The Doorman of Windsor Station

Francisco will forever be haunted by the sight of his best friend Juan lying on the floor of a train station, pierced by five bullets. He’ll remember that sight as he flees the political uprising in Uruguay that night. He’ll remember when he’s holding a dying homeless man in Windsor Station in Montreal eight months later. He’ll remember when he’s a successful architect. He’ll remember when he’s having an affair with a Québécoise pianist named Claire. He’ll remember when he’s much older, as a vagrant sleeping in a café that was once part of Windsor Station, where he meets his son, an activist in the student strikes in Quebec.

As he tries for a better life, Francisco’s past keeps finding him, until it blurs with the present in a series of hallucinations, challenging him to reclaim his identity and his rights.

Montreal-based playwright, director, and actor Julie Vincent received the Golden Plaque Award for Best Actress at the International Film Festival in Chicago for her role in Mourir a tue-tete (A Scream from Silence). She also won the Special Jury Award at Evry, France, for her one-woman show Noir de monde. She teaches at the National Theatre School of Canada and the Ecole nationale de cirque and is director of the theatre company Singulier Pluriel.

Hugh Hazelton is a Montreal writer and translator who specializes in the comparison of Canadian and Quebec literatures with those of Latin America. He has written four books of poetry and translates from Spanish, French, and Portuguese into English; his translation of Vetiver, a book of poems by Joel Des Rosiers, won the Governor General’s Literary Award for French-English Translation in 2006. He is a professor emeritus of Spanish at Concordia University.