I have this “spiritual” connection with Montreal. Both of my grandparents on my mom’s side (Nana and Papa) were born there and my Papa and his siblings grew up in a convent there. (Side note: I have this awesome old, old, old polaroid of nuns in Montreal passed down from them.) My childhood is flooded with memories of my Nana going off on French tangents seasoned with French curse words.

As for my dad’s side, my grandma was from Montreal and has relatives still living there. Now for the best part (this actually deserves it’s own blog post): my great, great, great, great, great uncle on my dad’s side was Louis Cyr. Who you may know as the strongest man in the world. His record was probably beat by now, but I love telling stories about the time they attached two draft horses to his body and whipped them. He didn’t move an inch. There is a statue of him in Montreal. I long to visit it and change my last name to Cyr.

I have been to Montreal once before, but I have dreams of someday moving there and getting a cat and writing a book and learning French and struggling over syllables as I ask for a tomato panini. But I wrote all of this just to tell you that I made a new twitter account and “myshoeseverywhere” wasn’t available in English so I chose my username in French. @SouliersPartout