Analog
Place: A seat by the window facing the bike path, Pikolo Espresso Bar, Quartier des spectacles, Tiohtià:ke Date: 2026-10-03, 08:17 EDT Conditions: Sleepy-eyed. 7ºC, sunny, cool autumn breeze coming from the northwest, sunlight and wayward glances reflecting off my circular black sunglasses on the walk over.
My Apple Watch is dead when I wake up, already prepared to wander. I slipped it onto its magnetic charger without thinking—muscle memory—and grabbed my other watch instead: a black, circular Fossil watch with a black face and band. Its battery has been dead for a while now, too, the hands stuck at 05:25 on the morning of an 18th that I can’t quite remember. Still, I slip it over my left wrist, mostly to cover the watch tan that has been fermenting all summer. For a second, I’m somewhere else entirely: frolicking with friends through the Champ des possibles, trekking across Parc René-Lévesque toward the water, feeling my heart rate increase as I pass the cruising spot near the tracks. I catch myself and come back.
I slide on my bomber jacket and glance at the watch face. Dead battery, right, of course. I remember now all those days I meant to change it, but didn’t. It seemed so trivial that I stopped seeing it as a choice. I roll my sleeve down to cover it, as if anyone was paying attention, and meander out the door.
Place-des-Arts is quiet. Birds chirp in the crisp Saturday morning air, and tourists cluster at the corner of Sainte-Catherine and Jeanne-Mance. A young father is playing with his daughter in front of the Columbus Café, running through the shade and sun thrown by Maestria, the two condo buildings connected by a pedestrian bridge on their twenty-sixth floor. Finally looking up, the child’s mother pulls her phone out of the top of the empty stroller and snaps a photo.
I often think about how slowly this city wakes up on a Saturday. Just a touch too late, wiping the crust from its eyes and shaking out its hair as it coaxes itself back to life. Gently. There’s an expression for this type of morning in French that doesn’t survive translation: grasse matinée. A morning that’s slow; indulgent. Forgiven in advance. My pace slows for a split second before the walk pulls me back into myself.
A small cluster of tourists jaywalks from the opposite corner of Sainte-Catherine and Saint-Urbain. The streets are all empty at this time, of course. My eyes flick, reflexively, to the SPVM headquarters. I keep waiting for the traffic light anyway.
Up Clark, some unhoused folks are sleeping on wet benches, covered in blankets. The city’s security apparatus is also slow to rise on a Saturday morning, just like everything else. But I know how this goes: by the time the tourist veneer needs the streets to look a certain way, these folks will be cleared up, scuttling through the city with their belongings, their histories, their whole lives, stuffed into backpacks while the whole city looks away.
I get to Pikolo and decide to take my coffee for here. I’m sitting by the big windows facing the bike path down rue Ontario. I chat with the barista about paper newsletters stacked on the counter, the ones made by a community member who got tired of the algorithm deciding what she saw and when. She chose to build instead. The concept is simple, yet profound: folks submit whatever they feel like sharing, and a newsletter full of poetry, reflections, and horoscopes is printed on coloured paper, folded with care, and distributed to others who need the digital detox. No more news feed, no algorithmic ranking, no one editing to maximize engagement. I take out my notebook and a book I just picked up from the BAnQ that’s due back in a couple of weeks. Both analog. Both, for now, still working.