Placemats
Place: By the window facing south, Le Vieux St-Laurent, Tiohtià:ke Date: 2026-10-05, 08:52 EDT Conditions: 11°C, cloudy. Cold hands, dry air, and the muffled din of cooking and conversation.
I wake up with the sun, despite it being obscured by my thick, green velvet curtains. I rise with it anyway, slow and unhurried, flattening the sheets and making the bed before drawing the curtains back on a city dotted with election signs. I light some Nag Champa at my altar. A deep inhale; a moment of calm before the calamity.
I lace up my black combat boots, tightening as I go, and slide my passport through the elastic band of my Traveler’s notebook. Today is election day, and though my polling station doesn’t open for a few hours, I’ll keep it with me, just in case. The door closes behind me with a thud and I’m on my way.
Downtown is eerily empty for this time of morning, and it makes sense: all of the colleges and universities are closed today to give their students a dedicated day off to vote. Their absence bounces off the walls of the buildings on Sainte-Catherine, my footsteps falling a touch louder than I’m used to. I make my way over to Olimpico for an oat latte and a chocolatine, which I eat on the bench outside more out of duty than hunger, before sauntering toward the gates of McGill’s empty campus.
A breeze rushes through the trees and scatters small yellow leaves across the cobbled path, where they turn in the air a moment before landing. The seasons, too, are changing. I fold that knowledge up, tuck it into the plastic zipper pocket at the front of my notebook, and take an instinctual right at the Y intersection, toward Milton-Parc. Low light catches the red brick and limestone, a Bixi clicks free of its dock, and the birds are unusually quiet for an autumn morning.
Once on Parc, I hop on the 80 up to Parc Jeanne-Mance. Michèle Deslauriers’ voice announces my stop through the bus’ tinny speakers: « Prochain arrêt : Monument Sir-George-Étienne-Cartier. » I wander down the stairs and through the empty park. It's undergone significant redevelopment, largely for the better: more washrooms, water fountains, splash pads, a new football field. I settle onto a picnic table facing a fence and the field. Its transition is almost done. Others are just beginning.
I spark a joint. I’ve been struggling to keep food down these days, especially in the mornings, and this is one of the only things I’ve found that helps. This morning is no exception: the chocolatine is sitting weird in my stomach. I stare at the empty field, smoke curling between my index and middle fingers. I pull out my phone and check the location of my polling station on the Élections Québec website before closing the tab. Not that my vote changes much: my riding has been a PLQ stronghold since it was created, and it doesn’t look likely to change anytime soon.
Eventually, I put the joint out and make my way through the park. East for a couple of blocks down Rachel, then a left down Saint-Laurent toward the restaurant that bears its name. I walk in with a smile and grab a seat at one of the tables by the window. This is always where I sit when I come here—a bit of a tradition, if you could call it that. Greasy-spoon comfort food served with black coffee in a white ceramic mug, on paper placemats and particle board tables. I’m right here. I’m already elsewhere.
Every summer when I was younger, we would take a road trip from Toronto “back home,” to the sleepy town in the Outaouais where my mom was raised, and where a good chunk of her large, Catholic, French-Canadian family still lives. Hell, about half the town is related in some way or another. I remember my excitement as we’d pile into her green Chevy Malibu at three in the morning and snake up the province’s asphalt arteries toward its edge: Highway 401 until the junction with the 37 in Belleville, through Thrasher’s Corner, Roslin and Tweed, then east on Highway 7 to Kaladar and its general store, where we’d usually stop for a coffee or a snack. Then Highway 41: up through Cloyne, along the glistening shores of Upper Mazinaw Lake, through Denbigh, Eganville and Pembroke, to Cotnam Island and the Ontario-Québec border.
The border was always the most exciting part of the journey. The sign made a spectacle of itself: huge, blue and white, an illuminated flagpole welcoming you to the province, first in French, then in other, smaller languages. On the Ontario side, the equivalent was a simple sign with an invitation to discovery and little more. We tuned the radio to 101.9 CHIP FM and made our way up Highway 148. The crawl from there to town felt almost interminable, though my childhood excitement is likely distorting my memory of it. Some years, if I was lucky, we skipped the first intersection with rue Thomas-Lefebvre and carried on about a kilometre, to the street’s other end.
That was where my cousin Jen’s restaurant and dépanneur sat, right at the edge of town. It was one of the only businesses around, inviting drivers in for breakfast, a pack of smokes, fishing tackle, or some scratch tickets sold with a smile. You entered through the main door and took an immediate left through some swinging doors into the seating area, which was what we always did. It was a simple spot, but, in my eyes, it was the best restaurant in the world.
Jen’s fluffy buttermilk pancakes remain one of the highlights of my childhood. They were always served with a small pitcher of pure maple syrup, a huge smile, and a ruffle of my hair that I can still feel if I close my eyes and concentrate hard enough. Once our food was ready, Jen would come over with an ashtray and a pack of Macdonald Originals, and she and my mom would sit and catch up for hours. My mom’s French eased back into place as the conversation went on, less switching between French and English, comfort coating her tongue alongside the cigarette smoke.
I used to have fun folding those paper placemats into paper airplanes and throwing them around the empty dining room while my mom and Jen were shooting the shit. You know the ones: Bienvenue printed over Welcome in burgundy, in that typical serif font, on cream-coloured paper with lacy printed edges. Later, they changed them for another style: basically a page full of advertisements for local businesses and restaurants, and politicians’ faces staring back at you while you eat. I used to scribble over their faces. Plus ça change… Jen’s restaurant closed for good a few years later.
Le Vieux St-Laurent used to have those same burgundy and cream placemats. Maybe that’s why I’m here, on this particular morning. Seeking comfort, I find another paper placemat instead: the same layout in light blue on stark white. The sun bounces off it into my eyes, which still have sleep in the corners, all to tell me how many grams of protein a 250 ml glass of milk would add to my meal (nine, in case you were wondering), with a printed reminder in the bottom left-hand corner to order a glass. I open the menu with a sigh, though I already know what I’m getting. Buttermilk pancakes, extra syrup.