Moose Schmoose

So I’m in the airport, my multiple bags are on their way to the airplane (the extra weight waived through thanks to the nice lady), sipping on a rather expensive beer while still trying to come to terms with leaving. In classic Elspeth style I am unable to cry at things that are actually sad, apparently saving my tears for trivial things like uncontrollable laughing fits and physio appointments and not understanding card games. The fact that my corona cost 70 cents less than normal because I didn’t have the change is a good feeling, I probably looked desperate.

Let’s start with April. Ahhh April, a whirlwind of exams, finishing my project, planning for fieldwork, packing up, moving out, sorting out modules for next year, hanging out with friends, and not much sleep. The sun arrived but the huge pile of snow on campus refused to melt for at least two weeks, partly because the +20 temperatures rapidly dropped to a nifty 10 degrees Celsius as I continued to wear my English-winter-coat as a Canada-spring-coat. With the end of the semester, my belongings and everything I have accumulated throughout the year deposited with various accommodating friends around Montreal, off I trotted to BC…

Four of us and Rosie the truck drove for 6 days across 3 time zones, winding through the boreal forest of Quebec and Ontario, across the prairies of Manitoba and Saskatchewan where the sky was enormous and constantly changing, up through the Rockies of British Columbia, over the Georgia strait, and up to the logging towns of Campbell River and Port McNeill on Vancouver Island. It was stunning, but alas, we saw not a single moose. NOT ONE. I came the conclusion that Canadians have eaten them all, and actually it’s all a ruse to bring in tourists. We did see caribou, golden eagles, bald-headed eagles, various deer, mountain goats, and many brown bears though. Although the bear spray I carried with me religiously was never needed, I did merrily talk to myself when I went for runs just in case one got fresh. Or angry. Either one.

 Fieldwork was hard work. I have beefed up for sure. It involved pulling up on the side of the highway (or tentatively using the logging roads avoiding the terrifying logging trucks by trying to understand the island accent through the radio), crashing through almost impenetrable forest while wearing waders and carrying minnow traps and other gear, leaping gracefully between swampy parts of streams to throw the traps in before leaping back to retrieve them later and carrying any stickleback back to the makeshift processing station under a tarpaulin to take photos of them and make fish babies/caviar. Naturally the graceful part was not my forte, and after falling in a few times we invested in some life jackets. I also arranged a code word for “I’m drowning please come help me” as opposed to the familiar splash and cackling laughter after falling in the water, down a hole, or getting stuck in the swamp, which was always hilarious and so difficult to know when it was real. It really made me appreciate how much effort one data point takes, especially since my project used some of the photos the previous year’s fieldwork team took (which was pretty much my life for much of January and February).

I returned to Montreal pretty bruised and bitten, rather disorientated, and very grubby, yet was welcomed with a cup of tea, catch ups, a shower, and a bed. I spent an enjoyable day running errands in the sun wearing the same dress that I wore for my first day in Montreal, running the same errands in the opposite direction. With everything sorted I spent my last night in the city watching the sun set from my favourite roof, going to a gig, trying to find fries, finding fries, trying to find friends, and finding friends. I had a lovely last day. So much love.

I also returned to the 40^th night of thousands of Montrealers communally banging saucepans in defiance of the new Bill 78. My time here started with the support workers of McGill striking (which lasted all semester and my labs were ‘interesting’ without the lab technicians) and continued throughout my stay. To cut a very long story very short, students from CEGEP (equivalent to Year 13) and universities across Quebec have been protesting the planned rise in tuition fees by street marches, boycotting school and picketing classes since September, but have upped the ante this past semester. After the annual Anti Police Brutality March became unnecessarily violent as usual (ironic much!?? I narrowly avoided being kettled in), the student protests also seemed to turn sour (or the police reacted more strongly perhaps?). Talks between the student unions and the government remain at a standstill. However, in attempting to curb the protests the Quebec government quickly passed a bill stating that gatherings of more than 50 (I think) people counted as a protests and can therefore be arrested or heavily fined, along with anyone wearing masks, and also that the police should be informed of the route of any protests. The initial outrage resulted in the police phonelines jamming because everyone rang them to tell them their individual route from home to join the protest, a genius way of mocking the bill. Despite this, the law hasn’t budged, and every night at 8pm people take to the streets to make an awful lot of noise in the name of freedom of speech. People who didn’t support the students striking (a few reasons being that the Quebec student fees are the lowest in Canada, are much lower than England, and tuition freezes applied to universities elsewhere in Canada are quickly seeing dilapidated and unsafe buildings…the money must come from somewhere, jus’ sayin’) are in full support of contending this bill 78, deemed officially horrific by top judges in North America. Well that story wasn’t quite as short as I thought, and quite possibly a bit wrong, but I do think it is valuable to put such issues in perspective.

As ever, it will take some time to adjust to my homeland. I will miss the bilingual surroundings, the switching languages mid-conversation, and the funny anglaisms mixed into Quebecois French. I will not miss the accent. I will miss the people – Canadians, especially the islanders on Vancouver Island, really are the friendliest people I have ever met. And I will miss being a foreigner, I had forgotten how much freer I feel when completely lost and constantly appreciating how different people can be.

Some time later…

I have arrived in England! Hurrah for roundabouts and fifty pence pieces. I am looking forward to visits and trips, and am also already planning a return trip to the Americas. I am also SUPER LOOKING FORWARD to seeing my wonderful family and friends on this side of the pond. I hope they can help me learn to say trousers and trainers again rather than pants and sneakers. Tomato tomato.

Bises in the general direction of you wonderful people on both sides of the Atlantic. Do do do come visit J 

Jolly January, Fishy February, and Marching through March

Spring is almost here! Look! Greeeeeeen!

This is greatly exciting. Yesterday we went to Mont Saint-Hilaire for a field trip to measure (hug) trees and snowshoe around in the forest. As much as I love Montreal, it was once again lovely to get out of the city and get a gurt bit o' nature in me soul.

January flew by in a still-recovering-from-fall-semester-and-Christmas way, starting with a wonderfully relaxing time in Toronto with Alanna and her delightful family. I taught them racing demons - a dramatic, quakerly-competitive card game with silly additions that is always played when my fam get together - so it definitely felt like a family holiday to me. They taught me an equally silly game which I impolitely and accidentally won, but I paid them back with flapjack, which here means pancake, as in american pancake not a crepe pancake, and which they call oatmeal, but it's oh so much more than just oatmeal....The conclusion was that they must come visit England, and test out their impressive cockney accents on real live Londoners. I also popped over to Niagara Falls (very impressive but also insanely cold) and experienced Igloo Fest. It's an outdoor club in Montreal for 4 weekends in January, which we passed on the night that was -34 degrees in favour of a tropical temperature of -8 degrees the following weekend. Drinks served are mulled wine and hot chocolate with unidentifiable alcohol, and, as ever, dance to get warm. Freakin awesome.

February flew by, or should I say 'swam by' *snort laughs*, in a flurry of fish as my research project got underway. Photos of stickleback followed me everywhere: I felt awkward if I ate tuna in front of them. But now the data is collected and collated and cleaned nicely, ready to put it into some sort of legible scientificness, very exciting. Midterms also came and went within 4 days which, while technically wasn't the most fun I've ever had, did involve long hours in library with fellow biologists, and I bagged me some brand new shiny friends. It's all about bonding over the characteristics of cnidarians and calculating entropy values.

And in between all that, I went to Arizona! I cannot express the pleasure of stepping outside wearing but one layer of clothing after so many weeks of double layers of socks and leggings and various scalp-warming accessories. Alanna and I stayed with her incredibly welcoming and generous grandparents (yes I think this post should be dedicated to Alanna and her incredible family!) for a week of sun, eating, museuming, safari-park visiting, sun, shopping, eating, wandering, sun, swimming, eating, sun, and appreciating the incredible views. I had never before seen surroundings like that: rust coloured mountains against the bright cloudless sky, with cacti three times the height of me piercing the desert. Sunset turned the mountains pink and the sky truly purple. Boulders perched precariously on top of one another, so you are almost convinced they will crash down as you drive underneath them, even though they have presumably been there since the glacial retreat around 18 million years ago. I was, if you can believe it, rendered speechless by the beauty, which is in no way reflected in the following photographs.

Arizona science centre is possible the best one I have ever been to, with more hands on stuff than @Bristol, video clips of brain surgery, and a multi sensory stage mimicking extreme weather including rain, earthquake trembles, wind, and heat lamps. At the safari I saw a large portion of a horse being thrown to a resuscitated lion, and two tigers playing with three humans as a house moggie would. A super musical instrument centre where you can listen to clips of music and see instruments from all over the world could have kept me entertained for hours, if we didn't also want to go home and whip up some macarons. And an incredible Van Gogh exhibition (look out for it because it is travelling everywhere) portrayed in a truly original and stimulating way. Nevertheless, the roads rarely smaller than 5 lanes wide, the enormous distances between anywhere meaning that it really is necessary to drive everywhere, and the huge amount of polystyrene still used where, it seems, most other places use cardboard to attempt to save the planet a wee bit, means that the US of A continues to boggle me. I returned slightly less pale, with my mind blown from the kindness, culture and a lot of fun.

I have been wanting to share my thoughts on differences in education systems, but that will have to wait for another time. It is a beautiful day out, and I must go run around. It seems like the an-awful-lot-below-freezing temperatures of January are behind us, and we are up into the positive temperatures. This has supposedly been the mildest Canadian winter for many years, although it still seemed pretty cold to me. You can tell I'm foreign because I still wear my snowboots and fat coat when it is above -5.

Huge love, hope all is fun wherever you are and whatever you're up to. Bisous.