On the way out to Montreal, via Vancouver, we spent a couple of days in 100 Mile, mostly hanging out with the Pettman clan, Axel, and Chuck. It was like a meeting of all the annoying people from the comments section, except Dasha. Not surprisingly, toilet humour ensued. Surprisingly, Roxanne was a main contributor. To paraphrase Mikara: “we never knew she had such a potty mouth.” Ava, Kryce & Mikara’s 9-month old girl, was deathly afraid of me, probably because of my beard. Her lip would quiver anytime I came within 3 feet of her, and then she would cry. Now, I’ve never been one to quit something just because it made small children cry—much to the detriment of my career as a birthday party clown—so I persisted in trying to make friends with her. Happily, after 2 days of facial contortions and spastic arm waving, she overcame her pre-toddler bitterness and warmed up to me. The proof of this is that she fell asleep for about 20 minutes while I was holding her. Chalk one up for silliness.

The first few days in Montreal we mostly just hung out and did city things, like going to museums and watching racoons scamper down the sidewalk. Well, that second one isn’t really a city thing, but it did happen. The Brian Jungen exhibit at the Musée d’Art Contemporain was definitely the highlight for me. I also saw some Jeff Wall photos at a few different places, always good. Also, Montreal has seriously good food, especially this one Lebanese place we went to. I’ve officially converted to being pro-falafel.

July 28th marked 1 year that Roxanne and I have been together. It was nice to be in a romantic city for that (I need all the help I can get). It seems like it has been longer than 1 year, in a good way. This is probably because it has been the best and most transformative year of my life, unless you count the year between birth and the age of one, which saw not only the greatest growth in my maturity, but also the peak of my maturity. Seriously though, this is a good thing. Thanks Roxanne.

A few nights before the wedding I went go-carting—or, as it’s called in Quebec: “le petit auto de vroom.” For various reasons a full-scale bachelor party was not in order, so a trip to the bar, and then the go-cart track (not in that order, unfortunately) was the substitute. Go-carting is ridiculously fun. They closed the track for the 11 of us, and there was even a qualification round for pole position. More important than winning, of course, was causing other people to lose. Despite the fact that it was made abundantly clear that all contact was illegal, there were many, many crashes. At the end of the race a statistical printout was provided, which showed that most of the cars reached speeds near or above 39 mph. That’s pretty fast when you are 1 inch off the ground. I was involved in 3 crashes, none of which were my fault, naturally. One sent me through a tire wall, but the best came at the end of a straightaway, when I turned a corner and promptly smacked into a 4-car pileup at 30 mph. An appropriate amount of semi-santioned violence is sometimes a healthy thing.

Laws related to the sale of alcohol are a bit more lax in Quebec, and by “a bit more lax” I mean you can buy a 1.18L bottle of 10% alcohol beer at any corner store for $4.40. Naturally, that was exactly what we did, mostly for the novelty. It had a bad fruity taste to it, so it was a good thing I didn’t have to drink a whole bottle myself. Roxanne, Kelly’s friend Chantal, and Kelly’s boyfriend were accomplices (Kelly was at the wedding rehearsal). Chantal is really cool. She is the brains behind/co-owner of a gelato shop, lives in an apartment with a severely warped strairway, and is a culinary genius in general. All of that is in addition to being the evil half of a set of twins. Kelly’s new beau is alright too. He beat us at every card/board game we played while we were staying at my dad’s cottage on Brome Lake, and, of course, proficiency at boardgames is all that really matters. Also, the previous week, he accepted a $400 bet from his tree-planting foreman to drink the sweat out of the socks of all 12 people on his crew. I managed to get 4 of those dollars, in pennies, out of him by betting him that I could hold my breath across the Champlain Bridge, which is about Second Narrows-length. It took 1:55, and several million brain cells, but I’ll do anything for $4 in pennies. Anything.

Here are some more pictures
And here are some more more pictures