Big Youth - "Solomon a Gunday"

Every few months in the city of Montreal there is a big wind that changes everything. It blows through and makes people listen to yacht rock instead of noise rock, Kate Bush instead of Manu Chao. It pushes them inside to hide for six months or scatters them across the park grass.

Yesterday there was a wind like that. It blew through the city and tore up the Marché Jean-Talon. Or maybe it just seemed that way. The temporary walls that surround the market through the winter were down and returned to storage, nowhere to be seen. Under the tall concrete roofs everything was suddenly exposed to the elements. The few remaining pieces of pink insulation were stacked in wheelbarrows waiting to be carried off to the dumpsters. The main thoroughfare, where the stalls selling local potatoes, garlic, arugula, apples, eggs, honey will soon be packed tight with produce, green, red, orange, yellow, were empty. The painted wooden pieces that will make up those stalls were stacked in haphazard piles in the corners and yellow caution tape was hung across the entry keeping the people out. The market was quickly expanding from its constrained winter self into its summer glory in one or two days of frantic activity, forklifts buzzing around at full speed. I bought some fiddleheads for supper. Seasons change.

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(photo by Spike)