During the summer of 2003, I packed a bag and went to Montreal to be an artist. This is part 2 of a series of emails I sent home during that summer.

A time capsule

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Friday May 16 2003

Bonjour. How are you all? Things here going quite nicely. I’m starting to feel settled. All of the new roomies have arrived… no bitter fighting yet. I feel like i’m on estrogen overload though. Better in theory than in practice.

I’m starting to feel like i’ve got a pretty good handle on the city. My place couldn’t be in a better spot…. I can’t get over it. Lots of really done up people… like a bunch of cookie cutter drones; everyone in bleach stained jeans, wierd euro loud shirts that i don’t yet understand and those trendy see through sunglasses… you know?

I was somewhere down in old montreal the other day drawing a building or something and it hit me that I have absolutely nothing to do until july…. it was exciting.

I’m determined to figure out the guitar and have some pretty wicked blisters to prove it. I’m almost finished a big painting of Adam Neilson sitting on the toilet. Adam, you might need to buy it for your wife.

Yesterday I decided it would be a good idea to run up the mountain. It seemed like a good idea until i started to run. Since when do run anywhere, let alone up mountains? (For those of you who aren’t sure, the answer is I don’t). Not only did i run up a mountain, I pulled my “yeah, I jog” routine and ran really fast up the mountain. when I got to the top I realized that I could have driven up… or taken a cab… and felt extremely misled. “BULLSHIT,” I shouted! Then i swore in french too so that no one was left out from my dismay. The top was lovely…. good view, although it’s no vancouver. I took the short cut on the way down (which also left me feeling deceived, having not discovered it on the way up).

I discovered the problem with my gym: until a couple of years ago, when they let us breeders join, LaCite was an exclusive club for gay francophones. It explains everything. Well, not everything, but it explains all of the naked men rubbing one another… and the hotpants… and the tanning bed in the change room.

J

Recently we had a chance to spend some time up on the mountain with VASS (Vancouver Adaptive Snow Sports), an organization dedicated to making alpine sports accessible to everyone. It was pretty inspiring to see what these guys and gals can do, but I’ll let the videos do the talking.

VASS is holding their [only] annual fundraiser this month, and could use some serious word of mouth (and mouse).

On April 27th 2003, I left for a summer in Montreal with two bags: one full of clothes, and one full of oil paints, canvas, paint brushes, a journal, and a Kerouac novel. A month or so earlier a friend had offered me a room. I said yes. I had finished the third year of my Industrial Design degree 3 days earlier, had just lived my first year on my own, had recently been through a shitty [for me] break up, and had just turned 20. I was bent on being a bohemian for the summer. I would make moody oil paintings, burn incense, listen to Ani DiFranco and, if necessary, attempt to smoke clove cigarettes.

Please enjoy. A time capsule from my life.

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Friday May 2 2003

I’m here… in montreal. Tuesday was the day from hell. I booked my flight with Aeroplan (thanx dad) and they made it their mission to give me the scenic ruite with a stop in Edmonton, Winepeg, then Ottawa… 4 HOURS IN OTTAWA. If was on something high enough, I could have peed on Montreal from where I sat, longingly staring East.

So after 4 hours without the book that I left on the seat of my previous flight, I got onto a plane that looked like a toy and which sat about 20. It felt like some weird Air Canada Jazz version of a bad foreshadowing scene from an Indiana Jones film. I ended up sitting next to the “I hate flying” guy. It was either that, or he was Indiana Jones and knew something that I didn’t. There were about 15 open seats and he climbed over my lap to sit next to emergency exit. It didn’t much matter because as soon as we stopped climbing we started to descent again. I should have walked.

Wednesday was beautiful…. not super warm, but absolutely gorgeous. I spent about three hours walking around the city in my toque and the wool jacket i stole from Jason [edit: I actually left it in Montreal. I still feel bad about it]… i think i was the only guy on St. Dennis without leather pants. I managed to get a wicked sunburn that nicely followed the contour of my toque down the side of my face.

On the porch.

Yesterday we moved into our new place…. It is GREAT. My room looks out to the street from the third floor of this old old house/apartment. Twelve foot ceilings, hardwood floors… my room has a huge blue stained glass window. It’s about the size of three of my rooms…. four. It’s amazing. I’ll take photos.

Today i went down to a local gym and grabbed a membership for two months. The place is a gay man’s mecca. I made the decision that i didn’t need to go into the change room again; it was as though I’d stumbled though a wrinkle in time right into a Greek bath house…. sauna, jacuzzis, steam room, tanning bed… all, apparently, with an unwritten no clothing man-code. I think the other rule that I missed was that you need to pair up and rub your partner down with moisturizer… really bizarre….

Alright. Enough for now… having a good time. As soon as we get the internet set up, I’ll send some individual emails.

Ciao. j

Swing over to AdHack.com/BALLS for the contest. You tell them what happened next. The best script will get made. And that’s pretty cool ::

While you’re there, listen to the Balls song and make your own avatar like these ones (and if you do, make a comment so that it can be found and shown off with the others) ::

Don’t forget to share the balls. Pass it along on twitter, facebook, your blog, etc. A little balls go a long way!

This is a little animation we put together for the Giant Ant Media open house this past Friday.

As you may have noticed, we re-launched our little company last week in conjunction with Chinese New Years with a new studio in Gastown, a couple of new team members, and a brand spanking new website. 2009 is the year of the Ant.

Thanks to those of you that come down on Friday and drank beer with us. We had a great time. For those of you who couldn’t make it, swing by the site and poke around.