Montreal, Day 3
Oct. 14th, 2014 10:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
missizzyLet's see if I can keep my head on straight after watching that most recent episode of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. long enough to write this:
Friday morning while mom went off for some final Fanny Burney sessions, I joined some other JASNA people on a tour bus bound for Montreal's huge Botanical Garden. On the bus was a guy to turn the ride into a tour by itself; he gave us history and stats on the city, told us about how apartments built at a certain time had outside stairs even to the ones on the second floor and the complications caused by large amounts of snow. We also took a circuit around the Olympic Park; he told us the history of the stadium and other buildings, including a velodrome-turned-biodome, and claimed this particular construction project, aside from giving the city a bad credit report for leaving it in debt for thirty years, didn't actually cost the citizens anything unless they smoked, because the money to pay for it was drawn solely from revenues generated by a cigarette tax. I make no assumptions as to his honestly, but certainly enough people smoke in Montreal to actually make this story plausible.
I would've liked to have spent the entire day in the Botanical Garden, or at least come back at night to see the Chinese lanterns properly lit up. We were split between four guides, and I was lucky enough to end up with the one who paid attention enough to know the conference's theme was Mansfield Park, read it to get ready for us, and was able to tell us about the real-life celebrity landscape designer mentioned redoing the estate of the rich idiot Mr. Rushworth. She especially talked about it while taking us through one of two rose gardens we went through to get to other gardens, though having just finished Mockingjay the previous day I admit I was not caring for roses at that moment.
We ended up spending the longest period of time in the Chinese Garden, a garden created in China in imitation of a Ming Dynasty private garden, shipped to Canada, and re-planted/re-assembled there. It was an incredibly large affair, complete with a proper entrance, a pond(filled with large ship-shaped lanterns matching the year's theme of honoring a medieval Chinese explorer), and a family temple. Also a collection of miniature Chinese penzai trees, which preceded the cultivating of the more famous bonsai trees of Japan.
She then led us to a Japanese Garden with a similar history, expect it was a garden you might find in Japan in the modern day. It had a number of side displays, including a gallery of modern ceremonial kimonos, and a bonsai collection. She shortened our tour of it because we were running low on time, though she was sure to show us the lantern by the great pool, lead us over the bridge where the koi fish were gathered for the food we're not supposed to throw at them but they expect enough to flock there, and a Japanese trees the leaves of which smell like caramel when you rub them, at least according to the others, though as I don't care for caramel I didn't really test that out.
We ended up having to rush through the First Nations Garden, though she did get one of the people working in it(all of whom are First Nation people) to talk about it a little. The parts we were in felt more like a wild wood than anything else, but I'm sure I would've discerned it better with more time. We then headed back to the bus, though just before going out we lingered a little in an 18th-century French-style garden, with a big plot of dahlias we all enjoyed walking through.
The tour bus then took us to the Chateau Dufresne, a big house built by a very rich pair of French-Canadian brothers a little less than a hundred years ago. We ended up being rather late and our tour there was abbreviated too, but we got to learned the history of the house and see some amazingly decorated ceilings; I especially liked the depictions of Cupid and Psyche in the ladies' retiring room. The house was in fact two dwellings in one, so each brother and his family could have their separate space, but we had less time to tour the second dwelling.
We got back just in time for the 2014 Jane Austen Society of North America Annual General Meeting to be opened with speeches and a lecture about the newspapers in Austen's time and how she made use of them, especially in Mansfield Park. Certainly there was lots of lurid scandal-sheeting he was able to tell us all about, but what that had to do with Austen's novels was much more limited than he liked to admit, and my mother was extremely unimpressed to determine he had not read Austen's letters, which had her actually reacting to reading the news. A good deal of the lecture was also incoherent. It was after this discouraging start that I ran downstairs to eat a quick bag of chips in the place of lunch before running upstairs for the first of two breakout sessions, which are different lectures given simultaneously, with people choosing which ones they want to attend.
The first session I attended was on the plays the characters in Mansfield Park consider putting on before deciding to stage Lover's Vows, which our lecturer also spoke of. It actually wasn't that in-depth a lecture, giving basic details of the plays, whether they actually might have been appropriate reflections of what was going on between various characters, and whether the number of roles and especially female roles would've worked. The lecturer also spoke of having a fantasy of Henry Crawford playing MacHeath in The Beggar's Opera, which is certainly an intriguing idea, completely with Maria and Julia Betram as his two ladies. I joined my mother for the second, which was about the houses at the time, and their general history, and how Mansfield Park is actually a "new" house, and all the ways it would've been different from the older houses, whose owners might have even considered it to be vulgar in design. The lecture also discussed at great length how much the "new" money at the time was raised through slavery and the slave trade, and all in all was a very in-depth detail intensive lecture.
Mom had also been a judge in an essay contest held for high-schoolers, undergrads, and graduate students, and in that capacity she and I were both invited to eat dinner with the other judges and the winners at a large bar just next to the hotel. Trying to avoid getting there more than five minutes late, we found ourselves arriving a good amount of time before anyone else did, which was embarrassing, but eventually everyone else showed up. The talk and the company was good, although the restaurant was loud and the food wasn't really worth the high prices.
The final event of the day I went to was A Dangerous Intimacy, a so-called "behind-the-scenes" portrayal of the attempt at staging Lovers' Vows at Mansfield Park. The play was mostly rehashing of the events of the novel, condensed where convenient, expanded where convenient, and spruced up with meta jokes(Fanny, in a reversal from her mindset in the book, tells the audience at one point she's not worried because Austen always gives her heroine the happy ending), modern jokes, and visual gags(Mrs. Norris wears the curtain the entire time, and when Sir Thomas returns from Antigua he's wearing a modern straw hat and Caribbean tourist shirt). Also the Prince Regent showing up as deux ex machina at the end, which was kind of random but kind of funny. Mom stayed downstairs to attend some singing but I was too worn out, and retreated upstairs to unwind and then sleep.
Friday morning while mom went off for some final Fanny Burney sessions, I joined some other JASNA people on a tour bus bound for Montreal's huge Botanical Garden. On the bus was a guy to turn the ride into a tour by itself; he gave us history and stats on the city, told us about how apartments built at a certain time had outside stairs even to the ones on the second floor and the complications caused by large amounts of snow. We also took a circuit around the Olympic Park; he told us the history of the stadium and other buildings, including a velodrome-turned-biodome, and claimed this particular construction project, aside from giving the city a bad credit report for leaving it in debt for thirty years, didn't actually cost the citizens anything unless they smoked, because the money to pay for it was drawn solely from revenues generated by a cigarette tax. I make no assumptions as to his honestly, but certainly enough people smoke in Montreal to actually make this story plausible.
I would've liked to have spent the entire day in the Botanical Garden, or at least come back at night to see the Chinese lanterns properly lit up. We were split between four guides, and I was lucky enough to end up with the one who paid attention enough to know the conference's theme was Mansfield Park, read it to get ready for us, and was able to tell us about the real-life celebrity landscape designer mentioned redoing the estate of the rich idiot Mr. Rushworth. She especially talked about it while taking us through one of two rose gardens we went through to get to other gardens, though having just finished Mockingjay the previous day I admit I was not caring for roses at that moment.
We ended up spending the longest period of time in the Chinese Garden, a garden created in China in imitation of a Ming Dynasty private garden, shipped to Canada, and re-planted/re-assembled there. It was an incredibly large affair, complete with a proper entrance, a pond(filled with large ship-shaped lanterns matching the year's theme of honoring a medieval Chinese explorer), and a family temple. Also a collection of miniature Chinese penzai trees, which preceded the cultivating of the more famous bonsai trees of Japan.
She then led us to a Japanese Garden with a similar history, expect it was a garden you might find in Japan in the modern day. It had a number of side displays, including a gallery of modern ceremonial kimonos, and a bonsai collection. She shortened our tour of it because we were running low on time, though she was sure to show us the lantern by the great pool, lead us over the bridge where the koi fish were gathered for the food we're not supposed to throw at them but they expect enough to flock there, and a Japanese trees the leaves of which smell like caramel when you rub them, at least according to the others, though as I don't care for caramel I didn't really test that out.
We ended up having to rush through the First Nations Garden, though she did get one of the people working in it(all of whom are First Nation people) to talk about it a little. The parts we were in felt more like a wild wood than anything else, but I'm sure I would've discerned it better with more time. We then headed back to the bus, though just before going out we lingered a little in an 18th-century French-style garden, with a big plot of dahlias we all enjoyed walking through.
The tour bus then took us to the Chateau Dufresne, a big house built by a very rich pair of French-Canadian brothers a little less than a hundred years ago. We ended up being rather late and our tour there was abbreviated too, but we got to learned the history of the house and see some amazingly decorated ceilings; I especially liked the depictions of Cupid and Psyche in the ladies' retiring room. The house was in fact two dwellings in one, so each brother and his family could have their separate space, but we had less time to tour the second dwelling.
We got back just in time for the 2014 Jane Austen Society of North America Annual General Meeting to be opened with speeches and a lecture about the newspapers in Austen's time and how she made use of them, especially in Mansfield Park. Certainly there was lots of lurid scandal-sheeting he was able to tell us all about, but what that had to do with Austen's novels was much more limited than he liked to admit, and my mother was extremely unimpressed to determine he had not read Austen's letters, which had her actually reacting to reading the news. A good deal of the lecture was also incoherent. It was after this discouraging start that I ran downstairs to eat a quick bag of chips in the place of lunch before running upstairs for the first of two breakout sessions, which are different lectures given simultaneously, with people choosing which ones they want to attend.
The first session I attended was on the plays the characters in Mansfield Park consider putting on before deciding to stage Lover's Vows, which our lecturer also spoke of. It actually wasn't that in-depth a lecture, giving basic details of the plays, whether they actually might have been appropriate reflections of what was going on between various characters, and whether the number of roles and especially female roles would've worked. The lecturer also spoke of having a fantasy of Henry Crawford playing MacHeath in The Beggar's Opera, which is certainly an intriguing idea, completely with Maria and Julia Betram as his two ladies. I joined my mother for the second, which was about the houses at the time, and their general history, and how Mansfield Park is actually a "new" house, and all the ways it would've been different from the older houses, whose owners might have even considered it to be vulgar in design. The lecture also discussed at great length how much the "new" money at the time was raised through slavery and the slave trade, and all in all was a very in-depth detail intensive lecture.
Mom had also been a judge in an essay contest held for high-schoolers, undergrads, and graduate students, and in that capacity she and I were both invited to eat dinner with the other judges and the winners at a large bar just next to the hotel. Trying to avoid getting there more than five minutes late, we found ourselves arriving a good amount of time before anyone else did, which was embarrassing, but eventually everyone else showed up. The talk and the company was good, although the restaurant was loud and the food wasn't really worth the high prices.
The final event of the day I went to was A Dangerous Intimacy, a so-called "behind-the-scenes" portrayal of the attempt at staging Lovers' Vows at Mansfield Park. The play was mostly rehashing of the events of the novel, condensed where convenient, expanded where convenient, and spruced up with meta jokes(Fanny, in a reversal from her mindset in the book, tells the audience at one point she's not worried because Austen always gives her heroine the happy ending), modern jokes, and visual gags(Mrs. Norris wears the curtain the entire time, and when Sir Thomas returns from Antigua he's wearing a modern straw hat and Caribbean tourist shirt). Also the Prince Regent showing up as deux ex machina at the end, which was kind of random but kind of funny. Mom stayed downstairs to attend some singing but I was too worn out, and retreated upstairs to unwind and then sleep.
