Thirteen years ago I took up an offer from a little shop in Montreal called Ariadne Knits (may she rest in peace) to come and teaching some spinning classes (the yarn kind, not the crazy people on stationary bikes). I remember that first trip well, the train from Ottawa (including the nervousness as the train slowed down past the Farine Five Roses sign and past the old decrepit Dow Brewery brewery building and how I was reviewing my class notes over and over, never having really formally taught before, and then the train arrived in the station and I pulled my bag out of the car and was off on this new adventure), the whirlwind delight of the first class, a long walk down Laurier in the orange snow-light of evening to my accommodations in the Plateau, the friends I made, how it would all lead to more teaching, future stays and a close friendship with one of the owners of Ariadne (and an unexpected fondness for the most unlikely of Montreal neighbourhoods, NDG), adventures further afield, a career change, then another, then in Toronto and teaching here, then teaching as a career albeit at a very different capacity (graduate level, clinical field) but that same delight, that same joy in teaching and accepting adventures (and job offers) as they come.
And how I miss it all so much now, the friends who have left Montreal, the ability to travel back to that city on a lark (saying fuck it, let’s get in the car and GO somewhere, pre-pandemic), meeting strangers, seeing friends, ending up in a parc somewhere on a blanket under blue sky
I’ll get there again, before too long.
