Botanical Snow Storm in Montreal

We were both pretty set on our mission. The fact that a monster Spring snow-storm was in the early stages of dumping its avalanche onto the city meant little. We’d planned to hit the Renaissance used bookstores in Montreal, and nothing, not even a life-threatening post-Winter white-out was going to stop us. So, with warnings in both of Canada’s official languages blaring from the car radio, we took off, studiously, or stupidly, oblivious to the danger.

On the way, my fearless companion Michel Gautier had to stop at the Montreal Botanical Garden to meet with Anne Charpentier the new director. I planned to read a book in the cafeteria, assuming there was one, then we’d hit the shelves.

Fighting arctic conditions, we parked and walked over to the lobby of the art-deco complex. Michel introduced himself at reception. Anne was duly called, and Michel was accompanied to her office down a hallway. I looked for a cafe.

I’ve know Michel since the late 1980s when I was membership director at the Ottawa-Carleton Board of Trade and he was head of The Ottawa Tulip Festival (and subsequently Winterlude). We hit it off, but never became that close; until that is, about 10 years ago when he saw an article in The Ottawa Citizen about my launching Literary Tourist. He called up, invited me out for coffee, and told me that he was a crazy photography book collector.

He wasn’t joking. He has a huge collection. Whenever he travels anywhere on business he checks out all of the bookshops. Amsterdam, Paris, Beijing. Seoul.

I get shots of them wherever he goes. In fact, he has a frikin’ list of them all, right on his phone. He’s also developed an impressive database of all of his photobooks, complete with details on where he bought them, how much he paid, what they’re currently worth, and where they’re physically located.

I told him about Literary Tourist, my adventures interviewing book people, photographing bookshops, and collecting books myself. Yes, the ever-growing Biblio File podcast reference library featuring histories, biographies & memoirs of publishers, booksellers, book designers, plus related ephemera (book sales and collection catalogues for example).

This beauty from Faber for example.

Just to show you how good Michel’s collection is, I was recently planning to interview great photographer and collector Martin Parr for The Biblio File podcast, so I asked Michel if he had any volumes of Martin’s The Photobook: A History. Only two (of three) he apologized. But one’s signed! I was able to read the intros in advance of the interview thanks to Michel. You might like to listen to the conversation with Martin, here:

(And yes, Michel bought the third volume, directly from Martin, who signed it).

Since reuniting over the Citizen article, Michel and I have become pretty close - in the way bibliophiles do - getting out together as often as we can to cruise for books. I love having Michel along because when I get home I get to tell my wife Caroline that “Michel bought way more books than I did.” And it’s true. Every time. Michel gets to tell his wife, Bernadette, that I’m the one to blame for him always getting home late. We have an excellent symbiotic relationship.

I interviewed Michel about his passion for photobooks for The Biblio File. Listen here:

Back to the story. After Michel disappeared down the corridor I headed off to look for a cafe. Damned if the first thing I didn’t see was a sign for a library.

I walked through the door to find myself standing in the children’s section. On very short notice Steluta Ovesia the librarian

agreed to show me around. The collection is surprisingly comprehensive. Books on Quebec flora of course, with a number by the founder of the ‘Jardin’, Frère Marie-Victorin, a self-taught botanist, and the first chair of botany at Université de Montréal. Fifteen years after taking up this post he published Flore laurentienne (1935), an inventory of the plants of Québec. It contains detailed information on 1,917 plants. The Frère was a separatist, believing I suppose, that the more French Canadians knew about the land they inhabited, the more interested they’d be in taking ownership of it, their “natural birthright.” In addition to books on Quebec,

there are lots of reference guides here detailing the flora of all sorts of far-flung places, including Bikini

Britain

Australia

and this incredibly large run of books on Chinese flora, a result of a cultural exchange of sorts with that currently unacceptably lawless country (or is it that they’re too law full, squashing people’s freedoms in the way they do? Either way, it ain’t good).

The highlight of the collection, however, is upstairs. Steluta showed me into a back room and there they where: an extensive run of Curtis's Botanical Magazines.

The magazine was launched in 1787 by William Curtis and is still going strong, in fact, it’s the world’s longest running, continuously published botanical periodical. It features detailed descriptions and beautiful accompanying original colour illustrations of plants executed over the centuries

by some of the world’s

most renowned botanical artists.

Before I knew it, Michel had shown up. After he checked out the Curtises, we hit the slippery, snow-stacked road again. But not before reflecting that it really pays for the Literary Tourist to keep his eyes open when visiting gardens or galleries or small museums. You might not ordinarily associate these places with libraries, but you just never know when you might run into a beauty.

Our first stop after the botanical gardens turned out to be our last. After ploughing into the thick pile of snow that covered our eventual parking spot we browsed the Renaissance shop close-by without much success, and so headed back to the car in anticipation of our next stop.

We couldn’t budge. The snow was now appreciable deeper. We ducked into a nearby depanneur and they gave us a shovel. Twenty minutes and a lot of rocking later we finally made it out. The roads were now pretty dangerous. Or I should say, more dangerous. Visibility was close to zero, so we reluctantly decided to pack it in.

Over subsequent months, as Spring sprang into Summer, Michel and I undertook numerous outings, to estate and library sales, and to various English and French bookstores in the Montreal area, including Le Livres Voyageur, on rue Belanger

Encore on Sherbrooke, The Word on Milton, S.W. Welch on rue Saint-Viateur,

The Horror.

all of the other Renaissance outlets (we particularly like the one on Decarie) and Terry Wescott’s,

which is still open despite a lot of recent moving around.

I’d say the book hunting in Montreal is pretty good. Great really, when you consider how often I get to do it with Michel. We’ve decided to hit the antique stores next, rain, snow, sleet, or hail.