Behind The Curtain (25 August, 2023)
Accessible Audio for this week’s Behind The Curtain will be available soon!
Back To School
I’m starting to panic. It’s the last day of school and I know that I haven’t done the work in several classes. Should I avoid them? Try to take the exams anyways? Can I get my money back this late in the semester if I never went to class? Also, why am I taking a mix of CEGEP and University level classes in a building with the layout of my old high school? Also, I seem to not be wearing pants. Then I wake up, feel relieved that I was only dreaming about the lack of clothing, and get back to thinking about what I can do about school. After the fog clears, I remember that I’m in my 40s, and graduated from University roughly 20 years ago.
I don’t remember many of my dreams, but this one, or a variation of it, has been recurring for years. So is the one where I hear my alarm in my dream, wake myself up to hit the snooze button, then keep hearing it, only to realize I had only dreamt I hit the snooze button, but I digress. Back to the school dream, or nightmare. I could analyze it and say that it’s due to me not being prepared for something, or maybe some form of imposter syndrome. But I won’t do that, for now, because I think school has a bigger effect on my subconscious than this one recurring dream.
Mid-August, I usually get a feeling of subtle loss, like the party’s almost over, and I’ve got to make these dying days of summer count. The summer equals freedom and fun. The fall means locked in a grind. This feeling is hard for me to shake, despite having no basis in my current reality. Not only am I not in school anymore, I don’t work as a teacher, and I don’t have any kids in school. My day job goes year-round, and I only get time off when I schedule a vacation. The summer is one of the busiest times of the year for the ghost tours I host, second only to the end of October, which is really big in the haunted industry for some inexplicable reason. (Editor’s Note: Jason knows it’s because of Halloween, he’s trying to be funny. Let’s humor him.) Fun fact: This year’s feeling of the imminent loss of my carefree freedom came at the end of a quick grocery run I had sandwiched between my day job and hosting a ghost tour. You know, the party.
When it comes to FTB, this will be the first end-of-summer and “back to school” I am experiencing under our new mission. I hear rumblings that we have some changes coming, and while my output has been constant (this one article every week), with a few spikes here and there, there may be more stuff coming out across the board. Like the start of a new year. That’s not new, though. Back on the old .net, I’d always switch my focus to the arts, in particular JFL, during the summer, then back to politics in September, because elected officials are another group that generally take the summer off. If they get a break from doing all but photo ops, I get a break from writing about them. Then it’s back to the “grind” in the fall, though I’ve never considered writing for this site (or the old version) a grind.
It’s not only politicians. Theatre companies set their seasons to start in the fall, but not the actual start of fall, which is the end of September, but the same start of fall that schools use: on and around Labour Day weekend. Theatre in the summer is considered a different animal, and a fun one. There’s summer theatre, Fringe theatre, Shakespeare in the Park, and more. When it comes to music in the summer, there are still regular local shows, but it’s really the festivals that take over festi-ville. Plus there’s a bunch of stuff in parks. When the school year starts, it’s back to the regular. Yes, I know POP Montreal exists, is a festival, and happens in the late fall. But it’s really a fun and glorious exception to the rule.
Obviously the weather plays a part in why people seem to follow the school year, and see the summer as fun and escape, and the rest of the time as work time. Especially in Montreal, where we only get three months of summer usually. But it doesn’t explain why I follow this pattern. Yes, I enjoy swimming and hanging out in parks as much as the next person, but is the summer heat my favourite weather? Nope. That would be spring or fall. When you can walk around in a t-shirt by day, but feel perfectly comfortable in nothing but a jacket by night. No need for fans when you sleep.
Chalk it up to the general societal reinforcement of the school year and the fun times to why I still celebrate school being out, and dread its return. Even though I haven’t been to class in decades, except in my dreams.
Notes This Week
Just Why?
Week, um, I’m going to say Week Twelve of the Meta C-18 Blockade. I know it really hasn’t been that long, but it sure feels like it. We’re doing all we can to stop from sinking until this wave passes: encouraging people to share our articles on their own socials; and asking for small donations to spend on other advertising methods. Yes, the site we’re using says “Buy Me a Coffee/Buy Me a Beer”, and a friend actually said to me “But I buy you beer all the time!”, which is true (and I buy him beer too), but that’s not the point. I want us to get back to the before times soon, so I can continue trying to figure out how Instagram is such a good traffic generator. I’m told that it is, and I believe it, and not just for us. Facebook I get. But how can a site whose very framework seems designed to keep people from leaving, with no ability to hyperlink a post directly to an article, succeed in getting people to that article. It boggles my mind.
Of Course They Would
This week we learned that a total of zero large building project developers created new affordable social and family housing units since the City of Montreal passed the Bylaw for a Diverse Metropolis in 2021. Five of them opted to give the city a lot they can build affordable housing on, and the rest chose instead to pay the city a fine. Now Montreal has $24.5 million, which isn’t enough to build one major social housing project, let alone the five they have empty lots for. I can’t say that I’m surprised at our local developers, but I am quite annoyed. The opposition at City Hall was the one that brought this up, so good on them. But, we can’t forget that when their party was in power, they didn’t even try to make, or even nudge, developers to include social housing units in their plans (the old Children’s Hospital is a prime example). Hopefully we can find a way to make paying the fine the less appealing option, because we can’t rely on developers’ best intentions to solve the housing crisis.
Well, that’s it for this week. I’ve got to go buy pencils and books. See you next week.
FTB Founder Jason C. McLean returns every Friday for another installment in his series, Behind The Curtain.
