August 18th, 2010
In contrast to the bland apartment buildings on its south side, the northern side of Mosque Street is lined by a crumbling stone wall and vegetation spilling over from the lush grounds of the Jamia Mosque. If you peek over the wall, there’s a nice view of the mosque, which is the oldest in Hong Kong. It’s a surprisingly rustic scene in the Central Mid-Levels, a neighbourhood that has obliterated most traces of its 170-year history.
Another throwback is Mosque Street’s name. Though perfectly straightforward in English, it’s a lot more complicated in Chinese. While the proper standard Chinese name for mosque is 清真寺 (ching tsam tsi), or回教廟 (wui gaau miu) in Cantonese, Mosque Street’s Chinese name uses the expression 摩羅廟 (mo lo miu), which derives from mo lo cha, an old and derogatory term for South Asians.
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April 22nd, 2010
The following essay appears in the April 2010 issue of Muse, a Hong Kong arts and culture magazine. The same issue also contains my feature-length profile on Hong Kong’s “tree professor,” Jim Chi-yung. The magazine can be found at major bookstores throughout the city.
In my neighbourhood, I know exactly what language to speak. At Jean-Coutu (the drugstore), Nouveau Palais (the corner diner) and Première Moisson (the upscale bakery), it’s French. At Zoubris (the copy shop), Cheskie (the Jewish bakery) and Club Social (the Italian café), it’s English.
But in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, on the other side of town, I’m lost. I know the neighbourhood is mostly English-speaking, but I don’t want to offend anyone. So before walking into the clothing store, I decide to take the safe route and speak French. Turns out it was the right decision. The owner was francophone.
Nothing is simple when it comes to language in Montreal. The city’s history has made it one of the most linguistically contested places in the world, but far from being a hindrance, it gives it the kind of powerful creative charge that can only come from cultural friction.
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December 27th, 2009
Mile End Station, built in 1878, rebuilt in 1911 and demolished in 1936
The name Mile End might now be associated with Montreal’s trendiest neighbourhood (a distinction that will surely move elsewhere in a few years), but three decades ago, it was in danger of extinction. Though the area north of Mount Royal Avenue was known as Mile End in the first half-century of its development, it became an anachronism after World War II, used only by old-timers and by newspaper journalists who had to explain its past significance.
I was reminded of this when I was browsing through the Gazette’s archives, which were recently digitized and made available by Google News. In a trivia column published on March 15, 1969, a resident of Mount Royal Avenue named Edward McElligott asks about the origin of Mile End’s name, noting that “though few English-speaking people today know much of it, both English-speaking and French-speaking folks of years ago knew it well.
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