I got up early, dressed quickly, had some coffee and a bowl of yogurt with blueberries and raspberries, and got in the elevator at 8:30 am, along with the security man who was finishing his rounds. Il fait froid? (Is it cold?) I asked him. Pas trop froid, he said. Not too cold. Outside, the sun shone in a completely blue sky as I walked the two blocks to the metro, donned my mask, and descended the two escalators to the platform level. The train came almost immediately, full of helmeted, brightly-dressed, excited cyclists with their bicycles, coming from all over the city to take part in today’s Tour de l’Isle, a summer kick-off tradition in which nearly 20,000 cyclists follow a route on closed streets through many of the neighbourhoods across the island of Montreal.
My destination for the day, however, would be quite different, and almost entirely interior: the Anglican Cathedral in the centre of Montreal’s downtown, where for many years I’ve sung in the choir. Today, Trinity Sunday, would be our final performance of the year, until we reconvened in September, and this morning the French congregation and the mostly-Anglophone congregation would worship together at 10:30, and then share a potluck lunch.
Montreal is arguably the most linguistically- and ethnically-diverse city in North America. A large majority of Montrealers are fully bilingual in French and English, and a great many speak three or more languages. After moving to Canada from the US almost twenty years ago, I lived in a Francophone neighbourhood, but moved last year to an area where I regularly hear Chinese, Korean, Spanish, Italian, Hebrew and Yiddish, Urdu and Hindi, Arabic, Greek, Russian, Ukrainian, Romanian, Polish, Indigenous languages and many others in addition to French and English—and where it is easy to buy food from all of those places.
At the same time, the conservative Quebec government has recently passed a law to protect and strengthen the French language against the encroachment of English, but it also uses the language argument as a smokescreen to cover racist attitudes against everyone who isn’t French-Canadian by birth. These populist policies play well in all the areas of the province except Montreal, where nearly everyone recognises diversity as part of our city’s unique character, and sees it as a source of pride and delight.
It is also a very secular city, where the Quebecois turned against the Catholic Church back in the 1970s, and many of today’s churchgoers tend to be immigrants from Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, Latin America. The way I had chosen to spend my Sundays was quite unusual; most Montrealers would be outdoors today, like the cyclists, revelling in the long-anticipated arrival of summer.
I thought about these things today, as our bilingual choir rehearsed for the morning service, which we sang in French and English, with the French congregations’s mostly-black, mostly-Caribbean-heritage choir contributing a song in Creole. Our potluck lunch was an international buffet, and I noticed that many of the long tables of parishioners were mixed up, with people from both congregations talking easily together. After that, we were hard at work again, rehearsing at 2:30 for our 4:00 Vespers, which is broadcast every week on a French radio station. When I started home at 5:15, the metro cars were again crowded with cyclists, tired now, but quietly satisfied with their day—as I was, too.
It takes many committed individuals to make a vibrant community. Today we said goodbye and thank you to our head verger, who has served the parish as a volunteer for more than 40 years. Now in his mid-80s, George is a black man of Caribbean origin, fluent in both languages, beloved by generations of young people—many of whom had problems of one sort or another—whom he has mentored. And this may well have been the final service sung by a good friend of mine in the choir, a woman also in her 80s who was recently diagnosed with a brain tumour, and who, among many other selfless tasks in her life, has organised and advocated for our parish’s work with refugees.
I sometimes have difficulty with the anonymity of life in a such a big city, especially when I’m in the metro and surrounded by what my small-town father once called, incredulously, “the whole world!” Then I remember that we each have our own stories, our own paths and passions, and our own intersections that could only occur in such a large and diverse place. Racism is deplorable anywhere, and occasionally Montreal has an incident of hate crime, though it is not often violent. But by and large, we rejoice in our diversity, individuality, and freedom, which I fervently wish we could export to more of the world.
How to cite: Adams, Beth. “Just Another Day: Beth Adams.” Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, 4 Jun. 2023, chajournal.blog/2023/06/04/beth-adams.
Elizabeth (Beth) Adams is a writer, artist, and publisher. She is a dual Canadian-American citizen, and has lived in Montreal since 2005. Her biography of Bishop Gene Robinson was published in 2006, and a book of her drawings and essays is forthcoming this fall. She was a founder/co-managing editor of the former e-zine qarrtsiluni, is founder/editor of the independent press Phoenicia Publishing, and her blog, The Cassandra Pages, has considered questions of arts&letters, culture, and spirit since 2003. She is a member of PEN Canada. [All contributions by Beth Adams.]
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