people treat you?"
"Mostly OK. Sometimes the proprietor would say, `Oh, you're writing a guidebook - let me show you around!' Then he might start telling me the story of his life. And how his pizzas were unique, or how he treated all his customers like his own family, (except that he didn't give them free food). But sometimes the owners said ‘Do we have to pay for this listing?' or `Don't bother us - we're busy today.'
"I felt so shy when I started out,’ Benoit continued. “But after the first few days I revelled in this sense of power over thousands of American tourists, telling them where to go and what to eat and what to buy -it was like being a member of the mob."
"Really?"
"But sometimes I felt like a jerk. Rue Laurier is a street with an attitude. They X-ray your wallet before they let you in the door, and give you an X-rating if you're wearing Birkenstocks. They really look at feet on that street.''
"Any special or odd discoveries?"
"A shop selling clothes with upside-down zippers and mini-skirts and bras made of chain mail. And a vegetarian restaurant on the Main. You walk up this dark stairwell to the second floor. There are these old bicycles lying all over the black paint-splattered floor.
"Everybody's dressed in black leather, and the waitress has a ring through her nose and her eyebrow. The menu features a black-bean brunch and invented recipes based on avocados, eggplants, lots ofzucchini. It was just too weird to include. And they don't have a phone."
Now that Benoit Ethier is a walking compendium of Plateau trivia, his friends assail him with questions and phone calls. They ask him where to buy things like Nepalese puppets, second-hand Asterix comics, geranium-scent for home-made wine, dried piranhas, inflatable travel pillows, 400-million-year-old crinoids from Ellesmere Island, owl bird-whistles and whether the octopus-and- lentil salad at L'Express or the horse tartare at Continental is really worth a try.
His new authority gives him a renewed sense of power. But whenever I pop the question, "Would you do it again?" he says, "Not for all the jewelry on Rue Laurier."
