a stolen chair

Today is a rainy autumn day, a perfect day to sit down on a chair and write a little. We had dinner guests from Belgium over yesterday evening, so I'm in the fortunate position of being able to have a mimosa from left over Cava we served and chocolate from our desert. Not a bad start to a rainy Sunday. 

Yesterday was a sunny Saturday, so we swopped the gym for a walk outside, around our precious Parc Lafontaine.

I had received a message from my "godmother-in-law" and decided it was a great idea to send her a picture of her godson enjoying a sunny day at the park, so we sat down on the funny chairs at the Léo Ayotte viewpoint.

Underneath each chair there is an object, a pair of shoes, a lunch bag, a folded newspaper, a book or a ball. All equally made in metal and permanently stuck to the ground. I like this spot, it's the second part of a sculpture group designed by Michel Goulet. The first part can be found at another lovely spot only a few steps away from the park, at Place Roy. This piece of art called "les lecons singulières" was not at all well received back in the 90's when it was installed. People got angry, because you were not able to sit on the chairs. The chairs got vandalized several times and one even stolen, so they had to remove them and the place was empty for a year.
   

In 1999 they came up with another way to attach the chairs to the ground and a copy was made of the stolen one and two more chairs were added so that people would be able to sit. I find this a funny story that gives a pretty good insight of how people think in the province of Quebec. Why just walk past these chairs and admire the mystery of them, when you can revolt against them and even steel one? 
The stolen chair was recovered twelve years later and it got placed in the Botanical garden as part of a work called "Un jardin à Soi". In other words a must see chair in Montreal and now on my to do list for my next visit to the Botanical garden. 
To Michel Goulet a chair is "the pretext for meeting new people, sharing and communicating" and so it inspired him in his sculptural work.

We ended our walk by getting cupcakes from a bakery and walking back to the park. It was pretty crowded at the park and each time we saw an empty bench we rushed over to it in vain to see somebody else steel it right in front of us. We ended up sitting down on a stone eating the cupcakes. Equally comfortable however. 

After these cute but a little too sweet cupcakes we rushed home to prepare the dinner for our Belgium friends. Later in the evening we all sat down at the dinner table sharing, laughing and talking. We tried to figure out the last time some of us had met and came to the conclusion it was 6 years ago, around a dinner table sitting on chairs in Finland. It is true that chairs play a central role in bringing us humans together, I had never really thought about it before.