100 Strangers Project Part 3

Meet my strangers, part 3: René Vaillancourt (aka Billy Elliot). I met René on my way home from Parc La Fontaine today. He was out on break, from Reanud Bray where he is a bookseller. He was a great subject and very easy going. He told me that he is studying French literature at University of Montréal. After he learned I was Irish, he started naming off all the fantastic Irish writers and he even had heard of Seamus Heaney and John B Keane. He was totally impressed that John B's daughter was my English teacher in secondary school. René now resides in Montréal but was born in Québec city, where he spent a lot of his childhood. He went on to joke about Irish people and the movie Billy Elliot. He told me that I should call him Billy Elliot in this introduction. This picture was taken on the corner of St Denis and Marie Ann.