One could sayùand many didùthat Mavis Gallant's appearance at Metropolis Bleu Festival LittTraire International de MontrTal (April 3 at 7) to receive the $10,000 Blue Metropolis Literary Prize was "a triumphant return" to the city in which she was a child and where she became a woman. But can you return to a place you have never really left? Mavis Gallant did quit her Montreal job as a journalist at The Standard 52 years ago and went to live in Europe, mostly in Paris, in order to be a writer. But she has never had a passport other than her Canadian one and she never lost contact with the best of her Montreal friends and visited them often. More importantly, for those of us who know her only as the superb writer she became, and have discovered important parts of this city and uncovered both the foibles and the tenderness in our neighbours' lives through her stories, her presence is continuous and monumental. She brings this city to life in us every day in ways that only the greatest artists ever manage.

This was the third time the Grand Prix has been awarded in the four year history of the festival (previous winners are Marie-Claire Blais and Norman Mailer). It arrived just in time for this year's recipient to get some pleasure from the thing. "People keep asking me if I am pleased," Mavis Gallant told a packed audience, "and I've got to the point where I think of saying, æNo, my religion forbids me.'" The pleasure might have been greater had she had less difficulty leaving Paris. As she approaches her eightieth birthday next August, Mavis Gallant's body moves far less easily through space than her mind travels through time or her spirit through an audience. She brought a wild, peculiar joy as well as her trademark mordancy and incisiveness to the prize-giving and other events, including the festival's closing.

The festival's organizers planned on presenting her with this prize for "lifetime achievement" on the evening of April 4th by following the formal presentation with a reading of some selections of Mavis Gallant's works in French translation by Monique Proulx and in English by the author herself before Eleanor Wachtel would take the stage to record an interview for her radio show Writers' and Company. Aiming directly at it's own foot and successfully hobbling itself even further in the local marketplace, CBC Radio-Canada management locked out 1400 union members who work in radio and television just days before the festival began. All the scheduled hosts, including Wachtel, had to be replaced. The organizers chose Ian McGillis as Wachtel's substitute and it was an inspired choice. Mavis Gallant is one of those women who is attracted to men who actually like and enjoy the company of women (to borrow what Bernice Rubens said of herself when she spoke of Mordecai Richler a day later) and McGillis not only qualifies but is also the brightest and most perceptive literary journalist working in Montreal these days. Half her age and on the cusp of publishing his first novel next fall (A Tourist Guide to Gelengarry, Porcupine's Quill), he said afterwards, "For me, it was like sharing a stage with Hemingway, Nabokov or Narayan. That's the company of writers I place her in, so I couldn't even pretend to any sort of journalistic objectivity. It was the kind of opportunity that comes along once or twice in a lifetime if you're lucky. Definitely something to tell the grandchildren." Ian suffered severe pre-event stress but he said Mavis made it easy. His favourite moment was when she delivered a very deadpan "So I'm told" after he'd commented on how often she has written about expats and displaced people. She went on to say how she had no idea this was her subject matter until other people started pointing it out. It was a vintage Mavis Gallant moment. There were many that evening. Linda Leith, who is the festival's founder, president and artistic director, said it was "absolutely the best event in the history of Metropolis Bleu."

Speaking to McGillis by telephone from Paris before the event for a piece in the Montreal Gazette, Mavis Gallant had told him "When I was younger, I was absolutely opposed to writers accepting honours and prizes, but as I began to get them I realized they were being given in good faith. They didn't keep me from sticking to my guiding principles. And this one means a lot to me, being a Montreal prize." When she's in Paris and thinks about Montreal these days, she said, "I forget what Sherbrooke Street is now, and see it as it was in the æ40s, when I was working at a newspaper." The past is much on Mavis Gallant's mind because she's preparing her diaries for publication in five volumes. What isn't on her mind is thinking about her place in world literature: "No. If you start to do that, you're not a writer any more. You're sunk." And the principle guiding her writing? A Gallant story is "clear, plain, plausible like any fiction. I don't like fiddling with mystery, making people think, æWhat does she really mean?' I mean what's there."

The closing event of the festival put Mavis Gallant on stage in face to face conversation with a colleague from her days at The Standard and her longtime friend, William Weintraub. Using a bibliography of her early journalism as an aide memoire, he elicited and provoked a wonderful range of comments (and a wonderfully entertaining evening ) by taking her back to "the good old days" of Montreal journalism when Duplessis reigned, unions did not exist, women were paid half of what men got for the same jobs, films were so severely censored that guns could not be fired on-screen, everybody was on the take and homosexuality was a criminal offence. She also freely admitted to not remembering many of the stories she'd written. "Journalism leads to everything, providing you leave it," she said. As we left the festival, my companion reminded me that æmavis' is the French term for the song thrushùa bird that has a wonderful song of its own and is also a terrific mimic, the poetic and satirical cousin of the robin, our herald of spring. Her parents gave her the right name: She did rest herself. ò