He now calls New York home, but writer and political observer Adam Gopnik is back in his hometown of Montreal this weekend for the 20th edition of Blue Metropolis, an annual festival celebrating Montreal's writers.
Gopnik, 61, was raised in Montreal and attended McGill University before moving to New York City in 1980.
For the last 30 years, he's been a staff writer at The New Yorker, where he writes pieces on American political culture.
CBC is at the Blue Metropolis all weekend.
On Shania Twain saying that if she were eligible to vote, she would have voted for Donald Trump — and then apologizing for it
"I share the total distaste for these rituals of apology that now public people are put through regularly. If you look to Shania Twain for your political leadership, you should listen to Shania Twain.
I hate people being forced to apologize for saying what they believe even though I think it's fatuous, ridiculous and absurd."
On police officers wearing religious head coverings
"I'm genuinely torn about this … I'm enough of a North American to think that everyone should wear what they please to wear, whatever is natural to their faith and ethnicity.…
I learned in France that there's something to be said for the idea there's a private sphere and a public sphere. And when we meet in the public space, we meet as citizens, and we don't meet as members of our faith, as members of our particular ethnicity.
That's not a trivial idea. It's not one we were raised to believe, but I recognize that it expresses a genuine republican ideal of another kind.
So when the burka was banned in France for instance, most of my libertarian American friends, or just liberal friends, were aghast. I wasn't.
I understood the principle behind it, which was not to say, 'You can't wear the costume of your faith anywhere,' but to say, 'You can't wear it in the public sphere.'
It will become totally atomized and ethnicized as people… if we don't believe in and establish a public sphere of citizenship apart from our private demonstrations."
On Mount Royal being closed off to traffic from east to west
"We love Mount Royal. You won't believe this — we actually have a picture of Beaver Lake on our refrigerator, because [my wife] Martha [Parker] and I just love to look at Beaver Lake in wintertime when we are waking up in New York. That's one of the world's great parks.
I'm all for making it more park-like and less urban. Cars are a curse to the modern city.
Montreal deals with them better than most because of our underground city and other things. So I am all for banning cars from Mount Royal. I'm there. I'm there for that."
On what went wrong with the Habs
"Nothing could be clearer than the Subban trade, which was the single worst, worse even than the Patrick Roy trade, because Subban represented exactly what hockey is now — that is, a mobile, puck-moving defenceman, speed and youth.
You have to be out of your mind to trade speed and youth for age and stolidity in any sport, much less in hockey.
So if I were the GM of the Montreal Canadiens tomorrow, I would draft for speed and skill, and I would make an unequivocal commitment to young players who understood what their roles were from the moment they joined the team, and I would ride them for three or four years, and I would de-emphasize goaltending, and I think I would trade Carey Price, as great as he is, because I don't think it's essential the way hockey is played today.
And I would certainly trade Shea Weber but Nashville would not take him back."
On bagels: Montreal or New York?
"That's not a question. That's truly not a question. I can not eat a New York bagel, nor could I sleep with anyone who could or work for anyone who could.
I routinely bring Montreal bagels to my editor, David Remnick at The New Yorker.
David suffers under the delusion that there is such a thing as a New York bagel. And i bring him St Viateur bagels on a steady basis, and he is slowly seeing the light and the wisdom.
I think it's reflected in the pages of The New Yorker, which have been vastly improved by white seeds."
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