This is a scene in front of the metro building at Snowdon station on Queen-Mary on a hot and sweaty late summer evening. The line of people who fill the page from left to right, and beyond that, are all waiting for the 51 bus to arrive, so that they can return to their homes after a long day either at school or work. Sometimes, I'm one of those people. Most of the time, I just glance at this scene and start walking home on foot. Either way, seeing this kind of thing has ceased to surprise me for a while now.Though I wouldn't say this kind of thing is common, it happens often enough that I don't get the nervousness it gave me the first time I experience something like this. And though it's annoying, I've learned to just shrug it off and just say, "Oh well, guess I'll just have to have supper late tonight", or something like that. But then, I start to wonder: Why doesn't it bother me anymore? Why have I come to accept this kind of thing as everyday? Such scenes, and the city as a whole, used to be something strange and bizarre to me, having lived most of my life in a peaceful rural town where such a situation is almost unheard off.
Then it hits me: this has become routine for me. It's troublesome, but it's all just part of what comes with living in the city. And it's not just that, I realize now. All the things that once seemed so weird to me here, are now just part of the background that make up my life here in Montreal. And it's the same for most other people too, from what I've seen. You could say it's just human adaptability, but it's more than that; everything in Montreal or any city, though seemingly chaotic/disparate, is all just part of a massive routine to most people, so much that even outrageous situations don't truly shock anyone anymore. It's all part of the city experience, as I like to call it.
Why does this bother me? It doesn't, not really. But, it makes me think: Do cities just make people jaded? Or is it that there's just so much of everything in cities, nothing seems impossible to its citizens? I don't know whether either possibility is good or bad, but at the very least, it makes me consider the things I've come to take for granted since coming to Montreal. (And perhaps the simple sense of "wonder" I've lost in the process.)
By Richard Arzenshek
I can fully relate to what you've said. I grew up in small towns where nearly everyone knows each other. When I came to Montreal, everything was completely different. The transition from coming from a small town like Rawdon and moving to Montreal is huge, but I guess we all get used to it after a while. I've seen quite a lot of strange things going on in and around Montreal that I would've never seen elsewhere, at least not where I grew up. Seeing hundreds of homeless people, people begging for spare change, or when you can't see the end of a line to get into a bus or metro, is all hectic and stressful at first, but like you've said, it all comes with living in a big city.
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