Guernica Editions

The Butcher of Park Ex is a humorous collection of personal stories inspired by growing up in Montreal's Park Extension neighbourhood. Not fitting in with his ethnic Greek community, and never feeling like part of mainstream Quebec society, Andreas Kessaris sets out on a forty-year search for answers, while trying to navigate a world where he is constantly the odd man out.

It was 1975 and the English/French dispute in Quebec was reaching a boiling point. The PSBGM English schools taught French in Kindergarten once a week for half an hour. The French teacher, Madame Sigeault, whom I referred to as “Madame Seagull” (not as a sign of disrespect; I actually thought that was her name … I said it to her face and she never corrected me), a no-nonsense, middle-aged blonde with thick glasses who always wore navy blue or black polyester pantsuits, showed up once a week. She never spoke so much as a word to the English teachers, who always seemed to greet her arrival with a low-level degree of snarky contempt.