Landcare
grows from a robust sociability. On holiday here in Montreal, I'm learning a
lot about sociability. Walking with our friend Linda Rabin through her
neighbourhood is a leisurely affair. She's lived in Mile End, Montreal, for 35
years, and she knows a lot of people. Georgio calls out from the veranda of his
first storey apartment - his wife Anna had a dream about Linda last night and
she's coming down to tell her about it.
We're happy
to linger on the pavement. The houses are three storey terraces, a separate
residence to each level, with a stairway entrance for each running down to the
street. An area about five metres deep accommodates the transition from
residence to street, and each building handles this transition with its own configuration
of staircases, rubbish bins, bicycles and gardens.
Fences are
low or dispensed with all together, so that the street frontage is an open,
permeable zone, where private and public spheres overlap. Conversations are
possible, with immediate neighbours and with passersby. As we discuss an
unusual renovation, a man joins in from his doorway - the first two floors, he
tells us, are one residence, the second two, another.
This easy sociability
is the most remarkable feature of my three weeks in Montreal. People are
helpful. Standing at the kerb of a major city street late one night, searching
in vain for a cab, a passing public bus pulls over, the door swings open and
the driver offers her help. Where are we headed? To Outrement? Jump on board
then, she'll take us to a Metro station that will get us home.
People are
considerate of each other. Cars slow and stop as I prepare to cross at corners.
Drivers look out for pedestrians, anticipate their movements and defer to them.
People give each other space in queues, and don't barge in front of others. This
care in the public realm flows over into care for the public realm. People are attentive to the quality of
relationship. What happens between people matters to them.
And the
people I've met are great talkers, who are interested in ideas. Conversations begin
easily, and move easily to matters of consequence. Standing at the bus stop
wondering when the next bus will come, I get talking to a 50-something lawyer with
a three day growth heading to his office late on a Sunday. We begin with the
vagaries of the buses, then turn to the benefits of travel in loosening up
one's expectations, then to the journeys brought on by his father's death this
year, on the other side of the country.
Montreal-eans move easily from 'bonjour' to the state of the world around them, and to their creative projects. For a traveller without connections, this matters. I’m not just looking at people, I'm conversing with them. My habits are slowly adjusting to the physical realities of a new city (stay to the right on footpaths, look to the right when cross the road), but the big stretch is social. There are deep challenges to my (Australian) expectations of disinterest and defensiveness in the public realm.
The people
I've met are thinkers, and makers, and contributors. They understand the social
as a living thing that has to be maintained and cultivated. They seem to enjoy
their shared social space as a collective achievement. It's summer, and they
have made it through another winter (think 20C below). They are
French-speakers in an English-speaking country. They stick together, and look
after each other.
It's a good
feeling to live in the circle of that care, to stand in the sunshine and strike
up a conversation.
