Montreal Musings 5: Lessons Learned

   When one of my uncles heard we had spent a week in Montreal, his first comment was, "Very educational."  He was so right on many levels.

• We learned about the unique culture of a cosmopolitan city through walking the streets, shopping at stores and riding the subway system with its residents.  Living in an apartment alongside regular year-round residents made for a more authentic experience than could be obtained by staying at a hotel.  We knew that sundown was approaching on Friday evening as a parade of orthodox Jews went by on their way to a Sabbath service in the neighbourhood.  The daily experience was augmented by a 20 minute multi-media show at the Pointe-a-Calliere Museum which told the story of this city since its founding as both a mission and fur trade junction.
• One line from the history of Montreal multi-media show that struck my husband and me was "The evening news replaced evening prayers."  Despite the towering basillicas and street names with religious references, the province of Quebec prides itself on being secular.  It was pointed out to us that Quebec is a legitimate mission field where only 1 percent of its population is evangelical.  Mali in West Africa shares the same statistic!
• Our visit to the Biodome, at the site of Expo '67 was a fantastic way to learn about and see all kinds of creatures, from the familiar otter and porcupine to the exotic capybara (rainforest) and three types of penguins.  We gained a fresh appreciation for the diversity of God's creation.

  If you read the first post of this series, you may have been wondering what we did with the $50 that had been given to us.  We used $20 to repair the toilet at the volunteer apartment, and the rest we passed on to a homeless shelter in Montreal. Soli deo gloria.

 Narrow street approaching the harbour.  Horse-drawn vehicles were used for tourists.

Real king penguins in their snowy and rocky habitat at the Biodome