ICY CAR PILEUP AND UGLY TREE HAVE THE WORLD MOCKING US

In a way it’s an advertising campaign of our times, where media is the message

Congratulations, Montrealers!

We’ve had two stunning media coups the last week like nothing I recall in years — twin stories that have put Montreal’s name on the world’s lips.

Out first PR success was that wacky car pileup last week that’s gone viral, with more than 25 million viewers across the North America, Europe and Australia.

The video shows a demolition derby of cars sliding down icy Beaver Hall Hill, followed by buses, a taxi, a spinning police car and finally a snow-clearing truck — all crashing into each other like bumper cars.

It’s a real-life comedy skit that’s had us making headlines, from Britain’s Guardian “SLIPPERY SLOPE, SLO-MO SNOW MAYHEM IN MONTREAL” to the Miami Herald “NOT EVEN SNOW PLOWS SAFE ON THIS ICY MONTREAL ROAD.”

We’ve conquered major U.S. talk shows, tabloids and CNN, not to mention a fellow Outremont high grad in L.A., who wrote: “Thank God I don’t live there anymore.”

I mean where can you buy PR like this?

Before the buzz had faded, our second PR coup struck: a media frenzy over the city’s Christmas tree in the Quartier des Spectacles, which quickly went viral, too.

The tall, skinny, scraggly tree has been dubbed the “world’s ugliest Christmas tree” everywhere from Britain to New Zealand. The U.S. website BuzzFeed alone has a quarter million hits under the headline “PEOPLE CAN’T STOP LAUGHING AT MONTREAL’S UGLY CHRISTMAS TREE.”

The tree even has its own twitters ite, Sapin Laid( Ugly Christmas tree ), where people can post insults. It’s been ridiculed as emaciated, anorexic and embarrassing — dismissed as looking “like a homeless tree ... begging for change.”

Some say it droops because it has “erectile dysfunction,” others because it was “just released from Christmas tree rehab.”

In fact, the tree is the inspiration of a Quebec tree company, Sapin MTL. They wanted to give Montreal a present: a giant conifer to outdo the world’s most spectacular tree in New York’s Rockefeller Square, which this year soars 94 feet.

They scoured the mighty wilderness of Quebec for the biggest, most majestic tree and came up slightly short, with this 88-foot, specially-challenged finalist.

It’s a battered, dishevelledlooking thing that’s lopsided and lost its tip in transit. It has no star and is “decorated’ in red Canadian Tire triangles that were the price of its donated light bulbs.

I absolutely love the tree! It’s the opposite of the perfectly-adorned runway model trees of Ottawa’s Parliament Hill, or Toronto’s tony City Hall tree. Vancouver’s picture-perfect, snow-free tree looks like something you’d order online from a Laura Ashley opulent.xmas.tree collection.

New York’s tree is a well-fed beauty wrapped in five miles of multi-coloured lights and crowned with a designer star made of 25,000 crystals — but it costs more than $100,000 and has personal trainers grooming it for a month.

Bah humbug! They’re all perfectly fine, storybook Christmas trees. But ours is a primitive, savage-looking specimen, a brooding, haunted thing that looks like it was torn screaming from the wilderness — a damaged, drooping, imperfect tree that gradually touches your heart.

Even its tacky Canadian Tire triangles are a reminder of humanity’s questionable collision with nature.

Our tree does have online supporters. Some say it’s proof Montreal is a tolerant city, ready to celebrate diversity in all life forms. They point out it’s a local product, a modest, austerity-era tree that was a gift to the city — the perfect symbol for Christmas.

Added one American: “Cheer up, Canada! This is still better than being from the country that voted Trump into office. I’d take that tree running the country over Trump any day.”

Love it or hate it, our tree is world-famous, trashed everywhere from CNN to New Zealand to Reading, England, which used to be famed for the world’s ugliest tree until we rescued them. Like our car crash video, our tree has got people everywhere talking about Montreal — saying “thank goodness that’s not us.”

In a way it’s an advertising campaign of our times, a Trump-era onslaught where the media is the message. Trump always claimed it didn’t matter what the press said about him — as long as his name was in your face.

So what else can we do to follow up on our success, by bringing out Montreal’s best with our worst? If the Big Owe collapsed while empty (or we secretly pushed it over), that would make world news (“MONTREAL OLYMPIC STADIUM SETS NEW OLYMPIC RECORD”).

If a tourist bus carrying a U.S. trombone-players’ convention got lost in one of our construction zones and didn’t emerge until a search drone found it in a sinkhole, that would make tabloid headlines (“DRONE FINDS STONED CONE ZONE TROMBONES!”)

Let’s put our worst foot forward and capture the world, by making our ugly Christmas tree our official Montreal emblem.

In our city of cones, this messy, massive tree is the biggest cone of all — our giant cone-ifer.