Tuesday 30 August 2011

Marketing in Montreal

Every year, the last weekend in August, Pointe-A-Calliere museum in Montreal helps put on a farmer's market, with local artisans, demonstrators, and re-enactors, all dressed up, with the aim of giving an 18th C. flavor to the whole thing. We try to make it down every year or two, so this past Saturday was our fix this year.

We wandered the booths, watched a shearer doing her thing with manual shears, and a cutlery maker/silversmith in wooden shoes expounding to an audience gathered around his portable stove.

Ladies and gentlemen chatted, and the soldiers gave a parade and military demonstration.


Several groups of buskers and musicians played music, and common people gossiped, shopped, or tended their market stalls.


Activities for the children included more active pastimes, but also an embroidery school, and several of the participants seemed very absorbed in their work.

And we feasted on lamb sausage, artisan cheese, truffles for dessert, and passed up fresh cider, instead trying a herb drink which proved surprisingly tasty, and more thirst-quenching than the cider would have been in the heat.

Of course a few purchases got made also. I came home with hand-woven linen washcloths, and a loaf of bread, and my mother had bread also, along with honey, and a liqueur made from a berry that's a gooseberry/blackcurrant cross.

We had planned to do some fabric shopping up St. Hubert street, but only made it to one shop before they closed. Fortunately, that one had some lovely linen, marked down by about 40%, as the store is going out of business. A few meters of drapey tan linen, and their remaining stock of fine white handkerchief-weight joined the day's purchases. All in all, it was a good day's work, I think.

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