Grand Trunk and Shearer by Ian Truman

Author:Ian Truman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Down & Out Books

Chapter 17

“Man, Montreal is better at riots than at Saint Paddy’s parades,” Cillian said to me once.

I must’ve been eighteen, nineteen or something. We had gotten up to Wellington to watch the beginning of the parade. Most people went up to Sainte-Catherine or on Maisonneuve around Concordia University. But the truth was that around those streets, what you had were mostly drunk students and I didn’t want anything to do with those kids. I was down here with the Irish families, the workers, I liked that better.

We celebrated Saint Paddy’s down here with the rest of us, the way it should be. In Verdun, in the Pointe, in Saint-Henri. Even if the French were in Saint-Henri, I somehow felt closer to them than I did the rich Anglos up the hill in Westmount. Everyone who could even be remotely Irish was always welcome to the parade, of course. You had plenty of French people, every year, no matter what the nationalists would’ve liked everyone to believe. It was always nice to be reminded that in this city, you could find someone name Kathy Murphy who spoke nothing but French, and some guy named Michel Dugay who always spoke English at home.

“What’s with all the military shit anyways,” Cillian added.

“It ain’t that bad,” I replied to Cillian. “It’s a Saint Patrick’s parade. What did you expect?”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right. It’s just that riots are really, really fun.”

“They really are, Cillian.” And just like that, I remembered the last Stanley Cup riot in 1993 and the news footage that ran in loop for days. I was too young to participate, but the truth was that everyone born and raised in this city were eagerly awaiting the next one.

The parade had a decent start. The leader looked stubborn and dedicated. He walked too fast for the younger marching bands to keep up. He marched like he meant it, you had to give him that. We stayed there for a moment, just watching as the bands made their way up the hill. After the cops and the RCMP were done with their PR for the year, we finally got some bagpipes. I loved the bagpipes. If I had it my way, Saint Patrick’s parades would be one, three hour long bagpipe festival. Now that would be something worth remembering.

The weather was bad as it always was. It was freezing as hell and everyone in the crowd was trying to huddle together in the rare sunspots filtering through the buildings. For as long as I could remember it was freezing on Saint Patrick’s Day. I guessed it wasn’t meant to be a Canadian holiday but I could take pride knowing that the Irish had been taking this shit for a hundred and eighty-seven years now. The weather was always bad, every year…year after year. It was just our luck.

After the bands, there were a bunch of people from parishes I had never heard of or cared about. They had horse carriages and former Irishman

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