Sunbird

Week 27, 2026: Je me souviens

I’m not built for this heat.

As much time is spent wiping sweat off my forehead and thinking about money and Maggie Rogers as is spent roaming the small flat of navy and grey and black and wondering if now is a good time to turn on the air conditioner. How’s that for a sentence? That’s what it felt like, the heat. It went on and on and on.

I had a few days off in the latter part of the week, so I spent the other part planning a trip to Montreal, Quebec. An uncomfortably large number of tabs in my window later, I know the plan like the back of my hand. I know it so well, all the dates and times and costs, that I book everything while sipping an iced latte in a cafe. I book it on my phone, jump off the stool, wave bye to the very nice barista and head home.

While watching my coffee come to a boil in my kitchen earlier that day, I relayed the plan to my father over the phone:

I took the day easy before the bus, lounging with Norm’s memoir and enjoying the cheers for Canada Day from my neighbours. I tried not to be grumpy about some files I’d lost. It’s been a while since I saw a screen flash in a weird unexpected way and realized I’d just lost a small digitized part of me forever. Book highlights I’d made on my e-reader over the years, gone just like that. They don’t tell you about this when they ask if you’re sure you want to Force Eject, I texted one of my computer friends. They do, actually, he replied. Well, fuck me, maybe I should start reading the fine print. I guess I’ll just riff in the book club.

It reminded me of something we'd say back home whenever someone got physically injured: better a broken bone than a dead body. It's related to this inherent belief that the evil eye is real and the harm was inveitable. The harm was going to catch up to you regardless and it's actually a gift that it was recoverable.

Of course, in my case, I just need to learn to be more patient and pay pop-up messages on the computer a little more respect. But what if this was a gift too?

Take the late-night bus on Canada Day

An orange sherbet and Jason Reitman’s Saturday Night fix me right up for my trip. Easy breezy. Good seat on the bus. I wake up at 6am to an announcement that the bus stopped working and we're stranded somewhere. I put my sleep mask back on and hug my backpack a little tighter. No need for panic, this is a first-world country.

Spend just over exactly forty hours in Montreal, Quebec

Hotel: 40 hours left

The walk to the hotel is short. I take in as much city as I can. The cars don’t have licenses on the front and there's a Leonard Cohen mural within sight of the local Hooters. Every province here has a unique motto. In Quebec, it's: Je me souviens. I remember. Montreal is beautiful. It reminds me of that country.

The hotel had said that check-in is at 4pm but I go up and say what if it’s eight hours earlier and they don’t mind. They tell me I can still catch the breakfast buffet. Excellent. I check into my room and catch a glimpse of what I look like after a seven-hour bus ride. This will have to do, just like the breakfast.

An old Quebecer couple sit at my table and the three of us eat in silence. I watch the woman’s eyes wander to the empty seat across from me. The coffee is not so bad. I’m still surprised by how monolingual the city is sounding at this point. I wait for the ascenseur with my second cup for a good two minutes before I make for the staircase and up the seven floors.

In the bath, I try to remember if I’d ever had a hotel room to myself in a new city. I know this is unfamiliar because I’m taking up much more space than I ever do when traveling. I like trying on different people in hotels. The big mirrors and small towels make me feel like someone else, it's certain to happen. Someone who uses coffee pods and is lulled to sleep by the French clock radio. Someone who perches up on the foot stool and sleeps with wet hair.

I can’t stay in this hotel room forever, I decide, so I leave to walk around the areas I’ve been told are nice places to walk. I wanted to move here initially. I’m where I need to be right now but I wonder again and again if this place could ever be home. It really does resemble that country. What was it called? Oh yes: western Europe! I buy an egg sandwich and eat it in front of the AC in my hotel room.

Adam: 32 hours left

We meet up in front of a bus station. So many of the steps I walked that day were with him. I can’t remember the names of the parks and places he walked us through, only that he thought they were important and I thought they were beautiful. At the ice-cream shop where he knows the owner, I pick the key lime pie sundae because it's the only one written in English. I don’t like its taste but I don't let that show. I point out how strange it is that the signs here are monolingual and he says that the signs in Toronto are monolingual too, which is a really good counterpoint because I have nothing to say to that.

I'm so dehydrated that afternoon and find it hard to talk at times. In the metro, he asks if I want to do anything before we check out Jazz Fest.

Drink water. What about you?

He says we could cool off in my pool.

Pool: 28 hours left

I had been waiting to see when he was going to suggest that, so I had to hide my smile when he answered, which was harder than usual because I was dehydrated. I managed to do a good job until I asked if he was dressed for swimming. He said he could swim in his shorts and he had an extra pair of trousers to change into afterwards. He carried those trousers in case he ever started to get a sunburn. I laughed.

That’s funny to you?

Yes, it’s very funny to have a contingency plan for the sun.

We swam for hours and hours, or what felt like hours and hours.

As we're drying off, I can't help it. I knew you were going to suggest the pool.

He looks up, surprised. I hoped you were going to be the one to bring it up.

No, I needed to see if you were going to do it or not. I knew you wanted to swim but I didn’t know if you were going to ask or how long it was going to take you to do it if you did.

Well, he stretches. I’m glad I brought it up

Me too. The thunder and rain outside the windows are getting comically louder. The festival is no longer in question. I’m also glad I’m already inside the building where I’ll be sleeping.

Thanks for rubbing it in. There's a pause that makes me wonder if I'd just invited a question. Do you have an umbrella?

I have a broken one back in Toronto.

He gives me a look. Thanks for that.

It’s fascinating getting acquainted with a friend’s sibling like this. Some of his turns of phrase are just like James’s, and they practically share the same voice. I told him that James was kind of my mentor for a while, that I respect his outlook on life. He was always cordial with me and paid much attention to what I had to say.

Caffeine: 17 hours left

It's not my intention to stay in the hotel until check-out time but by the time I drink the Ultra Monster in my fridge and then use all three of the coffee pods in my room, I need to go back inside the covers because I'm left a little shaky. I relay this to Adam a few hours later over my fourth coffee, an iced tahini latte that he wants me to try. He says he now understands why I abstain from liquor.

I’d also gone out for a classic bagel earlier that day. Stood in a too-sunny queue for a bagel as I listened to a tour guide explain to a group behind me how this Jewish neighbourhood came to be. That was the most touristy thing I did. The bagel was good. Generous filling. They served it with pickles and cantaloupe, which I enjoyed.

We watch the football game at a pub full of Australians and Egyptians, all green and red. I smile at faces that resemble my father’s, cheering and wincing with them. It ends at a tie, which means they have to play another two quarters so someone can win but I can feel that Adam thinks it's time to leave, so we leave. I check the final score from the supermarkets as he shops for dinner. Egypt won.

Flat: 6 hours left

I ask if I can inspect the bookshelf and he says I'm welcome to but that none of it is his, it's all his landlord’s. The longer I study the living room, the more instruments I find tucked neatly in some place or another. The drums and the electric guitar are easy enough to spot but more and more ukuleles keep coming into view. I go back to the small rocking chair and rock back and forth, sipping water and asking about his family as he chops things.

He’s good in the kitchen. He makes a salmon thing and a beetroot thing and I eat every spoonful and drink lots of water. After some more casual flat-inspecting, this time from the rocking chair, I start to form some assumptions. I ask if his landlord is political. Not long after, the landlord’s girlfriend and her sister join us. The younger of the two, the sister, takes an interest in me. She tells Adam that his presence is making it hard for us to flirt and neither Adam nor I know how to react to that sentence.

Whose copy of the New York Times is this? I can’t imagine anyone here reading the NYT. The landlord’s, says Adam. This doesn’t add up to the picture I formed of the guy. Maybe I have him all wrong. He uses it for the dog’s shit, Adam adds matter-of-factly. I smile. That's more like it.

After some more chatting and some more rocking on the small rocking chair, the flat fills up a little more. In comes the landlord with his cousin and his husky. The ages of the people in the room seem to range from not-old-enough-to-drink to forty. I don’t know how old the husky is, though. The young girl had just gotten back from a cheese trip, so we converse about cheese. We learn that we both dislike swiss cheese. I tell her that feta is my favourite cheese and she looks confused or disturbed. Back in my ends, it’s creamy and tangy and lovely. I talk to all of them and it's nice and not too hard except I can feel one person being overwhelmed and I wish they could feel as relaxed as they look.

We, all of us except for the dog, leave the flat and split into smaller groups with the plan of meeting up at Jazz Fest. That doesn't end up happening though, which is unsuprising because we're trying to gather at a free festival at 9pm on a Friday. I personally lose interest in being there after experiencing the crowd for about five minutes. I end up in a small mall with my friend's brother's landlord’s girlfriend’s sister, instead. That's a much nicer way to end a long day. I don’t remember much but I did find the ceviche mango quite nice in my burrito bowl. I didn’t mind it like I thought I would.

Take the midnight bus back on the Fourth of July

I feel my bones ache so much in the bus waiting room that I can't do anything but sit completely still. Two seats to myself on the bus again. I sleep a little.

What a gift of a trip.

The weekend

The weekend is full of naps and aches. I spend much of it holding a hot water bottle to my gut and watching Norm Macdonald Has A Show.

#weeknotes