Nazis in Montreal, Robbers in Lisbon
Backstory adventures and mis-adventures
From Brockville, where un-blindfolded Sally Grant oversees justice, we sailed in to Ottawa with a hold full of the five suitcases worth of magazines we’d recently hauled up to Toronto from Mexico City. Our precious revistas were deposited here:
Then it was over to Montreal in advance of heading back to Europe. I’d booked an Airbnb near one of my favourite book-hunting routes in NDG. It was on the forth floor of a building that didn’t offer parking. We quickly discovered that it didn’t offer an elevator either. FYI: parking in Montreal isn’t easy. The signs don’t submit to rational interrogation.
Anyhow, the route I used to follow back when I lived here (you might recall my famed series
of ship-on-roof
posts from that era) started at the Renaissance bookstore on Decarie Boulevard,
wended its way over to the Salvation Army on Sherbrooke, then doubled back to Phoenix Books, which happily I see won’t be closing after all,
and finished up a bit further along at Encore Books where, this time round, we scored a nice addition to our Hitler/Trump/Musk Asshole Dictator magazine cover collection,
and this copy of Playboy, with art by Vargas,
the only issue in the magazine’s lengthy history to feature an illustration not a photo on the cover (or so the now more suspect than ever Internet tells me).
I was very pleased with Encore. Three years ago, packing up to leave Montreal, I hauled over four or five boxes full of obscure publisher’s histories for trade. Got a note for $150 ( they were obscure), which I promptly lost. I told the people at the shop about this. They contacted the owner. He honoured the note. You never see this laudable level of customer service in Eastern Europe where I’m currently stationed (well, for the next few weeks at least). Long way to go. More on the note shortly.
On the Biblio File front, around this time I was reading Ira Wells’ book On Book
Banning: or, How the New Censorship Consensus Trivializes Art and Undermines Democracy I later interviewed him about it. One disturbing takeaway was that fundamentalist christians in Florida are using exactly the same bullshit excuse to remove books from school libraries as wound-up wokes are in Ontario. Want your child be taught how to think critically? Read this book, and get on your child’s school principal, and librarian. Listen to my conversation with Ira here.
The next TBR on my Biblio night table was Fleeced. Couldn’t find it. Figured I must’ve left it in my storage locker in Ottawa. So back I drove.
I’m really keen to talk with Andrew Spence about it given the absolutely appalling service I’ve been getting from Canadian banks over the past several years. One of them fucked me out of $5-6,000 on an overseas transaction. When I cottoned on, their response was a helpful, “tough shit.”
Happily, I found the book.
It’s billed as an “expose.” Haven’t covered exposes yet - another reason I’m keen to discuss.
While we were in Montreal a library sale took place (also on Sherbrooke). We didn’t score much, but my friend Michel Gauthier pulled out some nice photography books on day two, including one on Prague. After scoping the sale I had the chance to visit my friend bookseller/poet Michael Harris at his nearby home ( yes, his extraordinary Ted Hughes Collection is still available for purchase). Turns out his wife Caroline organized the book sale!
In addition to the sale, there was also a federal election raging while we were in town. I use the word ‘raging’ advisedly. Many of the posters along our special route had been defaced. Words like “Nazi” were scrawled over candidate faces.
Apart from (or perhaps connected to) the interesting design-related observation that the defacing texts laser focused pretty well all of my attention, these acts of vandalism are simply shocking. All of the hard work that people put into producing and presenting the posters, participating in the democratic process, erased/reversed by a few ignorant squirts of spray paint. The 2020s resembling the 1930s.
On a more cheerful political note: I know Canada’s MPs are bobbleheads mimicking whatever their leaders say but this
is
ridiculous.
***
Next day, with Michel’s haul in the trunk, we drove downtown to Mont Royal Street to visit some shops,
and have lunch at Première Moisson, Montreal’s premier chain of cafe/bakeries.
From Montreal we flew to Lisbon, where we got robbed. They stole Fleeced, they stole the new note that Encore had written me, they stole the keys to my storage units in Ottawa and Montreal, and oh yeah, my passport, drivers license, health card, birth certificate…miserable motherfuckers.
Living, as I have, in a beautiful bubble full of good book people for so much of my time over so many years has deluded me. I frequently forget how many unpleasant evil bastards exist out there in the real world.
Read all about them, and the full Lisbon adventure, in the next installment, coming right up.
