awesome
Today I finally took some photos of the sword-fighting kids, as I had been planning to do. (Click here to get to the photo set)
Maybe this needs some explanation: there's a big weekly festival here in Montreal called "tam-tams", which is an onomatopoeic word used by Francophones to describe the sound a drum makes. Every summer Sunday afternoon the park at the bottom of Mont Royal fills with about a thousand hippies and regular people. Big crowds of them sit around the statue and beat on bongos and djembes, and sometimes two or three of them manage to strike their instruments at the same time. Other people sell things on blankets, juggle, or just sit around. (This will further explain it to you. Especially the photos.)
But if you push through the throng and move uphill, you'll come upon something which, for any number of reasons, you wouldn't expect to find. Here, a crowd of about eighty adolescent males (and a few females) lines up in two groups at either end of a dusty pitch the size of a soccer field. Their dress ranges from the classic black-jogging-pants-and-t-shirt combo to full-body chain mail under a fur-trimmed cape. But it's not their clothes that catch your attention: for each is carrying some variety of oversized weapon.
The swords, pikes and whatnot are handmade - usually a broomstick wrapped in plastic bags secured with duct tape. That may sound shoddy, but for the most part they are huge, ornate, and surprisingly sturdy. Although swords are the most common, I have also seen things that look like axes or ice picks, and today someone had a stick with a big block on the end. Its function was only too clear.
So once the groups are arranged, a messenger from each camp steps out a few paces and yells something insulting and French at the other group. This is the cue for everyone to start advancing toward each other; the twelve-year-olds do their best to brandish their weapons menacingly. When the two groups meet there is a flash of steel, and for the next ten minutes the air is filled with the dull slap of blade hitting flesh. The love radiating from the drum circle not three hundred meters away is eclipsed by the fierce reality of fake war.
The handful of spectators and photographers are largely ignored by the participants. When the fight is over, the dead and wounded stand up and everyone heads back to their side. Two messengers emerge soon after, and it starts all over again.
They do this for hours.
Anyway, it's all good fun, no-one gets hurt, and everyone involved seems to get a kick out of it. If you're ever in town on a Sunday during the warmer months, I'd recommend going out to have a look. The photos are good, but they're nothing like seeing the real thing.
Maybe this needs some explanation: there's a big weekly festival here in Montreal called "tam-tams", which is an onomatopoeic word used by Francophones to describe the sound a drum makes. Every summer Sunday afternoon the park at the bottom of Mont Royal fills with about a thousand hippies and regular people. Big crowds of them sit around the statue and beat on bongos and djembes, and sometimes two or three of them manage to strike their instruments at the same time. Other people sell things on blankets, juggle, or just sit around. (This will further explain it to you. Especially the photos.)
But if you push through the throng and move uphill, you'll come upon something which, for any number of reasons, you wouldn't expect to find. Here, a crowd of about eighty adolescent males (and a few females) lines up in two groups at either end of a dusty pitch the size of a soccer field. Their dress ranges from the classic black-jogging-pants-and-t-shirt combo to full-body chain mail under a fur-trimmed cape. But it's not their clothes that catch your attention: for each is carrying some variety of oversized weapon.
The swords, pikes and whatnot are handmade - usually a broomstick wrapped in plastic bags secured with duct tape. That may sound shoddy, but for the most part they are huge, ornate, and surprisingly sturdy. Although swords are the most common, I have also seen things that look like axes or ice picks, and today someone had a stick with a big block on the end. Its function was only too clear.
So once the groups are arranged, a messenger from each camp steps out a few paces and yells something insulting and French at the other group. This is the cue for everyone to start advancing toward each other; the twelve-year-olds do their best to brandish their weapons menacingly. When the two groups meet there is a flash of steel, and for the next ten minutes the air is filled with the dull slap of blade hitting flesh. The love radiating from the drum circle not three hundred meters away is eclipsed by the fierce reality of fake war.
The handful of spectators and photographers are largely ignored by the participants. When the fight is over, the dead and wounded stand up and everyone heads back to their side. Two messengers emerge soon after, and it starts all over again.
They do this for hours.
Anyway, it's all good fun, no-one gets hurt, and everyone involved seems to get a kick out of it. If you're ever in town on a Sunday during the warmer months, I'd recommend going out to have a look. The photos are good, but they're nothing like seeing the real thing.
