Time flies / Le temps passe vite

The way spring bursts forth here, it doesn’t take long for bicycles to be overgrown (a surprisingly common sight in my neighbourhood). Photo: Patricia Maunder

The older I get, the more time seems to fly, but never more so since I moved to Montreal. It’s partly because activities are so seasonal here – much more than in Australia where, even in the south where we actually get something approximating winter, you can pretty much do whatever you want, when you want. Except winter sports. For that you need to make a determined dash for the mountains in July and hope for a centimetre of snow.

In Montreal, if you want to do winter sports it’s basically December to February for almost-guaranteed snow and outdoor ice (though last winter it was considerably longer that that – except the very weekend some friends visited from Philadelphia for a taste of real winter, and we had a ‘warm’ spell with no snow!). If you want to sip tropical cocktails outdoors in your summer togs, make the most of those warm, humid spells, generally in July and August. Autumn colour comes and goes in a few weeks, while spring’s big burst is a two-week wonder.

I think that strong sense of seasonally organising one’s activities (including spring cleaning, which actually makes sense here) is ingrained into the Québec psyche. I have gradually caught on, but lately I’ve had a real sense of urgency now I’ve decided to call time on my Canadian adventure in a couple of years. So that means I have two more autumns, winters and springs, and maybe 1½ summers …

I’m starting to feel the wrench of parting already. Last weekend I had a blast with my Montreal summer tradition of the Lachine Rapids jetboat ride (I still rate this the best summertime fun in Montreal!). Afterwards I felt a little sad that next summer’s jetboat ride will likely be my last. One more Just for Laughs comedy festival. One, or maybe two more Montreal International Jazz Festivals and international fireworks competitions. I’m working on a Thanksgiving long weekend that will immerse me in a sea of brilliant autumn colour for the second-last time. There’s winter fun I want to try again at least once more, such as snowmobiling and an outdoor hot spa, and there’s only two more white Christmases …

I’ll miss Montreal’s winters – including chilling vodka in the garden! Photo: Patricia Maunder

I’ll be back for holidays whenever I can, timed to coincide with some of those favourite Montreal experiences, but visits will inevitably be years apart and relatively short. It just won’t be the same, so there is a sense of compressed time, of finality, to so much that I do here now.

Of course the worst thing about leaving will be parting from friends, knowing I probably won’t see them again for a few years at least. At the same time I’m really missing friends back in Australia, and all the things I love about life in Melbourne. It’s tough to say to people back home, I’ll be there soon, I’ll be back in two years, when I’ve already been gone for two … but time really does fly, and I really will be there soon.

Some other thoughts on time here in Montreal:

• The big summer holidays have a clear starting point in Australia: Christmas Day. Here it just kind of happens sometime in July. I only notice because CBC Radio starts using temporary hosts and run more repeats, and everyone in Montreal seems hell-bent on getting away somewhere.
• The difference in hours of daylight between summer and winter is huge: the sun sets around 9pm (daylight saving time) on 21 June, and around 4pm on 21 December. It’s not nearly so drastic in Melbourne, whose latitude is almost eight degrees lower than Montreal’s (most of the rest of Australia has even lower latitudes, so little or no variation in daylight hours). Further north of Montreal, the difference between summer and winter solstice is even more extreme.
• Growing up in Australia, exposed to lots of northern hemisphere culture, but living in a southern hemisphere reality, my head was completely around the fact that the seasons are reversed. It’s funny how people in the northern hemisphere often have to think for a second or two about how Christmas is in summer Downunder, and July is mid-winter. But after two years my seasonal bilingualism has diminished. I realised this recently when someone was telling me about an outdoor activity in February in a southern hemisphere country, and for a second I thought it was weird this would be happening in winter.

No matter how long or short the days, whatever the season, whatever special thing I’m doing or friend I’m with here in Québec, my sense of time being precious gets more and more acute. How fitting, with the untimely passing of Robin Williams a couple of days ago, to recall that powerful phrase from Dead Poets Society: carpe diem.