Littoral https://littoral.blog/ Writings from the shore between tides, ni tout à fait la terre ni tout à fait l'eau. Sun, 28 Jun 2026 22:46:06 +0000 https://i.snap.as/VfYWBePT.png Littoral https://littoral.blog/ Always Near Water https://littoral.blog/always-near-water?pk_campaign=rss-feed <![CDATA[I wake up early again today, following a pattern that has become an impromptu tradition. I swing by Tims first for a coffee (a medium French Vanilla this time), largely because nothing else is open. Then I make my way down to the Old Port. Taking a different route today, I walk down Boulevard Saint-Laurent, mounting the levees that once protected the city from river floods, before dropping back down to the banks to sit and write. I'm always near water these days. Today, it's the pond right near the King Edward entrance—a body of water that passes for natural until you learn it's emptied each autumn and refilled each spring. The benches here sit low enough that the city appears to grow straight out of the water. Maybe that impermanence is why I'm facing it today, my back turned to the river and the tourist industries clinging to the industrial quays like barnacles to the hull of an ocean liner. In the glare of my laptop screen, I can see the crane behind me that the bungee jumpers use. I've sat here enough times to watch a few of them drop. I still remember one whose head briefly dipped into the Saint Lawrence on the rebound: a baptism of sorts, a momentary connection with the ancestors. Yet, I am drawn back to this not-quite-pond, not-quite-fountain, with its calm waters and the grey limestone of Vieux-Montréal reflecting on the shimmering surface. Like many things in this city, the illusion breaks down the second you stand at the edge and look straight down; the usual sparse detritus of urban life sits at the bottom. But from this bench, with birds calling from all around me and the morning otherwise silent, it's more than enough.]]> I wake up early again today, following a pattern that has become an impromptu tradition. I swing by Tims first for a coffee (a medium French Vanilla this time), largely because nothing else is open. Then I make my way down to the Old Port. Taking a different route today, I walk down Boulevard Saint-Laurent, mounting the levees that once protected the city from river floods, before dropping back down to the banks to sit and write.

I'm always near water these days. Today, it's the pond right near the King Edward entrance—a body of water that passes for natural until you learn it's emptied each autumn and refilled each spring. The benches here sit low enough that the city appears to grow straight out of the water. Maybe that impermanence is why I'm facing it today, my back turned to the river and the tourist industries clinging to the industrial quays like barnacles to the hull of an ocean liner.

In the glare of my laptop screen, I can see the crane behind me that the bungee jumpers use. I've sat here enough times to watch a few of them drop. I still remember one whose head briefly dipped into the Saint Lawrence on the rebound: a baptism of sorts, a momentary connection with the ancestors. Yet, I am drawn back to this not-quite-pond, not-quite-fountain, with its calm waters and the grey limestone of Vieux-Montréal reflecting on the shimmering surface. Like many things in this city, the illusion breaks down the second you stand at the edge and look straight down; the usual sparse detritus of urban life sits at the bottom. But from this bench, with birds calling from all around me and the morning otherwise silent, it's more than enough.

]]> https://littoral.blog/always-near-water Sun, 28 Jun 2026 12:42:02 +0000 pour l'instant https://littoral.blog/pour-linstant?pk_campaign=rss-feed <![CDATA[Les gens ne semblent pas se rendre compte qu'il y a un nouveau prince dans cette ville même si je ne suis qu'un clochard pour l'instant. -- Dany Laferrière, Chronique d'une dérive douce, p. 55]]> Les gens ne semblent pas se rendre compte qu'il y a un nouveau prince dans cette ville même si je ne suis qu'un clochard pour l'instant.

— Dany Laferrière, Chronique d'une dérive douce, p. 55

]]> https://littoral.blog/pour-linstant Fri, 26 Jun 2026 15:48:02 +0000 Act Accordingly https://littoral.blog/act-accordingly?pk_campaign=rss-feed <![CDATA["Pleasure is not binary. It exists alongside fear, sadness, and politics. That is the history of Queer pleasure. We tend to tell one side of our history—of riots and martyrs—but ignore how much sex is a root of that liberation. The folks who judge and police another consenting adult's pleasure are just policing their own. For the past decade, we have experienced a massive paradigm shift through tools unimaginable to our ancestors: PrEP, HIV undetectability, DoxyPEP, vaccines, GPS apps. Our history is full of Queers who lament eras they missed out on. Stop arresting your own development and abolish the cop in your head, beloved. We are in a sexual revolution--act accordingly." -- Leo Herrera, (analog) CRUISING, pp. 134-135]]> “Pleasure is not binary. It exists alongside fear, sadness, and politics. That is the history of Queer pleasure. We tend to tell one side of our history—of riots and martyrs—but ignore how much sex is a root of that liberation. The folks who judge and police another consenting adult's pleasure are just policing their own. For the past decade, we have experienced a massive paradigm shift through tools unimaginable to our ancestors: PrEP, HIV undetectability, DoxyPEP, vaccines, GPS apps. Our history is full of Queers who lament eras they missed out on. Stop arresting your own development and abolish the cop in your head, beloved. We are in a sexual revolution—act accordingly.“

— Leo Herrera, (analog) CRUISING, pp. 134-135

]]> https://littoral.blog/act-accordingly Thu, 25 Jun 2026 14:37:12 +0000 Old Port, June https://littoral.blog/old-port-june?pk_campaign=rss-feed <![CDATA[The sun is out and the walk to the Old Port is warm and inviting. Recently I’ve been drawn to this bench that faces the river, the Grand Quai tower, and Habitat 67. This is my favourite part of the summer: mostly sunny, about 20 degrees, people out with their dogs and their coffees and their tote bags, crossing runners in short shorts with the light eastward breeze pushing through their hair. The river’s surface is calm, sparkling in the sun. Fitting: to my far right, a Canadian flag flutters in the wind, asserting its ownership over these stolen Indigenous lands and these waters that hold the remnants of my ancestors. It was always a lie. I know this because we are still here. I am still here. Still sitting in the sun on a Tuesday morning with nowhere to be but in the present moment.]]> The sun is out and the walk to the Old Port is warm and inviting. Recently I’ve been drawn to this bench that faces the river, the Grand Quai tower, and Habitat 67. This is my favourite part of the summer: mostly sunny, about 20 degrees, people out with their dogs and their coffees and their tote bags, crossing runners in short shorts with the light eastward breeze pushing through their hair.

The river’s surface is calm, sparkling in the sun.

Fitting: to my far right, a Canadian flag flutters in the wind, asserting its ownership over these stolen Indigenous lands and these waters that hold the remnants of my ancestors.

It was always a lie. I know this because we are still here.

I am still here. Still sitting in the sun on a Tuesday morning with nowhere to be but in the present moment.

]]> https://littoral.blog/old-port-june Tue, 23 Jun 2026 19:00:24 +0000 The Body Near Water https://littoral.blog/the-body-near-water?pk_campaign=rss-feed <![CDATA[Dionne Brand writes that every map a Black person makes begins at the door of no return — the rupture where the connection to origin was severed, where the Atlantic became the site of a dispossession so total that what it organized was not a journey with a destination but a navigation from a breaking that has no other side. The door does not draw you back through it. There is no back. What it produces instead is a particular structure of navigation: the body moving through geographies it did not choose, on land it arrived to under conditions not of its choosing, making maps from a point of irresolvable loss rather than from a legible origin. The water is where this structure is felt most honestly — not because it holds what was lost or promises what was severed, but because it is where the breaking happened and keeps happening, the ongoing condition of dispossession that the body is inside whether or not it has language for it. The St. Lawrence running east toward the Atlantic is not pulling the body toward something waiting on the other side. It is the body registering, near this specific water in this specific diaspora geography, the structure that has been organizing its navigation all along — the triangular piece of ice that pointed east from this river on a blustery February morning, the eastward orientation I keep returning to without deciding to, the body finding the water cities not because they were calling but because it is navigating from a rupture that makes every geography partial, every belonging conditional, every map a document of what cannot be returned to as much as of where you are. The body near Tiohtià:ke’s water, carrying what Kjipuktuk drew out of it, living inside Sharpe’s weather, navigating from Brand’s door — these are not separate conditions pressing on the same body but one condition, the structure of Black life in diaspora, felt here at the water’s edge.]]> Dionne Brand writes that every map a Black person makes begins at the door of no return — the rupture where the connection to origin was severed, where the Atlantic became the site of a dispossession so total that what it organized was not a journey with a destination but a navigation from a breaking that has no other side. The door does not draw you back through it. There is no back. What it produces instead is a particular structure of navigation: the body moving through geographies it did not choose, on land it arrived to under conditions not of its choosing, making maps from a point of irresolvable loss rather than from a legible origin. The water is where this structure is felt most honestly — not because it holds what was lost or promises what was severed, but because it is where the breaking happened and keeps happening, the ongoing condition of dispossession that the body is inside whether or not it has language for it. The St. Lawrence running east toward the Atlantic is not pulling the body toward something waiting on the other side. It is the body registering, near this specific water in this specific diaspora geography, the structure that has been organizing its navigation all along — the triangular piece of ice that pointed east from this river on a blustery February morning, the eastward orientation I keep returning to without deciding to, the body finding the water cities not because they were calling but because it is navigating from a rupture that makes every geography partial, every belonging conditional, every map a document of what cannot be returned to as much as of where you are. The body near Tiohtià:ke’s water, carrying what Kjipuktuk drew out of it, living inside Sharpe’s weather, navigating from Brand’s door — these are not separate conditions pressing on the same body but one condition, the structure of Black life in diaspora, felt here at the water’s edge.

]]> https://littoral.blog/the-body-near-water Sat, 06 Jun 2026 12:50:18 +0000 between the tower and the water https://littoral.blog/between-the-tower-and-the-water?pk_campaign=rss-feed <![CDATA[The basin at the Port de Montréal on an overcast day, grey water rippling in the foreground. something about the grey i keep not saying the cranes are still i am also still this is not the same thing the river was here before anyone decided where it ends habitat 67 stacks its windows into a question i already answered wrong somewhere in the pilings the current keeps moving through what we built to control it]]> The basin at the Port de Montréal on an overcast day, grey water rippling in the foreground.

something about the grey i keep not saying

the cranes are still i am also still this is not the same thing

the river was here before anyone decided where it ends

habitat 67 stacks its windows into a question i already answered wrong

somewhere in the pilings the current keeps moving through what we built to control it

]]> https://littoral.blog/between-the-tower-and-the-water Sun, 24 May 2026 17:45:17 +0000 Abundance https://littoral.blog/abundance?pk_campaign=rss-feed <![CDATA[“The ecosystems I was born into, and that form my body, are a boundary, a border between two separate and linked systems. On a macro scale, the boreal and mixed hardwood forests came together to create something new: a zone of overlapping presence that requires care, kindness, sacrifice and reciprocity to continue to bring forth a diversity and abundance of new life.” -- Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Theory of Water: Nishnaabe Maps to the Times Ahead, p. 68]]> “The ecosystems I was born into, and that form my body, are a boundary, a border between two separate and linked systems. On a macro scale, the boreal and mixed hardwood forests came together to create something new: a zone of overlapping presence that requires care, kindness, sacrifice and reciprocity to continue to bring forth a diversity and abundance of new life.”

— Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Theory of Water: Nishnaabe Maps to the Times Ahead, p. 68

]]> https://littoral.blog/abundance Fri, 22 May 2026 13:01:25 +0000 Parc La Fontaine in May https://littoral.blog/parc-la-fontaine-in-may?pk_campaign=rss-feed <![CDATA[A view across the étang du Parc La Fontaine, Tiohtià:ke, in early spring. A concrete retaining wall runs along the far bank where a few people sit or stand in small groups on the grass beyond it. Tall deciduous trees line the park, their leaves newly green. Parked cars are visible through the trees. Blue sky with light cloud.]]> A view across the étang du Parc La Fontaine, Tiohtià:ke, in early spring. A concrete retaining wall runs along the far bank where a few people sit or stand in small groups on the grass beyond it. Tall deciduous trees line the park, their leaves newly green. Parked cars are visible through the trees. Blue sky with light cloud.

]]> https://littoral.blog/parc-la-fontaine-in-may Wed, 20 May 2026 17:29:48 +0000 Habiter la mort https://littoral.blog/habiter-la-mort?pk_campaign=rss-feed <![CDATA[« L'omniprésence de la mort, l'habitude des deuils, la dévalorisation de la vie noire, l'exposition à l'aliénation, à l'expropriation et au génocide lui donnent une signification particulière. Il s'agit moins d'une forme-de-vie que d'une forme-de-mort. Non pas un refus de la mort, une absolue volonté de survie, mais une capacité à habiter la mort. Vivants parmi les morts ; morts parmi les vivants. L'une des raisons de la ténacité des populations noires partout où elles ont eu à subir des violences démesurées tient à leurs propres traditions de pensée. S'ils étaient déshumanisés, abandonnés à un flou entre la mort et la vie, leur dignité résidait dans des imaginaires, des ontologies, des visions de la mort et de la vie qui les rendaient aptes à faire face à ces catastrophes. » -- Norman Ajari, Le manifeste afro-décolonial, p. 57]]> « L'omniprésence de la mort, l'habitude des deuils, la dévalorisation de la vie noire, l'exposition à l'aliénation, à l'expropriation et au génocide lui donnent une signification particulière. Il s'agit moins d'une forme-de-vie que d'une forme-de-mort. Non pas un refus de la mort, une absolue volonté de survie, mais une capacité à habiter la mort. Vivants parmi les morts ; morts parmi les vivants. L'une des raisons de la ténacité des populations noires partout où elles ont eu à subir des violences démesurées tient à leurs propres traditions de pensée. S'ils étaient déshumanisés, abandonnés à un flou entre la mort et la vie, leur dignité résidait dans des imaginaires, des ontologies, des visions de la mort et de la vie qui les rendaient aptes à faire face à ces catastrophes. »

— Norman Ajari, Le manifeste afro-décolonial, p. 57

]]> https://littoral.blog/habiter-la-mort Sun, 17 May 2026 15:09:05 +0000 Travailler beaucoup, enfanter parfois, crever toujours https://littoral.blog/travailler-beaucoup-enfanter-parfois-crever-toujours?pk_campaign=rss-feed <![CDATA[« Pour qui se donne la peine d'observer l'histoire de la négrophobie à travers le regard des intellectuels et des activistes afrodescendants qui l'ont étudiée et combattue, un tout autre tableau se dessine. La déshumanisation des Noirs cesse d'apparaître comme un phénomène générique et se présente comme une singularité. Les navires négriers et les plantations du Nouveau Monde furent des laboratoires de la discipline et de l'exploitation capitalistes. Ils se sont bâtis pour accompagner un déplacement de populations sans précédent : des lieux comme les Antilles, le sud des actuels États-Unis, le Brésil ont été repeuplés de captifs noirs qui n'étaient pas conduits là pour fonder sociétés et civilisations, mais pour travailler beaucoup, enfanter parfois, crever toujours. La colonisation du continent africain l'a balafré de frontières hasardeuses, a imposé une économie dévouée au monde blanc et une dévalorisation intégrale de la vie noire. La mutilation, la réécriture et la confiscation de l'histoire, des œuvres d'art, des sciences et des savoirs africains demeurent sans précédent. Aujourd'hui, aux États-Unis, en Grande-Bretagne, en France, au Canada, les Noirs sont largement surreprésentés dans les prisons. » —Norman Ajari, Le manifeste afro-décolonial, pp. 19-20]]> « Pour qui se donne la peine d'observer l'histoire de la négrophobie à travers le regard des intellectuels et des activistes afrodescendants qui l'ont étudiée et combattue, un tout autre tableau se dessine. La déshumanisation des Noirs cesse d'apparaître comme un phénomène générique et se présente comme une singularité. Les navires négriers et les plantations du Nouveau Monde furent des laboratoires de la discipline et de l'exploitation capitalistes. Ils se sont bâtis pour accompagner un déplacement de populations sans précédent : des lieux comme les Antilles, le sud des actuels États-Unis, le Brésil ont été repeuplés de captifs noirs qui n'étaient pas conduits là pour fonder sociétés et civilisations, mais pour travailler beaucoup, enfanter parfois, crever toujours. La colonisation du continent africain l'a balafré de frontières hasardeuses, a imposé une économie dévouée au monde blanc et une dévalorisation intégrale de la vie noire. La mutilation, la réécriture et la confiscation de l'histoire, des œuvres d'art, des sciences et des savoirs africains demeurent sans précédent. Aujourd'hui, aux États-Unis, en Grande-Bretagne, en France, au Canada, les Noirs sont largement surreprésentés dans les prisons. »

—Norman Ajari, Le manifeste afro-décolonial, pp. 19-20

]]> https://littoral.blog/travailler-beaucoup-enfanter-parfois-crever-toujours Thu, 14 May 2026 15:20:12 +0000