Rich and Poor Colours

Colours in Working-class Brussels, Belgium

Colours at the Maharajah’s Palace, Jodhpur, India

Quebec City Tour: Le Campanile

In the early 1980s, New Urbanism arose as a reaction to suburban sprawl, advocating a return to traditional city planning. The Campanile area, laid out in 1986, was built according to these ideas. This dense neighbourhood lies beyond the low-density suburbs of Sainte-Foy on the edge of Greater Quebec. Just when you think you’ve hit the wilderness, there it is.

New Urbanist principles dictate that neighbourhoods should have a discernable centre. The centre here is a “campanile,” or clock tower. Beneath the tower is a modern day take on an old market hall, containing a supermarket, a pharmacy, and a few specialty food stores. A typical main street stretches up from this clock tower and has managed to attract an interesting array of shops.

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Quebec City Tour: Suburbia

This is Sainte-Foy, one of Quebec City’s numerous suburbs, where I grew up. Yes, it could be anywhere in North America. 80% of the population in Greater Quebec lives in low-density burbs like this one, with anonymous detached homes on large grassy lots. This demographic majority has redefined the public image of Quebec City, a city often depicted as an enigmatic hotbed of conservatives by the press. The fact that these conservative values are largely relegated to the suburbs has been mapped through demographic research.

Though all Quebec suburbs may feel similarly insipid to some, there is a pecking order for locals. Sainte-Foy is near the top. People from Sainte-Foy look down on people from Charlesbourg, who in turn look down on people from Beauport, who look down on people from Duberger, who look down on people from Neuchatel and Loretteville, who look down on people from Val-Bélair, who look down on people from Vanier. Vanier is the bottom of the suburban barrel, home of the “Coupe Vanier” (AKA Coupe Longueuil AKA The Mullet). Only Cap-Rouge and Sillery are high enough on the pecking order to look down on Sainte-Foy.

But that’s just the north shore, which leaves out the “farmers” on the south shore. And there’s Quebec’s city centre, which looks down on all these suburbanites, their screaming populist politicians, and their “my power centre is bigger than your power centre” pecking order. So who’s the big fish now? Well, let’s not forget Montreal, who thinks the “gros village” of Quebec has its head up its ass for even thinking of itself as a city. But Montreal has “les 450” to reckon with, and that takes us into a whole new pecking order.

So who’s right?

Railway Stations in Quebec and Montreal

Gare du Palais, Quebec

In the 19th century, Montreal boomed as an industrial railway hub while Quebec City fell into obscurity. Quebec remained poorly connected by rail to the rest of the continent until the 20th century. A grand chateau-style railway station, called Gare du Palais, was built in 1915 to inaugurate the new railway line crossing the recently-completed Quebec Bridge. A small park with a brutalist fountain by Charles Daudelin was added to the front in 1999, and for some strange reason the contrast works. There’s something grand to this area, leaving you with the misleading impression that Quebec is an important railway hub. But the cavernous emptiness of the halls reveal the truth – only four trains come into the station per day.

Gare du Palais, Quebec

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Morning Coffee: Bombay’s Zoroastrian Cafes

Zoroastrian carving, Bombay. Thanks to Toreajade.

Bombay’s Zoroastrian community emigrated from Iran about 1,000 years ago and brought their religion along with them–the oldest living monotheistic faith. They are also known as Parsis, because of their Persian origin. Since they cannot marry outside the community, they have retained a distinct identity and appearance. They worship in Bombay’s towers of silence. where sky burials are also performed–a practice that has come under scrutiny in recent years because of the declining vulture population.

Though Zoroastrians represent a mere 0.005% of India’s population, they have had a considerable impact on the country. In the West, the best known Parsi is probably Queen singer Freddy Mercury, who grew up in Bombay. Indians are more familiar with the Tata family, who seem to own everything–you start your day with a cup of TataTea, pay your TataPower bills, drive to work in your TataCar, and make calls on the TataSky network. In recent years, the Tatas have moved outside of India, acquiring Tetley tea, Ritz Carlton Hotels, and Jaguar.

Kyani Café, Bombay

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Fleur-de-Lys Studios

Fleur de Lys Studios (1885), Providence, RI

Paharganj, or the Dregs of Delhi

Tooti Chowk, Paharganj, Delhi

Paharganj is a mix of crowded makeshift homes, budget traveler hangouts, and the odd chunk of decaying heritage. It’s also an example of what happens when a section of town is left to its own devices with little consideration for urban planning.

A few centuries back, Paharganj was a grain bazaar populated almost exclusively by Muslims, a short walk outside the walls of Mughal Delhi. Today, most of the Muslims have gone, but here and there are the domes of an old mosque, fronted by an ugly concrete structure, squatted by several families, or converted to a budget hotel. Most hotels in the neighbourhood are unauthorized windowless dives who steal water and electricity from lesser mortals. Wires and plugs dangle all over, and the shoddy structures look as if they’re about to collapse onto themselves.

The noisy main bazaar is congested with kerosene-powered motorcycles spouting black fumes, three-wheelers, cycle rickshaws, cows, carts, and the occasional car squeezing through. I even saw an elephant rambling through at 11PM, its driver asleep for the night on his back. Wide-eyed shellshocked travelers, fresh off the plane, can’t see beyond the noise, cows, and raw sewage. Then there’s the old India veterans, dreadlocks down their back, also shellshocked, but in a different way — they took a wrong turn on their long strange trip and ended up in Delhi. Both of these groups feel like they’re in transit — Paharganj is an unfortunate stop on their journey to somewhere a little more scenic or relaxing.

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Indigo India

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Morning Coffee: Café Ekberg, Helsinki

Inside Café Ekberg, Helsinki

Most people don’t think of coffee when you mention Helsinki. The usual things that come to mind are death metal bands, formula one racers, and blonde people. Nevertheless, statistics show that Finns are the biggest coffee drinkers on earth. They drink almost twice as much coffee as the French, and nearly three times more than us. It is no surprise that Helsinki, the capital city, has loads of great coffee shops.

But I don’t drink coffee, though I still like to linger in cafés. So I stopped by the oldest café in town: Café Ekberg, which opened on February 3, 1852. It is small, yet quiet and sophisticated. More importantly, it provided me with the instant shelter from the chilly Finnish winter I was seeking.

I went for a delicious frothy hot chocolate. The place was full of formal Finns in evening attire. But then the sun rose and I remembered it was daytime, 10:00 AM, still somewhat dark, not really helping my jet lag. I looked around at the stiff elderly blond women and quiet gentlemen serving themselves heaping plates at the Nordic breakfast buffet table. I felt surreal, like an extra in a David Lynch movie, or should I say Aki Kaurismäki.

But that’s how I expected to feel in Finland, so there wasn’t any culture shock.

Outside the Bio Rex Cinema café, Helsinki

A Century of Subway Cars

Elegant wood-panelled New York subway car with wicker seats from the turn of the twentieth century.

The New York Transit Museum is a paradise for public transportation obsessives. The museum has a chronological collection of turnstiles and subway tokens on display, with detailed descriptions of the minutest changes over the years. This may be a bit much for the average visitor, but everyone gets a kick out of wandering through the old subway trains downstairs, which contain period ads and the original transit maps.

A streamlined subway car from the 1950s…


… and the subways on the tracks today.

The Revolving Fortunes of Rotating Restaurants

From the 1940s to the 1980s, vast areas of North American cities were demolished and replaced with freeways and large concrete skyscrapers. This process, which came to be known as Urban Renewal, did not hit Quebec City quite as hard as Montreal or other cities in Canada. Though the old city was left untouched, over 1,200 homes were demolished to widen boulevards and make way for skyscrapers in historic neighbourhoods immediately outside the city walls. In 1974 alone, four of the city’s ten tallest skyscrapers were inaugurated. One of these was topped with a revolving restaurant on the 31st floor.

The restaurant in question, L’Astral, tops the Loews le Concorde hotel. The Italianate home of Cyrille Duquet, little-known inventor of the double-ended telephone handset, once stood on the site of this hotel. Promotional literature of the time claimed Le Concorde provided the “sophistication of the vieux regime with a bold contemporary statement.” Though it’s difficult to see the link between a mass of brutalist concrete and the traditions of New France, there’s no doubt that the building was bold.

I went to this rotating restaurant for the first time a few weeks ago. The whole idea of lunching at L’Astral had always seemed a bit corny. A few work colleagues managed to talk me into it with promises of nice views. To be fair, it was better than other tourist traps on the same strip, and it got me mind thinking about revolving restaurants.

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Quebec City Tour: Montcalm

To many people in Quebec, Montcalm ward is synonymous with old money and big houses. It is actually quite a diverse and interesting area, with everything from cheap student flats to landscaped boulevards with mansions. The term “climbing the social ladder” takes on a rather literal meaning here—the lower part of Montcalm is more modest than the streets fronting the Plains of Abraham at the top.

Montcalm is located immediately west of Saint-Jean-Baptiste, and about a twenty minute walk from Vieux-Québec. This is too far for most tourists, which is a shame as the area has lots to offer. The few tourists who do make it out tend to come for the National Museum of Fine Arts and the Plains of Abraham, but a walk through its architecturally diverse streets is worth the detour.

In the middle of the 19th century, Montcalm was located outside Quebec’s city limits. A tiny settlement of tax dodgers sprung up on its edge, called Faubourg Guenette. Most of the land in today’s Montcalm was originally owned by wealthy English-speaking lumber barons. These gentleman-farmers built picturesque villas on large estates overlooking the cliffs, living out the romantic ideal and fleeing the cholera and typhus of the dense centre.

Traces of the old Faubourg Guenette, along Rue Crémazie

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Wolfe vs. Wolfe-Montcalm

The Plains of Abraham are famous for the confrontation between the armies of Wolfe and Montcalm, a decisive battle leading to Britain’s conquest of New France.

Several centuries later, a confrontation over a street name is taking place on this lamp-post bordering the park. Federal and Municipal authorities can’t agree on whether to call the street “Wolfe” or “Wolfe-Montcalm”. It seems likely that the disagreement reached a stalemate several decades back. Nowadays, the two names coexist and most people are either indifferent or unaware.

There are legitimate grounds to adopt either name. The city named the avenue “Wolfe-Montcalm” first, in 1901, a politically correct decision to commemorate both victor and vanquished equally. The National Battlefields Park was created in 1908 when Federal authorities saved the area from residential development and turned it into a commemorative park. The disagreement probably arose because the short avenue has always led to a monument on the spot where Wolfe fell in battle; the street has no link whatsoever with Montcalm. To complicate things, recent municipal mergers have resulted in the fact that a Wolfe Avenue now exists elsewhere in the city (home to an English-language, formerly Irish Catholic, elementary school).

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Feltly Hats

Feltly Hats in Hasidic Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NY