The gardening season for 2019 officially begins this week. Have you got your pots clean yet? (I recommend spraying them with a solution of water and peroxide bleach to disinfect.)

Starting next week, you can begin seeding peppers (2nd week of Feb), eggplant (3^rd week of Feb), cabbage (4^th week of Feb) and then tomatoes (1^st week of March).

Pick up your seeds this weekend at the Great Gardening Weekend! Traditionally held at the Botanic Gardens, the awesome event takes place at the planetarium this year.

Seedy Saturdays also take place across Montreal beginning next weekend.

Get ready to plant!

Great Gardening Weekend

Planétarium Rio Tinto Alcan, 4801 Pierre de Coubertin Ave.
February 16 and 17 from 9 a.m. until 5 p.m. 

The 19^th edition of the Great Gardening Weekend takes place this coming weekend. Organized by Espace pour la vie, in collaboration with Cultiver Montréal.

More than 20 different Québécois seed producers will be on hand. There will also be seed exchanges and workshops about urban agriculture.

This is the first time the activity takes place at the Planetarium so there will be more space for everyone.

Seedy Saturday Verdun

Grand Potager at the Verdun Municipal Greenhouses, 7000 boul LaSalle, Verdun
March 9 from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m. 

The 3^rd edition of Verdun’s Seedy Saturday takes place the second weekend of March.

There will be five Québecois seed producers, a seed exchange table plus kiosks from members of Grand Potager.

Learn about African heritage plants, fruit trees, aquaponics, backyard gardening in Montreal, edible flowers and a multitude of other urban agriculture skills.

Be sure to pick up compost, gloves, pruners and seeds from the Coopérative de solidarité Abondance Urban Solidaire. Membership in the coop costs only $10, which gets you a 10% rebate on courses and products.

 

] Listen to Unapologetically Episode 17: Lorne Trottier

If there’s anyone who knows how to use the study of science for the benefit of humans, it’s Lorne Trottier

Trottier’s childhood passion for electro-magnetic technology has him to create:

• a multi-national company,
• a building on the McGill campus,
• two research chairs,
• two institutes,
• an observatory, and
• a family foundation known for its philanthropy to science and health.

The Montreal native holds unfailing love for his city. He was appointed a member of the Order of Canada in 2006.  His nomination as an officer took place in 2017.

When I met him, he spoke honestly about the ups and downs of entrepreneurship, the brilliant researchers he supports and the issues on which he’s changed his mind.

“When we started, there was no venture capital,” he says about Matrox, the 600-employee company he co-founded with partner Branko Matic in 1976. “What helped us is that we picked a product to develop that we were able to sell within six months. We kind of bootstrapped and grew slowly in the beginning, not necessarily by choice.”

Matrox

Matrox peaked in the late 1990s and 2000s with its graphics cards. Trottier says the company couldn’t sustain that level of leadership over time and “kind of flamed out.”  Still, he’s proud that the company has not only stayed in business through forty years of high technological change but remains flexible enough to continually develop new products that put the latest research into practical use.

“Today, we have three basic areas of strength,” he says. “With computer graphics, we’re strong in display walls and public information displays. With television production, when you watch any sports on the nightly news, sports or election results, our cards are in the bowels of what you see. We’re also strong in machine vision. The latest flavour there is deep learning and we’re getting into that via the algorithms we’re developing.”

Trottier says that he likes meeting the Matrox senior researchers to make sure that the company continues to benefit from significant technological breakthroughs.

Research Funding

That drive to keep current in basic science also has him funding researchers like René Doyon. Doyon runs the Director of the Institute for Research on exoplanets at the Université de Montréal.

“René Doyon is among the world’s top research in exoplanets,” says Trottier. “He’s developed a sensitive spectrometer to be able to read the biomarkers of atmospheres around planets, including water vapor, carbon dioxide and perhaps methane or oxygen. It’s one of the instruments on the $8 billion telescope called the James Webb Telescope that will launch in the fall of 2018. They want to find earth 2.0.”

Personal Growth

When asked about vulnerabilities, Trottier says that he’s “more of a geek and not very people-oriented.” He’s also “very stubborn and dogmatic.” He says his attitude sometimes prevents him from appreciating public trends.

When his youngest daughter was studying environmental studies, for example, he was less than enthusiastic about the issue of climate change.

“I probably said some things about those protesters that I would be ashamed of now,” he says. “Skeptic is too strong a word, but I was not convinced that there was anything beyond showmanship.”

After his daughters convinced him to take a closer look at the science behind climate change, he brought eminent scientists from around the world for a public symposium on the issue in the autumn of 2005.

Climate Change

What he learned turned him into one of the top funders in the field with a $15 million grant to McGill in 2011 to create two climate change research institutes. The Trottier Institute for Sustainability in Engineering and Design promotes engineering, architecture and urban planning research. The Trottier Institute for Science and Public Policy, which is run by soil-expert Tim Moore, was set up to expand the contribution of science to human welfare.

“If it hadn’t been for my daughters, I might still be on the sidelines with the climate change issue,” says Trottier. “If you have an open mind, you can change it about anything.”

The experience also wanted him to help change other peoples’ minds about science. Since 2007, Trottier has funded annual public symposiums at McGill. Many are webcast and permanently available at https://www.mcgill.ca/science/outreach/webcasts/trottier-symposium.

Canadian

Trottier likes Canada’s modern attitude and its cultural duality.

“Canada is a modern country,” he says. “I like the fact that we have two basic cultures here.”

In his private life, Trottier says he’s still the same boy who began exploring technology through a ham radio set with a buddy. Only today, he’s fooling around with radio-controlled airplanes instead.

Please note that this conversation took place in 2017.

This episode of Unapologetically Canadian is brought to you by Thrive Themes.

The annual family ski event at Angrignon Park takes place on Saturday, February 9, 2019, from 11 a.m. until 4 p.m.

Roughly 200 skiers and snowshoers will explore about 10km of trails through Angrignon Park. If conditions are good, additional trails lead through the Douglas Research Centre, along the Aqueduct, and south to the St. Lawrence River waterfront.

Up to 30 sets of equipment in various adult and child sizes will be available. If you haven’t tried cross-country skiing before, plan to do so on that day. For more information about ski conditions and a trail map, refer to the ski in the great southwest website (which is in French).

Beverages and snacks will be on hand along with music, probably in Douglas Hall.

This latest version closely resembles the family event connecting Angrignon Park, the Douglas Hospital and the St. Lawrence Rapids that’s occurred annually since 2012 when the Friends of Angrignon Park began. The Friends used to organize the event in conjunction with the Douglas Research Institute and the Club Aquatique du Sud-Ouest (CASO).

Since then, Verdun, Lachine, LaSalle and the Southwest Borough partnered with Parks Canada and SOGEP to create similar events in all southwest Montreal parks.

This year, there will be animation ski introduction events in:

• the Des Rapids Park in LaSalle on Saturday, January 26,
• René Lévesque Park on Saturday, February 16, and
• Verdun’s Park Arthur Therrien on Saturday, February 23.

The activity is free.

Everyone should bring warm clothes, a bottle of water and a lunch to enjoy.

See you there!

As Breast Cancer month began, I spoke with MUHC Foundation President Julie Quenneville for my podcast. Our discussion can be heard here.

Most of our conversation covers the needs met by the annual Enchantée fundraiser for the MUHC Breast Clinic wellness program. This year’s event takes place next Thursday, October 18th, 2018 at the Le Mount Stephen from 6:00-8:00 p.m.

Tickets cost $200 each and can be purchased online.

The event is important enough for Montreal that I also prepared a story for the Suburban.

Julie and I are friends and members of the same club, so you’ll probably notice that some of my questions reflect a deep admiration of her work. Yet I’ve never before heard her talk about her Canadian identity and her work with the Banff Forum trying to figure out why kind of country we want to live in. Just goes to show you that podcasts can reveal fascinating facets of people.

Here’s the transcript of our conversation.

How does Enchantée fit in with all of the rest of the fundraising you do at the MUHC?

Julie Quenneville: [00:01:09] So we do a lot of fundraising that is globally for the priority needs of the MUHC. And we also do some very targeted fundraising that is for certain diseases departments and linked to of course the priority needs of those areas. So this event is particular to support the breast center and its own priorities. It’s a great opportunity to engage not only the staff, the physicians but also the patients and their families in a fundraising initiative. So when you’re very targeted, it allows them to feel like they’re giving back and really working towards a common goal.  It can be quite empowering for the patients.

How did it start?

[00:02:01] Well it was the committee that the three co-chairs actually sitting down with physicians and it started off with very specific needs. So not people in general but a need that is not being met in the community and that’s lymphedema. Have you ever heard of that?

[00:02:20] No.

Lymphedema

[00:02:22] Lymphedema is an absolutely terrible swelling basically of the arms and the legs that happens after surgery when you remove lymph nodes. It affects about 25 percent of breast cancer survivors who post-surgery will have this swelling. There is absolutely no cure for it and the only thing that we can do is to manage the disease through obviously early diagnosis always essential but also through physiotherapy. So you manipulate the affected areas and there are also some bandages. So the government recently decided to cover the bandages, at least a portion of the bandages that the patients need. But it’s still unfortunately not covering the actual physiotherapy that relieves the pain. And you can take a look on the internet what Lymphedema looks like. But it is life changing for the patients. Many of them don’t want to leave home anymore.

And so we actually have the Canadian lead physician who has been really leading the battle to get lymphedema care covered across the country. Her name is Dr. Anna Tower. And so it was in meetings obviously with Doctor Tower throughout the last couple of years, our foundation has always covered those services. I would say probably for the last decade. And in the breast center, we cover the services for our patients as well. And so anyone who is afflicted with this is at least will have access to care.

Now that’s not good enough. I think everyone else in the province should have access, but at least we’re doing our part in making sure that our patients are taken care of.

So the conversation started with lymphedema and saying to ourselves well with the patients how do we make sure that these services continue because they’re not covered by government and what else can we do to not only improve the survival rate but also improve their quality of life post-surgery and treatment?

[00:04:30] So I just looked at a picture of what lymphedema is. This is extreme. The picture I’m looking at looks extreme in various ways. One just makes it look kind of blotty and then right up to legs that are clearly five times bigger than what they were prior to the disease.

[00:04:59] For breast cancer patients, it would be mostly the arms, because it’s in the areas that you remove the lymph nodes, and in breast cancer that would be the arms. But it’s a high number 25 percent. In all the cancers, ovarian cancer and breast cancer, patients are the most affected by this.

[00:08:32] I can see why they don’t want to leave home. They’ve become a whole different person and they’ve already just gone through a very traumatic situation anyway because they’ve just survived breast cancer.

[00:08:40] Their quality of life is affected.

Co-chairs Cynthia Price Verreault, Jo Anne Kelly Rudy and Anna Capobianco-Skipworth

So we have three co-chairs.  So Cynthia Price and Jo Anne Rudy have been heavily involved in the Quebec Breast Cancer Foundation throughout probably the last 20 years and Anna is a breast cancer survivor. So you know they were personally touched by these issues.

So, on top of the lymphedema services, the funds raised from this event—this is the second annual event—are going to the wellness program.

Wellness Program Services

So that includes lymphedema but it also goes above and beyond. It includes:

• Resource guides to help patient education. It’s you know a very very stressful time to be diagnosed to go through the treatments. So we want to be able to help our patients and their families through that process.
• Preoperative kinesiology support sessions. So this is again we have proven through our research projects that providing kinesiology before surgery actually helps them recover afterwards. And we have a research project right now at the breast center that is actually verifying if physiotherapy before the surgery will reduce the risk of lymphodema for example. So we’re looking at all the preop care, which is so key. But again this is not something that is covered by our regular health care.
• Post-operative support services. Again from looking through what does that mean for patients? Well you know that’s the nutritionist and the psychosocial so all of those areas that really help the entire patient.

 

Now I noticed last year you raised 120,000 dollars.

Exactly. That was our first event.

Yeah and how many patients would that cover

I don’t know off the top of my head but we can certainly pull that number and get back to you.

Event Location

Okay perfect. And I noticed that this particular event is taking place at the Mount Stephen on October 18, which is a pretty good location. Was it there last year as well?

[00:10:31]It was there last year as well. They’ve been a very good partner. It’s a very nice place and as you know it’s important in these fundraising events to find something that is central and is a bit different from other events.

[00:10:39] So you had 200 guests last year. Do you know how many people are reserved so far this year?

[00:10:43] We’re still in the middle of the sale. So we’re still confident to be able to surpass last year.

Fundraising Partners

[00:10:50] I noticed that some of the other partners in this, in addition to the MUHC itself and McGill University, of course, include the Goodman Cancer Centre, the Genome Centre, and the Rossy Cancer Network. Can you tell me a little bit about what each of those groups does?

So this year we’ve added a partner foundation. We’re always striving to collaborate with others because that’s the best way to help our patients. So the Cedar’s Cancer Foundation, which is a foundation of the MUHC, has joined forces with us to make this event even more successful. The Cedar Cancer Foundation is heavily involved with the Rossy Cancer Network, which you know if you look back in past announcements, is funded obviously by the Rossy family and is a way to break down the silos between the MUHC, McGill, JJH and St. Mary’s for Cancer Care and all of the foundations related also contribute to the pot. Any time there is a funded project everyone is engaged and everyone contributes financially, including the Rossy Network.

[00:11:35] OK. So then you have a network of people who are already behind your project when it gets launched.

In all of cancer, because the patients flow through these various areas, you know we have incredible complementarity where we don’t duplicate the services. There are certain cancers which we are specialized in. Certain cancers will go to the Jewish. And of course, there are some cancers that go to St. Mary’s. So this way we make sure that the patients are always in the best place and are being treated by the best team possible for their cancer.

[00:11:59] Did you find last year that there were new partners this year because of the event last year?

[00:12:06] Well it allowed us to start a conversation. And that’s that’s the key right? Even though we’re not raising millions through a fund-raising event, it allows us to meet patients who are interested in giving back and interested in getting involved.  Absolutely there were many conversations that went in other directions and many many of the attendees became important donors as well to the program.

[00:12:27] Well and then what happens in your job I think we have got a higher level in your job you actually handle a heck of a lot of events. How do you handle it? I mean just give me a sort of an overview of a day in your life it can’t be easy because everything is so emotional. I mean you’re dealing with life and death.

Julie’s Mission

[00:12:40] It’s funny that you say that and you know everyone in the foundation all the staff are also patients. Our board of directors are also patients. Our physicians are so dedicated and so passionate about their work. So every meeting I go to everyone is striving to make things move and save more patients. So it is not a job, it’s more of a mission. And then when I come home and I wasn’t successful in bringing a gift, it is not… It really hits us emotionally because we want to be able to solve this problem. When you meet your first patient with lymphedema, for example, when you come home at night it’s hard to let that go. You just want to go back to work and try to find another solution try to find more money to be able to provide additional care.

So a day in my life is every day I meet physicians, nurses or patients who are looking to work together to find solutions. But it’s also empowering Tracey.

There’s always no one of the things I learned in being in health care for this long is that there’s always a way to make it work. If you get everybody around the table engaged in finding a solution, you do find a solution, and that’s empowering.

[00:13:43] Can you give me an example of something like that? Perhaps something not connected to this event. But in terms of something that looks like a very difficult situation that you were able to find a solution?

Centre for Innovative Medicine

[00:13:53] So we have a physician at the MUHC who is specialized in rare rare genetic diseases and because of his expertise, we get patients from all around the province. We’re also the only place one of the only places in the world to have a Centre for innovative medicine which is an area dedicated 100 percent to clinical trials.

So he had a patient at one point and there were quite a few publications around this case, who came from one of the regions of Quebec so out of the McGill Territory who was 32 years and who was in palliative care at the time and no physician he had seen was able to identify the source so they had to put him into palliative care. For a father, that’s difficult to swallow at 32 years old. It turns out what he had was basically thrush in his brain. It’s really hard to get rid of thrush. It turns out that through the work that our physician did, he mixed medication and eventually he found that a mixture of two medications for other diseases actually worked for this patient and he was sent home to be with his family. And this is a physician that we fund heavily because of course, this kind of research is so ultra=specialized that it takes a lot of tender loving care but it’s very encouraging because it reminds us that we are able to pull off miracles when we have dedicated people.

So is that patient is still alive. Has he become one of your donors?

I can’t tell you that, because obviously, that information is confidential.

[00:15:23] But he is certainly unbelievably grateful and I’m sure every time he tells his story about what happened to him and his family it is important for the hospital and also important for Montreal.

It is a very very very powerful story and it shows that if you keep working hard,  there are miracles. Not very many people think about a fundraiser as a miracle worker.

Making the Difference between Quality and Excellence

Well, we make the difference as a foundation we make the difference between quality and excellence. We fund innovation.

[00:16:04] There is no government budget to fund innovation. That is really the drive that the community has. There’s also no budget in the government for development of new equipment. So when there’s a piece of equipment a new piece of technology on the market, the foundations support that. The existing budget is really just for the replacement of the existing platform. So what we do is we make the difference between quality care and excellent care which is what we all want and what we should all demand.

[00:16:37] And well how much do you have specific about how much your foundation supports above and beyond the budget of the MUHC.

[00:16:50It’s important to note that we don’t fund items that are covered in the operating budget. We always cover what’s above and beyond. So just to make sure that we don’t confuse that. We raised last year 24 billion in revenue plus our investments. So that was a record-breaking year for us. That’s a 25 percent increase in revenue.

[00:17:17] Congratulations.

Thank you.

How long have you been there?

[00:17:24] It’ll be three years in October.

So that result is really in part due to your leadership. You can take credit for a lot of that.

Engaged Board Members

[00:17:34] Well, it is due to the team and the board. We have an absolutely exceptional board. You can take a look at the list online. In the last year alone, we have brought in a lot of really big important new names and a lot of Francophones as well, which is important to note. Many Francophone leaders are really supporting the MUHC and helping to raise funds and helping to engage the Francophone community. To give you an example, Michèle Boisvert, who is executive vice-president of the Caisse de Dépot has just joined. Marc Parent, who’s president of CAE also joined. So these are really important folks in the community.

It’s thanks to the entire team, the staff, the board and the physicians who are working with us that we were able to have that kind of success.

[00:18:29] Now donors are all patients.

Do you have a relationship with any of the francophone funders or foundations? Do you do any joint projects?

[00:18:50] So we’ve had a very long joint corporate campaign with the CHUM Foundation and this was to build the two new hospitals. It was a great success. We had a wonderful collaboration between the two foundations and the two institutions and we have you know we are preparing now for our next big fund-raising initiatives and some of them will be in collaboration not only with them but we hope with other hospitals across the province. The funding agents across the country for research are asking for it and the donors are asking for it as well that we work more and more together. So we plan to do that.

Fundraising Compared to Journalism

[00:19:32] OK. And now just on the personal side, you used to be a journalist and you’ve moved to a different world. What kind of, I assume that the adrenaline is similar, because you have so much emotion in your job, but it’s a different kind, other than talking to a journalist like me.

[00:19:56]  I’m going to speak very honestly to you. When I was a journalist because I’m an incredibly passionate person as you know. I found it very difficult to cover the story but not be involved in it. And what I find now is that I have an opportunity to actually have a direct impact on my community and it’s hands-on. And so it is very similar in terms of how you tell the story that has the impact, that you engage the community. But it’s just a different step in getting actively involved in mobilizing people to have an impact on the community.

[00:20:41] Well and it’s also similar in that you have to be a thoughtful and accurate spokesperson and willing to say I don’t know when you don’t know.

[00:20:54] Absolutely. And you know we’re striving to we’re striving to mobilize as many people as possible. If you think about it, we’re the second most important research hospital in the country right after UHM in Toronto. We have 700,000 patient visitors at the Glen alone, 500,000 of those adults. Those are big numbers. There are a lot of people who can work together and have a desire to work together to improve care for the community. So what our objective is simply to help them work together and help mobilize them.

[00:21:42] Yeah well I’m glad that you pointed that out to that. I think there’s a very important and to give an idea of the kind of scope of the projects you are working on. This is one event in a very large fundraising effort. It’s an important event because it’s a targeted event.

[00:22:03] Yes exactly. Absolutely. And in order to operate the entire initiative I’ve mentioned to you, we need about $300,000 dollars per year, which the foundation supports. So those are also big numbers.

[00:22:18] Wow. Yeah, that’s a big gap.

Do you consider yourself a Canadian? And if so what does that mean to you?

[00:22:39] I absolutely consider myself a Canadian—a Canadian first and a Quebecker and of course a Montrealer as well. And I think that that defines us. Canadians are very different and I think with what we’re seeing with our neighbours down south, it seems to from my perception have reaffirmed the differences between being Canadian and others around the world and we have a tendency towards being more diplomatic, more engaging and collaborative and those are things that I strive to do every day at work and at home with my personal life.

I also sit on the board of directors with a really important group called the Banff Forum where we strive to find solutions to break down those barriers across the country from east to west. We’re meeting next week and this is part of on my personal time one of the areas that I find most important and I hope to be able to contribute.

The Banff Forum

[00:24:03] Oh can you talk a little bit about the Banff Forum?

[00:24:12] Well the Banff Forum is an organization that was created by a small group of Canadians after the referendum in 95. The idea behind it was really to engage Canadians across the country to break down those barriers and have everybody working together. There’s a lack of communication in the past so that was really important to get people around the country. It’s really targeted at younger Canadians. It was founded officially in 2002.

We should be defining what kind of country we want to live in in the next 20, 30 years. So it’s a group of very very passionate young Canadians.

Although I’m not so young, they are very young and very engaged. We meet officially for a conference once a year, but we have many chapter provincial meetings as well and seminars. We talk about the environment and indigenous issues. We talk about politics. Many politicians from every party come and speak with us as well to be able to have that diversity of conversation. We talk about culture. And it’s really about building that curiosity and seeking solutions and all of the members who—we are very careful to welcome the members that represent different diversity of different age groups and different cultural backgrounds and make sure that these are all individuals that are also incredibly engaged in their communities and so they bring back this information and knowledge to their own work into their networks.

And so the meeting next week is actually in Yellowknife. We’re going to Inuvik first and then in Yellowknife. We’ll be visiting from villages communities and we’ll be hearing from them are their challenges and seeing it for ourselves. I’m hoping to have some time to go visit some of the clinics that are there as well. And somehow, of course, it’s impossible not to have an impact on perception.

[00:26:40] We’re all very anxious to hear from them Yeah exactly. Well, will you have any presentations about your experience in the future?

None are planned.

[00:26:53] This is a closed group because we want to make sure that everyone can speak very openly. But of course, you know you cannot leave such an event without changing as a person in your own perception changes. So I’d be happy to speak with you afterwards if you’d like.

[00:27:14] That would be wonderful thank you very much.

Meeting Sherry Simon

McGill’s Centre for Interdisciplinary Research on Montreal began 2018 with a bilingual lunchtime discussion about power struggles in multilingual cities.

Journalists, translators and writers packed the room. Among them were students and professors from the universities of Concordia, McGill, UQAM and Sherbrooke. Late-comers pulled up chairs in the hallway.

We all came to hear keynote speaker Sherry Simon, a woman long known for challenging community identity.

Simon simultaneously lives within multiple communities based on gender identity, religious upbringing and personal conviction. She works in French at Concordia, an English University. She grew up in an Anglophone family, yet argues strenuously in favour of a French-first Montreal.

Speaking Memory

The presentation stemmed from a controversial book Simon edited called “Speaking Memory: How Translation Shapes City Life.”

Simon began her talk by describing how much the book carries her sentiments even though others wrote most of it.

Even though this book is a collective, it is a result of my obsession with Montreal and with Montreal-like cities which I’ve studied over the last ten or more years,” said Simon. “It all started in the early 1990s in my neighbourhood, which is Mile-End, when I became aware that the day-to-day life in my neighbourhood, the way languages were handled, the way people thought, the way identities were construed were diametrically opposed to what I was hearing on the radio and what I was reading in the newspapers. That was a shock.”

Pivot from Literature to Social Studies

The resulting shock combined with reflections about her neighbourhood to inspire Simon to pivot her research away from Quebecois literature. She began studying language and translation as a conduit for exploring the social and cultural history of Montreal instead.

Eventually, her work took her going Montreal’s borders to examine similar multilingual cities around the world, such as Barcelona.

As she studies different places, her analysis reflects a deep understanding of how it feels to have basic assumptions about identity questioned. She says her background growing up in a minority culture enables her to see patterns others miss.

Watching English Lose Status in Montreal

I remember that very existential sense that I had as a kid, when I took the bus across town and felt unwelcome,” she said. “When I grew up, Anglophones thought we were the dominant culture in the city. Then we found out it wasn’t true.”

That shift [in dominance from English to French] happened between the 60s and the 80s. I think that shift is so foundational for me that it allows me to understand so many other contexts around the world where those kinds of shifts happen, where communities re-examine their relationships to their cities, to their countries. If you look at the situation in Catalonia today, for example, that’s what that’s about. The shift in power about who thinks they’re up and who thinks they’re down. How do the languages realign themselves?”

Publishing History

Simon’s history questioning how languages realign links the many facets of her career.  As a result, she has books in multiple disciplines.

Her study of Quebec literature led her to publish two books about the subject in 1989 and 1994.

Then she studied feminist writings and presented her research in a book called “Gender in Translation” two years later.

Then she turned her eye towards the history of cities. Two additional books followed. She published Translating Montreal: Episodes in the Life of a Divided City in 2006. In 2011, she came out with Cities in Translation, in which she examines language patterns in cities around the world.

Translating Montreal

Simon says that Translating Montreal is her favourite work so far.

I think that the fact that this work was grounded in my personal experience of living between languages,” she said. Exploiting the potential discomfort of such a situation made it more of an organic quest. All these issues are things that I feel personally. As a citizen of a city like Montreal, we are always aware of the uncertainties of our situation. What some people see as a disadvantage I turned into an advantage.”

Living Between Communities

A lifetime of living between communities and her desire to shed identities has given Simon a cross-cultural existence.

To be a Montrealer means I have some affiliation to the historic Anglo community, even though for a very long time I wanted to give up my membership in that community. I felt more drawn to a Francophone identity. I wanted to be part of that identity. I’m also Jewish. So those three identities are important to me in various ways at various times and with various intensities.”

I found myself fascinated as she described the positive impacts of Montreal’s fundamental shit from English to French between 1940 and 1980.

People don’t realize that what was happening on the French side of town was exciting to a whole group of Anglos at the time,” said Simon. “My favourite character of that time was Malcolm Reid, a journalist in the 70’s who wrote about Francophone Montreal. He wrote this wonderful book about the Shouting Sign Painters. It’s a fabulous book about how the poets and songwriters were transferring the identity of the city and how exciting that was for English Montrealers to watch.”

Three Identities

Integrating her multiple identities has led Simon to approach research with a perspective that opens up unusual insights. She has closely examined Yiddish, French and English literary movements in Montreal during the early 1940s, for instance. That study made her realize that assumptions about Montreal as a land of two-solitudes is not correct.

Her work landed her the André-Laurendeau prize for the promotion of Québecois literature and culture in 2010.

I highly recommend watching Simon’s bilingual acceptance speech called “The Flow of Languages, the Grace of Cultures.”

Simon plans to continue investigating language’s influence on identity. Her next book will focus on polyglot places around the globe.