This coming Monday is Journée nationale des patriotes in Quebec, and Victoria Day in the rest of Canada. Of course, pretty much every Anglo in Montreal, or at least those I know, still call this Victoria Day Weekend, and would probably give you a momentarily confused look if you asked them what they were doing for National Patriots Day Weekend.

“I’ll tell you a little secret. Yes, Schwartz’s is good, but you’ll probably have to wait in line. If you want even better Montreal smoked meat, just go directly across the street to The Main. It’s open late, and if you’re going together, I recommend sharing the smoked meat platter.”

Friday is “take out the trash day”, at least according to a first season episode of The West Wing. It’s the day when the White House releases a bunch of stories to the press and throws in a few they hope get buried, as people pay less attention to the news on Friday and the weekend.

Sometimes answering one question can create so many more questions, and lead you down a rabbit hole of your own fascination that you can only escape through literal cracks in the ground. Trust me, that will make sense by the end of this piece.

Montreal is the kind of place where the unique, the iconic, and the mundane happily co-exist. It’s the kind of town most appreciated by those who visit or move here, and generally only liked or grudgingly accepted by us lifers.

On this site, we don’t do breaking news, but nothing stops me from talking about news that’s over a week old. So here’s literally my cold take: last Wednesday, Montreal was hit with a mini-ice storm.

Montreal’s transit system is a world of wonder. No, it’s not as efficient as New York’s, not even close. There you can take a train across a bridge at 2:30am and the locals complain you may have to wait on the platform for 20 minutes for it to arrive.

This promises to be quite the fun ride, Oxford commas and all (if you see a semicolon in my writing, though, it was put there by an editor). I’m excited to have my soapbox back. I am Jason, son of William and Louise of House McLean, and I am inviting you to peer behind the curtain with me again next Friday.

The proverbial circus coming to town, or specifically the extremely popular global sports entertainment (aka pro wrestling) behemoth that is the WWE coming to Montreal, is nothing out of the ordinary. The circus being thematically about the town, now that’s something special.