Quebecwhaaa? Miss Stacia Goes To Canada (Part Deux)

Continued from Quebecwhaaa? Miss Stacia Goes To Canada (Part Un)

Museums, Bad and Good:

Pointe-à-Callière, Musée d'archéologie et d'histoire de Montréal:


Nobody warned me you'd be full of children.

Quebecwhaaa?: Miss Stacia Goes To Canada (Part Un)

Oh, Canada.

I booked my Summer '09 trip to Canada at the last minute, not knowing I would be hitting Montreal during the incomparable Jazz Fest until after my plane tickets were purchased, not expecting so many friends to offer up detailed itineraries that would run me frenzied around the city, not realizing the Canada Day Parade would literally march up to the front door of my hotel until I opened up my morning newspaper and walked outside for my daily oeufs.

The trip started of as somewhat of a clusterfuck affair when I realized my passport, which had expired on May 29, 2009, would be required to gain entry into and exit from our North American neighbor as of June 1, 2009. With fifteen days until my departure, Project Update Passport commenced. Against a background of white foam board velcroed over a wall of Mailboxes Etc. PO boxes, and under harsh flourescents used only to light corporate pack-and-ship institutions and the county morgue, a hyper-close mugshot was taken. In it, I resemble the cowardly lion on crack, thanks to a fourteen day stint of the most humid weather in New York history -- the ideal environment in which to prep for glamour shots that will stay with you for the next decade. But I guess it's better than the old photo, originally taken for a fake ID and swiped from my high school desk drawer by a mother with a nose for sniffing out rebellion, to be used on my actual passport. ("You saved me a trip!" she would say when she unearthed it.)

The last ten years, when the customs officers flipped open my little book and scanned their eyes from the passport, to me, to the passport, it was clear I was the kind of girl who wore makeup to the pool in her teenage years.


Would you let hair this big into your country?