Pumpkins – The Concordian

Citrouilleville, a pumpkin village located one hour away from Montreal.

For all you fall fanatics out there, I have a fall activity that is a one hour drive from Montreal.

Citrouilleville credits itself to be ”the most original pumpkin village in Quebec.”

It is a little pumpkin village that is located in Saint-Zotique at the Ferme Benoit Vernier.

This pumpkin village features an abundance of activities. Citrouilleville is not only family friendly but dog friendly as well!

The creators of the pumpkin village got extremely creative and built various houses made out of pumpkins, and many vintage cars that you can pose with.

These vintage cars include a Volkswagen beetle, a Volkswagen bus and a Dodge pickup truck.

For the lovers out there, they’ve also set up a kissing booth.

Around the farm you can get whisked away in a tractor ride, or you can choose to get lost in the cornfield maze that they have set up.

On weekends, Citrouilleville has a lot of activities set up for kids. The staff put on performances for kids at different times on Saturdays and Sundays, and children can also indulge in facepainting and carnival games offered on-site.

The other nice thing about Citrouilleville is that they offer $1 squashes sold on-site as well as lots of different sizes of pumpkins. They also sell a variety of handmade goods like local honey and handmade jewelry.

There are snacks offered if you want to grab a bite to eat, including freshly popped popcorn (the smell wafts through the farm and honestly makes you salivate), corn on the cob, etc.

If you choose to visit the site at night, you will be dazzled by the lights that line the paths around the farm.

Citrouilleville is open on Saturdays from 9:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. On Sundays, they are open from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Admission is $17.50 for adults. Visitors can buy their tickets online and on-site.

Aside from weekends, they are exclusively open on Thanksgiving, Oct. 11, from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., as well as on Halloween, from 5 p.m. to 9:30 p.m.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY DALIA NARDOLILLO/The Concordian

In which Mim does Halloween the Montreal way

My Halloween started off with some good ol’ grocery shopping where I was served by a partially decapitated checkout chick. A corpse bride unpacked a box of long-life milk, a mime served me at the deli counter, and an Elizabethan Queen offered me a cheese sample. Like many other stores on Mount Royal Ave., the supermarket had been transformed into something dungeon-esque with spider webs, bats, pumpkins and skulls, but it was the costumes that impressed me the most.

On the way home I came close to death. I walked past him—the Grimm Reaper, that is—standing in front of a dépanneur. He held a scythe in one hand and a diet Coke in the other. Further down the street I passed a witch with five animal children trailing behind her and then a sailor smoking casually on the corner.

When night fell the kids came out. I could hear the trick-or-treaters from the eighth storey of my apartment building. Later in the evening, I went to my friend’s on the tenth floor to transform myself into something non-human. The day before, we found out that we happened to be dressing as the same thing: a pale, white-haired, stripey-suited Beetlejuice. What were the chances? We are both from Melbourne (but had met in the apartment elevator one evening in September), so perhaps it was some spooky telepathic Australian thing that only happens on Halloween. Although we were going to separate parties, we decided to get ready together. Sharing grey hair spray, white face paint and three metres of pinstriped fabric we created two very different Beetlejuices.

Just before midnight my flapper friend showed up with gin and a deadly amount of Halloween candy. Only at 1:30 a.m. did we finally rock up to the intended destination: Metropolis on Ste-Catherine St. for a Halloween event called First Kontakt. All kinds of creatures lurked out in front, but inside, it was another world. I admit, the night was a little hazy. I met a moose, may have been hit on by a gangster and (I think) was insulted by a zombie. Despite there being hundreds of people (perhaps over a thousand), I managed to bump into a university friend in the middle of the dance floor. Engulfed by a sea of people dressed as villains, sinister creatures, something sexual or something deceased, I felt like I was at the centre of post-apocalyptic madness.

Luckily I got home in one piece. Just. People sprinted for taxis like animals chasing after prey. A girl literally bared her teeth at me as she told me to get lost—“this is mine.” It was so hard to find an available cab that I didn’t get home until 5 a.m. I hear that the after party went past 7 a.m., so in that respect my evening was apparently pretty civilized. Montreal, you sure know how to Halloween.