Month: July 2019

Va-et-vient, viens vers moi, toi vent tout valseur

Je vacille entre ciel et fenêtre je suis avec toi

Je te suis; suis-je toi?

Souffle ton haleine, expire je t’inspire tu m’imbibes

Inhalations exaltations exhortations

Somptueusement nous sommes.

 

08-07-2019

 

Montréalers far and wide flaunt and flock to the Jean Talon Market whenever they can. It is a jewel within our city. We oft times neglect another one of our treasures, it is the less glamorous and touristy Atwater Market. It is considered the Westmount of vegetables, the less authentic market, the jack-up-the-prices kind of place. As far as I am concerned, if you are a real aficionado of beets, barley and beef, it is the master in its class.

How to spend a beautiful sunny Sunday summer day? No other way than by taking out the bicycle and ambling down to the Lachine canal via the Atwater market. From my home in the West (west of Décarie, that area which those in the more centralized parts of the city call the wastelands—how little they know!), I cycle on Sherbrooke West as I love to people watch and window shop whilst I pedal my way to my destination, before cutting down Victoria onto the bike path of De Maisonneuve and onto Westmount Park, a marvellously lush oasis within the city.

Ah yes, my destination beckons! Why do I love thee so much, my precious market? Can you believe it, there is/are not one, not two, but three organic vegetable stalls!

How many are there in the other so-called market, the one most everyone talks about? Weirdly, the outdoor market touted as being the biggest in North America only has 2 (!) organic vegetable stalls. Most importantly, though, is the proximity to the merchants. They are familiar with their customers, they get to know us, our likes, dislikes, our cooking styles and all. Today, I lucked out with beautiful organic lettuce at $1.00 a head, along with my many other finds, including delectable haskap berries (cross of a blueberry and black currant).

For those who haven’t gone vegan, the meat market upstairs is a plethora of cuts, loins and chops all flanked out in their best Sunday suits. It is a visual feast summoning the wavering pseudo-vegetarians back into a carnivorous salivatory rapture.

I don’t know how I resisted the call of the sorbet or the ice cream from the Chocolatier as I was heading out to the canal.  I had to repeat to myself 10 times over that I must fit into my dress for my son’s upcoming wedding… no ice cream for me!

Aaahh… music, people, bikes, water, dogs being walked and sun. Can life be any better?

Note to myself: remember that you need to go back up the Atwater hill before you fill up your knapsack with 25 kilos of food!

 

On the way back home, I stop in at the local coffee shop to talk political shop with a young phenom for a couple of hours. If one wants to know how to make my day/week, this is the way to go. For all of the bah-humbuggers out there, you need to get the chance to be star-struck, enlivened and rejuvenated by the powerhouse generation of 20somethings who are making a difference to our world. Your cynicism might get wiped out.

My route back home brought me past an old memory. In my distant past, I had been an entrepreneur, owner of a boutique I named Créations Tropic-Val. It went flop, during a recession and due to my zero-to-nil business sense of the time. The store location is now a weed shop, and I can only say how ironic, considering my frame of mind at the time of my debacle into a smoke-haze of my entrepreneurship days (subject of a future blog post).

Can’t find a picture of my store, but I managed to find the first sketch of my business card.

 

*Backflash to a fine morning minding the store, when a young gentleman came in and spent 1 hour looking at the hand-made clothing in the shop. He left, saying he would come back in the afternoon to try on a pants suit he particularly liked. I was surprised that he kept his word, as he actually showed up a few hours later. He took the suit and went into the dressing room. I heard muffled sounds, and he started swearing. Then I see him coming out, with a ski-mask on his face, holding a knife. He came toward me, saying he was sorry, and that he didn’t want to hurt me, but I should give him all of my money in the till.

Some of you might be gasping at this point, worried that I am being robbed. Put your fears to rest. For my fear factor had not kicked in. I looked at him. Looked at his ski-mask and was wondering why he would need to put it on, as he had spent so much time at my shop that all of his facial features were already imprinted in my mind. And then I looked down at the knife. He was holding a bread knife, dull enough to cut the freshest of breads but nothing else. And then I was thinking of my cash register, as it was mid-January and he was the first customer I had seen in eight days. So I started a little chuckle, telling him he was welcome to 25 cents, to make a phone call, as it was about all I had.

Strange thing happened. He sighed. He took off his mask, slumped down in the chair next to the counter, and started crying, a heaving desperate uncontrollable sobbing frenzy. Then he started talking, telling me how sorry he was, but that he was desperate for money and for food. He shared with me his story.

He came to Montréal from the Caribbean three months prior to be with his pregnant girlfriend who had moved here to be with her cousins. But things weren’t going too well in their coupledom. She resented him for not having money. She kicked him out of her room the month prior, and he was forced to sleep on the floor in the living room, with no bed and no sheets, with only his winter coat as a shield from the cold. Her cousin had confiscated his passport. They kicked him out of the house each morning and told him to find a job or find some money, and only then would they give him back his passport. He was cold and hadn’t eaten in four days.

My heart broke for him. I hugged him. I closed my store and took him to see a counsellor at Head and Hands, as much for help as for legal advice. I took him to the food bank. I encouraged him to do everything in his power to get his passport back, even if it required calling the police, and to find his way back to his home to his country. I then left to tend to my shop, telling him he could come back to see me, to give me some news on his situation. He vowed to come back and pay for the suit he had tried on, it seemed to be his way to say thank you.

I hadn’t taken down his address or phone number. He went incognito, and every day, my thoughts went out to him. Was he ok? Was he being abused by his host family? Did he find his way back to his country? I had none of these answers.

Sometime two months later, he came to see me. He had a big smile on his face; he had money to buy the suit! He told me that it was his last thing he was doing before flying out of Montréal. He hugged me, and I never saw him again.

My sunny Sunday ambles have come to a close. I reach home, and unpack my groceries, hoping that my veggies haven’t wilted from being in my knapsack for four hot hours. The only collateral damage is the case of berries which had found its way down the bag, got squished and leaked out onto the bottom of my bag.

One hour later as I undress, I realize that the berries in question had leaked out of the bottom of my bag and onto my white shirt, at the level of my bottom, leaving stains eerily similar to menstrual blood stains. I wonder when and how long ago these seemingly blood marks were visible on my shirt?

Well, that’s life, fake blood stains and all, on this fine Sunday amble kind of day!

 

 

 

 

INTERVENTION CONTRE LE HARCÈLEMENT 25 JUIN 2019, CONSEIL D’ARRONDISSEMENT CDN-NDG

 

*** Mise à jour; la couronne fait appel au verdict.

 

Bonsoir Mme La mairesse, et les élu.e.s,

 

Le verdict est tombé. L’harceleur de Mme Montgomery, que je nommerais pour ne pas lui donner une plateforme qu’il désire tant, a été reconnu non-coupable d’harcèlement criminel.

 

Ceci, malgré le fait que le harcèlement perdure dans le temps, que cela a occasionné de l’angoisse de la victime et que de nombreuses personnes ont étés témoins de ce comportement, y inclus tous les élu.e.s autour de la table en avant.

 

Nous sommes nombreux à dénoncer ce jugement que nous estimons être scandaleux. Nous sommes nombreux à nous mobiliser pour démontrer nos inquiétudes et notre déception envers le système judiciaire. Et nous sommes présent pour donner soutien à la personne qui subit l’injustice d’un verdict qui redonne la voix et le pouvoir à l’harceleur.

 

Nous disons, assez c’est assez.

C’est la campagne hashtag; #harcèlementnondénoncé.

 

Je tiens à vous rappeler de mon intervention de l’année passée, quand je vous ai fait part de l’impact et les effets plus globales du harcèlement.

De l’effet de démotivation pour les femmes désirant s’intéresser et s’investir à la politique.

Du stress de la situation qui peut affecter notre politique municipale au quotidien. Nous, les citoyens et citoyennes de l’arrondissement s’attendent que nos politiciens puissent donner leur pleine attention à leurs dossiers, sans être détournés par une situation de harcèlement.

Sans oublier le sentiment d’insécurité, qu’inquiétude et d’inconfort de citoyens, et plus particulièrement les femmes qui assistent aux conseils d’arrondissement.

 

Que voulons-nous?

 

Que personne ne donne tribune à cette personne qui continue à harceler la mairesse. Ni à lui, ni a des personnes qui le représentent.

Peu importe votre allégeance politique, nous voulons que tous les élu.e.s, incluant l’opposition, exprime leur désarroi et dénoncent publiquement ce jugement.

Que les élu.e.s de CDN-NDG agissent solidairement, peu importe leur parti, afin d’enrayer la situation et toute autre situation semblable qui pourra se produire dans le futur.

Que vous soyez solidaire avec Mme Montgomery dans ce dossier.

Que vous travaillez tous ensemble solidairement pour faire tomber le fardeau de la preuve des victimes de harcèlement et les injustices du système judiciaire.

 

Mme.la mairesse, votre communauté vous soutien.

Merci,

Valérie Bell