Montreal Biodôme, priestcraft, smoked meat, and living your religion

Montreal is a cool city! And we liked visiting it. But…it also just made us so happy that we lived in Quebec City instead. In our humble opinion, Quebec City is way more beautiful, way less congested, and just more charming in every way. Quebec City feels so much more foreign and European, too. In Montreal, everyone speaks English! Lots of people know English in Quebec, but they start in French and usually let you persist in French, if you want to. But I don't think anyone spoke French to me in Montreal at all! When we left Montreal we were so happy to get back "home" to Quebec!

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The temple, L’Oratoire Saint-Joseph, and Mont-Royal

Once we realized how bad traffic always was in Montreal, we weren't eager to go into the city too much, but of course we had to drop Malachi off at the airport and pick him up, and we had three temple trips scheduled, so we actually saw quite a bit of the island. 

The temple (in Longueuil, on the far bank of the river) was a highlight, of course! It is tiny—maybe smaller than the stake center that shares its parking lot! But it's beautiful. We loved being there. We had missed it! They had an interesting way of choosing the language of the session—the temple president would just stand at the front of the room and ask for a show of hands whether people wanted French or English! I loved doing it in French when we went in September. It was the perfect situation for understanding—hearing words I am very familiar with in English, accompanied by clear French speech and French subtitles! I understood every word! But strangely enough, both of these later sessions ended up being in English. There are many English speakers in Montreal! I think there are two whole English wards there. It seemed both of the sessions we attended on this trip were split about 50/50 between French and English speakers, so I don't really know how the temple president decided which to do!

The temple is only open Wednesday evening through Saturday, and Malachi left for Utah on Wednesday afternoon, so sadly he didn't get to do baptisms, but Daisy and Junie went with Sam and had a great time. The younger kids and I went to the store and then just played and walked in the (very small) temple grounds. It was such a warm night, we didn't even need coats!

While we walked around I talked to Malachi on the phone. He was in the Detroit airport and had had his wallet stolen!! But it turned out okay. The thief (a cleaning guy in the airport) took a pouch of all Malachi's stuff (passport! Driver's license! Debit card!) while Ky was working on the other side of a table, and Malachi noticed soon afterwards that it was gone and went running after the guy, who he'd seen cleaning there! The guy of course acted innocent and told Malachi he'd already turned the pouch in to his supervisor, but when Malachi tracked it down, his cash and airpods were gone. He filed a police report there at the airport, but without much hope of ever getting anything back. He was so grateful at least to have his passport back so he could fly home!

So that was an adventure.

Sam and I did a temple session the next day while the kids played at a nearby park. Another nice day, happily! The kids found a dead mouse but otherwise had an uneventful time.

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Saint-Calixte and the Lake House

Before we ever left for Quebec, Malachi decided that he wanted to go home to Utah halfway through, to go to a debate tournament. He was talking about driving (what??? as if we would have let him drive alone across the entire country…in our car) and when I said no way to that, said he would buy his own plane ticket. Well. Sam and I finally agreed since it was his own money. And when he found a pretty good deal to Salt Lake from the Montreal Airport (about a three hour drive from Quebec City), we decided we would go down and stay in Montreal surrounding the days Malachi would be gone, so we could take him to the airport and pick him up without making the whole trip twice.

We wanted to visit Montreal at some point anyway, so it was a good excuse to do it! We found a house in Saint-Calixte, about forty minutes from Montreal (which sounds like it wasn't such a great efficiency after all, but it was forty minutes out in a different direction, not towards Quebec City, and everywhere is far from the actual city of Montreal because traffic is so bad!). After we had booked the rental house, I realized that Saint-Calixte is very near to Sainte-Julienne, where we stayed with the older boys (and baby Teddy!) years ago when Sam did a workshop at the Schoolism House! So that was a fun coincidence. We never got into Montreal proper on that trip at all, but we remember the countryside as being so beautiful and were excited to see it again!

The house we ended up staying at was so cool. It was on the tiniest little island, just big enough for the house and a little yard. You drove in on a small driveway and then were completely surrounded by water! It was beautiful! There were some boats we could use, and I wasn't sure how much we would get to use them, but the kids ended up loving them and getting pretty good with them, so they spent hours rowing around the little lake! So fun. 

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