Quebec Studies Open House

Around 4pm I got an e-mail in my Inbox from Dr Jarrett Rudy of the History department at McGill University. Apparently he doubles as the Department Head for the fledgling Quebec Studies program there as well. It seems they were having an open house to promote their program, complete with cheese, French bread, wine and (of course) Quebecois beer! I know my readers will be completely shocked that I decided to attend the event. After all, when has Al ever fallen for the old “free beer” recruiting tactic?

So I headed over, with a spring in my step, looking forward to checking this thing out. I arrived a bit later than the majority of the attendees, but in plenty of time to mingle a bit and sample the available beer. I wasn’t quite bold enough to introduce myself to the huddle of professors, but I gradually made the rounds. Once I was on my 3rd beer, I found myself trying to explain the Toronto-Montreal dynamic to a Parisian exchange student, which of course prompted chuckles from the PhD candidate from Alberta. I failed miserably to disguise my complete and total disdain for Toronto, but whatever.

Dr Rudy was also nice enough to offer to be a sounding board for ideas as I try to prepare a research paper for my application to the Masters program. It’ll be nice to get a bit of feedback so I don’t end up completely off track and whatnot. Now I have the unenviable task of trying to come up with a topic. That was always the reason I never tried to do Editorial work for the campus paper back in the day. Heck, I run into the same problem with this blog de temps en temps. So I appeal to my loyal readership: please submit history-related topics that could make for an interesting 15-20 page research paper.

For those anxiously my interview with Bernard Landry, it’ll probably be another few days. I’ve been taking my time with it. Til next time…