It’s kind of hard to write about love in January – I mean really: the weather forecast is calling for freezing rain AND strong winds AND lots of snow AND dropping temperatures (we’re already below zero, any more of a drop and we’re talking Siberia and Dr. Zhivago …)

Our first post of the month, in this new posterromance blog format, was all about love, and Montreal, and how we love Montreal. And we do – I mean, I firmly believe that you do have to be partially (or completely, in my case) insane to live here – but for those of us who have drunk the Kool-Aid and sing in the choir, we really do love this place we call home.

Many years ago there was a book written about the two solitudes (English and French) that comprise the Quebec population. To be honest, I don’t think I ever read that book, or if I did, it was so very long ago that I no longer remember. But usually when I think about this wonderful place that I call home, I don’t think of it in terms of two distinct populations, but rather as a functionally dysfunctional family (kind of like my own)…

I love the funky weirdness of this poster from 1980 – for a fun-loving parade which was then called the Fete Populaire, and where, if you look at the poster closely enough, you can see that a stuffed moose still had a role to play in a parade.

I love the culture of this city – with its ballet companies, its Opera, its new Quartier des Spectacles, it’s world-famous jazz festival, it’s incredibly cavernous pot-holes

It’s cold in the winter, it’s hot in the summer, it’s bilingual and infernal and it’s the only place I would ever really want to live. I love Montreal… Montreal, je t’adore.