Canadian Crossing

Living 'la vie de sports' in Montréal

There are so many reasons to go to Montréal. The food. The night life. The parks. Olympic Stadium and the surrounding Olympic village from the 1976 Games.

But on this trip, there were a couple of sports angles. I timed the trip to catch a CFL game at Percival Molson Stadium. It's a little surreal to be at a professional sporting event where there's a full house and there are only about 20,000. But the Alouettes play in a tiny venue after playing all their games for years at huge cavernous Olympic Stadium.

Percival Molson Stadium is on top of a hill on McGill's campus, perhaps the best-known Montréal-based university, so if you sit at the top of the north side, you get a wonderful view of downtown Montréal. My seat was on the north side, but closer to field level. Fortunately, I took pictures before the game started.

I've now seen four CFL games live: 2 in Vancouver and one in Toronto. Both are huge stadiums that weren't filled all the way up. This place was much more excited.

It sure helped that Montréal was playing host to its biggest rival, the Toronto Argonauts. And that the Alouettes were coming off their own loss of the season the previous week. Montréal posted a rare shutout, 25-0, its first shutout since 1976. The Argos hadn't been shut out since 1993.

I was really impressed with how basic the setup was. There was one person at the gate, who let me in a few minutes before the actual time. No frisking — I was treated like a human being. It felt more like a small college football game than the CFL. The only other similar professional sports experience was the bleachers at the old County Stadium in Milwaukee in the late 1990s.

I had been to see the Expos at Olympic Stadium in 2002, knowing I might not have a second chance. I had now seen the Alouettes. All I needed was Les Habs, the Canadiens (NHL).

Trying to speak French in Montréal and Quebec

In the PBS children's show, "Postcards from Buster," when Buster finds out his new adventure is in Montréal and finds out they speak French in Montréal, the rabbit freaks out and asks how he will get around when the only French word he knows is "Aloha."

Buster quickly learns that Aloha is not a French word and that people do speak English in Montréal.

In my trip to La Belle Province — Montréal and Quebec City — I knew I would have to speak some French. Unlike Buster, I've been to Montréal, one time in 2002. I did have nightmares before I left that I would have to eat jambon and fromage (ham and cheese) the entire time.

I did a week in Montréal in 2002, and didn't starve. And didn't eat tons of jambon and fromage. But it does affect what French words I try to learn since eating is important.

After doing a week in Paris in May, I got the ordering food thing down pretty well. So when this trip to Montréal and Quebec City came up, I was looking forward to being confident in ordering.

Yes, when you travel to these two cities, you will find enough English to help. In Montréal, most menus have an English translation. And in Vieux Quebec (Old Quebec), there was plenty of English to go around.

But I wanted to speak French in these two cities. And unlike Paris, it went a lot better. People really do appreciate when you try. Even when they switch to English, the general mood wasn't condescending.

At one boulangerie (bakery) in Quebec but outside the tourist area, I successfully ordered (ironically) a jambon foret noir sandwich with Canadian suisse fromage (Black Forest ham with Canadian Swiss cheese). I even asked for moutard (mustard). The woman behind the counter asked if I wanted "moutard forte." I looked puzzled and some guy from the line yelled out "strong." Strong mustard. "Ah, oui, oui, C'est bon," I replied.

There was a few conversations in the farmers markets in Montréal and Quebec that ended short because my French couldn't cut it and their English wasn't that good. By and large, it worked out well enough.

My French isn't really that good, but when I had been in the province of Quebec for a week, it was better. And I felt better than I tried.

If you go to either city, you can survive on English. But unlike in Montréal, many of the signs, especially government signs, are only in French. And even in Montréal, some official signs are only in French.

So if you travel in La Belle Province, will a lack of French cause real trouble? In the smaller cities, life might be more difficult, especially if they really don't know English, which is common. In Montréal and Quebec, you can get help or stay in certain areas where English is dominant. I met Canadians from various provinces who either didn't know French or were afraid to speak it. They likely never went far from tourist-safe areas.

Even when I spoke French, I wasn't fooling anybody. I know "Je parle Francaise avec accent Americain." But knowing a little French really does go a long way.

If you are interested in going to the province of Quebec, and you feel totally unsure, consider Montréal or Vieux Quebec. But regardless of where you go, use the planning of a trip as an excuse to learn a little French.

I was in Quebec City, waiting at a bus stop. This woman from Minnesota was asking her daughter how to say something in French. I offered to help. This is how bold I had become. I was offering to see if I knew a phrase in French.

The woman asked me if I knew how to ask for "a cup of coffee to go." I replied "Cafe a emporter." Then I asked her if she wanted something in the coffee. "Milk," she replied. "Cafe au lait a emporter."

The woman thanked me and went off to get her coffee, leaving the suitcases and her daughter sitting there all alone. I felt bad for the young child and started a conversation in English. Turns out the child is in a French immersion class, and she told me she shares secrets in French with her much older siblings. You can bet her mother wishes she knew more French.

I made sure to stay around until her mother got back, to make sure the child would be OK. I asked the mother how things went, and she said that what I said worked perfectly.

Learning a little French for such a trip isn't absolutely necessary, but you get so much more out of being there.

'Homeland Security USA' back to burn off final episodes

The much-aligned, yet sickly fascinating "Homeland Security USA" is back, if only to burn off its remaining episodes. As you may recall, there were supposed to be 13 episodes, but only 8 were shown when the show disappeared from the airwaves.

The ABC owned station in Chicago is burning off the last few episodes on Sunday afternoons. It's even possible that your ABC station isn't even wasting time slots meant otherwise for infomercials. The episodes are available for free on ABC.com. The programs were supposed to come with commercials, but when I watched the latest episode, it was commercial-free.

The Canadian content wasn't very exciting in this last episode. They stopped a young woman traveling by bus from Toronto to New York at the border crossing in Buffalo. They felt she was auditioning/working without a visa (she was an unconventional model) and sent her back. She didn't seem to fight that hard — seeming unusual behavior.

If there are significant Canadian crossing border stories in these last few episodes, we will try and bring you the highlights.