ALTO is connecting Toronto to Québec

Along the Toronto-Québec corridor, Montréal looks like it’s tying a knot. Whether you’re looking at the yellow line alone, or both the yellow and the blue, the statement remains: Montréal is the link between one side and the other.

ALTO is connecting Toronto to Québec. Montréal has been doing that for the last couple of centuries.

Montréal has not only been promoting commerce and keeping the peace by connecting Toronto to Québec, Montréal has also been keeping the culture alive. The culture québécoise, the Canadian culture, and the culture of the diasporas who moved to Montréal, whether as temporary or permanently hopeful residents…

It’s all in Montréal, you see? Montréal is the ultimate muse!

Montréal is a muse to all forms of arts, but we’ll only talk about music today.

For one, Montréal allows Moroccan amazigh singer Nukad (whose name IRL is Khadija Ettahi and who’s also an engineer and a finance manager) to create mesmerizing music. Montréal has this je-ne-sais-quoi that makes composers prolific. 

For instance, without Montréal, there would be no Starmania.

Without Starmania, there would be no Le Blues du business man.

Without Le Blues du business man, we wouldn’t know that the experience of the artist precisely resembles the experience of the businessman.

Their blues is exactly the same!

La Cigale et la Fourmi enfin réunies !

Therefore, if it wasn’t for Montréal, we wouldn’t know that the answer is for art and business to work together. That was the main idea behind THE PANATHENAIA, or the Olympic games of the hearts and the minds dating back to antiquity (that's not their official title, we just made it up).

The concepts behind THE PANATHENAIA were forgotten during the third century A.D., but Montréal allowed for the magic of Le Blues du business man to occur, so really, Montréal knows just as well as Athens did back in antiquity.

Therefore, if being a city was like being a singer, Montréal would be a rockstar!

How many more prizes can Montréal earn before it is undisputable that Montréal is the place to be? Montréal is, Montréal has always been, and Montréal will always remain for everyone. How many contemporary metropolises can one count that would be able to claim to have welcomed diasporas from a more diverse range of backgrounds and dreams than Montréal?

And Montréal has been doing it for centuries!

But before Montréal started needing to be reconciling Toronto and Québec and welcoming diasporas from all over the world, Montréal was busy being Tiohtià:ke. Tiohtià:ke was the perfect place for peace, philosophy and commerce long before the anglos and the francos came over, and long, long before it became a thing to talk about reconciling them.

To prove this point, here’s a consideration: Montréal is the place where the Canadian National Railway Company (CN) places their Head of Indigenous Relations. If this isn’t another sign to be hopeful for peace, and to repeat that Montréal is tying the knot for Canada, for Québec, and likely for the world, then we don’t know what it is!

The CN Headquarters look over Place du Canada, so that’s where we’ll be.

Watching history unfold.

But Place du Canada isn’t surrounded only by the CN Headquarters. There are countless instances of lovely Business-Meets-Art and other wonderful initiatives that can only happen in Mooniyang.

Stay tuned! On n’est pas à court de poèmes pour vous en parler !

 

***

Opinions from Savato Kiriako, poétesse cartésienne