PARIS !!!

How Christine fell in love with the city and made me love it too.

On our wedding night.

Third time’s the charm, I s’pose. Here is my third attempt at telling this story. First two times, something went glitch and all my efforts vanished. A message from the other side? Perhaps Jodie Helm or Kat Medium could say? Just kidding, ladies.

It started when I wrote this piece about sad songs I love, and then wrote this one about Christine’s songs.

Ever since I started, I’ve been wanting to pay tribute to Christine’s persistence in bringing me to Paris and make me discover a world I would never have even suspected existed, so here it is.

After I graduated, I was posted to Canadian Forces’ Base Esquimalt, in Victoria BC, on Canada’s West Coast. Christine came with me as a common-law spouse. We were 22 and 23 years old and the only thing we knew was that we wanted us. She had given up her job as an RN to follow me. Plus, she didn’t speak English. So it took her quite a lot of courage.

But as soon as I arrived in Victoria I was almost immediately sent away. She had to fend for herself, all alone in a strange city, one where she couldn’t even understand the language. That’s Canada for many French Canadians: the name of the country’s the same, the money’s the same, the government’s the same but everything else is…