Tents from Occupy Vancouver site at the Vancouver Art Gallery – Photo by Christopher Porter, Flickr
In the middle of June, a time when the weather was hot, I was listening to Amy Winehouse at the corner of two Parisian avenues. I stopped in a kiosk, because in Paris, newspapers are sold in kiosks and not in big green or grey boxes. It is not often, frankly, that the French press cares about Vancouver. Since the Olympics, we had no news. But then, several weekly and daily newspapers were going over the same picture in their ‘picture of the week’ or ‘story of the week’ section: le baiser de Vancouver (the Vancouver kiss).
It was the now famous picture of a kissing couple on the ground during the Vancouver June riot. I learned since, as everybody else, that the young woman had in fact been injured. What looked like a kiss at first, turned out to be a man lying on a woman who was trying to help her. But at the time, wandering in the Tuileries gardens of Paris with my dark glasses, I thought that the picture was saying a lot about Vancouver: on the one hand, it was romantic, and on the other hand, it was rebellious. In the picture, the background was chaotic: the forces of law and order against people running away, and although it was about hockey, you could feel the feverishness of a city awakening.
In France, it is no secret that to strike is a tradition. Since I left France two months ago, trains, airline companies and education have already taken to the streets and slowed down their activities several times. It is part of everyday life. We are never surprised when it is in the news.
But then, since June, the word ‘riot’ covered the front pages of newspapers and the movement Occupy Vancouver is becoming more important. You would think Vancouver is “frenchifying.”
The unrest of the city gives it an air of agitation which suits it well and something that photographer Richard Lam beautifully captured with his picture.
But as I’m in Vancouver now, I must say that this place is rather soothing.
When I arrived to Canada Place, the harmony in which forests, water and buildings get mixed, relaxed me. The clean and invigorating air makes you forget about the pollution of the French capital.
And also the calm, the fluidity of traffic circulation without car horns or insults, and the ‘calm’ manner of the city dwellers walking around, makes a big difference to me, as I’m usually impatient with people moving far too slowly in the corridors of the Parisian subway.
Most of all, in Vancouver, there is an incredible kindness, a common courtesy, and a certain elegance in relations between people. Gone are the stony and grave facial expressions of bus passengers. They are replaced with enthusiastic ‘Thank you!’ by passengers getting off the bus.
In Vancouver, when I cross the streets, I seem to scare drivers with my jaywalking, which is the usual way in Paris. Here in university, one of our professors gave us Smarties to make us happy – my French friends and I were speechless.
There is also the gentleness and candour of Vancouverites, who are always ready and willing to give information and even take the risk of answering me in my native tongue – French, that is.
From English to French, from French to English, going back and forth and also dealing with new exotic words from Quebec. So, for two months now, I don’t used ‘acheter’ (buying). Instead I now use ‘magasiner’ (shopping). I don’t even use magasiner de la crème fraiche (to buy fresh cream) but je magasine de la crème sûre (I buy sour cream). The taste of certain foods is not ‘modified’ (modifié) but simulated (simulé).
I note all this new vocabulary, close my eyes and enjoy the fresh air, then open my eyes again and catch sight of the snow-capped mountains, and if it’s raining, I open my umbrella and look at couples, hand in hand, heading for cover, or else, kissing under the rain, as in romantic comedies. Apparently, in Vancouver, everything begins and ends with a kiss.
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Translation by Nathalie Tarkowska
