The sound of silence in Montreal seems post-apocalyptic
It’s early Sunday morning on Rue de la Commune at the Old Port and the emptiness is astonishing.
Even at 8 a.m., it feels post-apocalyptic.
In 30 minutes looking around near Bonsecours Market, I see only one civilian automobile go by and a handful of walkers and joggers.
La Grande Roue de Montréal, the huge (and hugely expensive) Ferris wheel in the Old Port, isn’t turning. It’s supposed to open April 16 but it won’t. It may not turn all summer. Nothing else is turning either.
When I listen, I hear something you don’t hear in cities: silence. Cities are never silent. Never, day or night, no matter the weather. There is always a throb and thrum somewhere but on this morning three weeks into the great lockdown, it is silent. I hear nothing at all but the cries of the wheeling gulls.
There are walkers out here and there, the occasional jogger. Most of the walkers have dogs. Even they are few and far between. The average social distance this morning is about four blocks.
A cop cruises by, turns and parks down the way. An old man toting a bag pauses and talks to the cop from a distance of about 15 feet. Another cop pulls up next to the first, then a third police car. They sit three abreast, talking. They aren’t blocking traffic because there is no traffic to block — there are more police cars on duty than there are people to police.
This is not Montreal. We are gregarious, out-and-about people, rarely rushed. Two glasses of wine folk, always with time for a second cup of coffee. We are masters of dawdling, skilled loiterers, connoisseurs of the convivial pause.
But the city feels drained of its vitality on this Sunday morning, leaden and weary under a greying sky that threatens rain.
Abandoned to the gulls and pigeons.
Even the statue of the Virgin as Star of the Sea atop Bonsecours Chapel holds her arms raised as if in benediction, but with the palms turned outward, as though she is trying to ward off some invisible threat.
I leave the Old Port to the cops and the wheeling gulls and head up the Main. Even the usual group of homeless men outside the Old Brewery is missing, but farther along a lone panhandler is working the corner. These are tough times for panhandlers, because there is no one around to fill that cup.
Out of curiosity, I decide to take a stroll along de la Gauchetière through Chinatown. It is nearly as empty as de la Commune and in far worse shape. Peeling posters droop off walls onto the ground. Mounds of garbage are strewn here and there.
Outside a sprawling Chinese eatery where we sometimes stop for bubble tea, a lone man wearing a mask shuffles back and forth as though on sentry duty. One hundred feet in this direction, one hundred feet back. I give him a bit more than social distance and carry on.
The worst of it is in Parc Sun Yat-sen. There is garbage everywhere. Two homeless men are asleep under parkas on benches, one of them with an impressive array of gear strewn all around him. A lone man in a red maple-leaf tuque comes walking through and kicks furiously at a seagull pecking at the garbage. Another sits alone on a bench, grooving to music from some invisible source.
“How are you doing?” I ask. “It’s ------- cold!” he says. “Got a cigarette?”
“Don’t smoke.”
“Spare change?”
“Don’t have a dime.”
It’s true. If I had any he would be welcome to it. He turns his back in disgust. No cigarettes, no money. In his world, I am utterly useless.
I carry on up the Main. The spine of Montreal, after all, is the Main, not the traffic sewer of the Décarie. I pass Schwarz’s Deli,
Moishe’s Steakhouse where I have never eaten, the Slovenian market where we used to buy klobasa, the dozens of shuttered restaurants. At Bernard St., I decide that I have seen enough of my silent city. I have no doubt that it will come throbbing to life again or that it would be livelier later in the day even now, but I have chosen a time when I can keep my distance.
Still, I feel as though I’ve had a glimpse of a post-apocalyptic world, of a day when we are gone and our cities are left to the gulls and the pigeons with no one to chase them away.