The year I discovered Montreal,Canada was the Ice storm year(1997-1998):I was a first year student in University and did not expect this kind of weather, as people stocked food ,campuses closed and the city became a giant ice cube.
Ice Storm' 98.
An icy wind stirs and drowns out urban lights,as premonitions of future chaos floats on the city.Montréal is freezing in a dizzying mess as flakes pour down on parks,roads,university campuses.The headlines of newspapers,radio ..etc all emit the same lost fate for the city:a giant ice storm will hit the city and soon campuses will be closed and electrical generators will be serving the residences.
Being a freshman on my first year away from home,I had geared up on Saint-Catherine street for winter boots,jacket,gloves and was awaiting in a suspenseful dread the storm's fall on the city.
The snow was accumulating behind doors and everywhere on the campus,students sliding, falling or tentatively grabbing lampposts to hold steady.I was a victim of the weather's fickle temperament and more than once ,had plainly fallen on my buttocks,hair disheveled and red,hot embarassed.
It seemed as though the campus library had taken the role of refuge as people,steaming hot coffees in their hands,were haggardly waiting for less snow sleet,less wind..or whatever it was that was coming down chaotically from the skies.
With the arrival of the snow storm came the closure of the University and students,sometimes deprived of electicity,were curled up in bed or playing games outside,throwing snow balls.Ice had swept over trees and covered bark in luminous crystals and a bitter wind was swelling up around the residence building.I lay in bed,motionless,listening to the gentle stirring of the radiator,my fingers sore with cold and my drowsy head,cloudy with a baudelairian spleen:this was not 19th century grey Paris with its deserted cafés,lazy gutter cats,tin roofs and landscapes of gloomy chimneys; I was in the center of a Montréal ice storm,tightly clutching my bed spread among stalactical borders dangerously materializing near my window. The sky was a palid greyish blue foretelling the appearance of windy patches and streams of cloudy ,wrinkled passivity as we all dug deeper into our bed sheets and wished for a little more warmth.
At the heart of the eight compelling nonfiction stories and five-article appendix which make up Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah is this interesting question: What would your life mean if you were living someone else's dream of what it should be?
