The art of the 'Power Look'

One lesson we learned quickly was beware of traffic, both pedestrian and autos. There is a unique dynamic at play in Montreal among the French Canadians. The pedestrians and bicyclists travel anywhere they please [including down the middle of the sidewalk and the middle of the road] and display a flippant attitude of "I'm not backing down so watch out". The autos perform in much the same fashion, except they do not actually drive on the sidewalks very often. During these cat and mouse maneuvers, the autos "size up" the approaching pedestrians [P] and bicyclists [B] looking for any sign of hesitation or weakness. The P and B do likewise when an auto approaches head on. Once either player observes such a sign in the other they then take the power move of accelerating, forcing the weaker party to yield. Prior to mastering this system, we had quite a few near miss accidents. On Saturday, while walking across the crosswalk [we had the light] an auto approaching took a turn and headed straight for Jon. Jon kept walking, but did not have the "power" look about him, so the motorist began to accelerate. It was only my frantic scream that drew Jon's attention, causing him to stop and avoid certain death. Later the same afternoon we were driving through a green light when 3-4 pedestrians walked directly across our path, staring us down with their bold power stare. When they noticed we did not have the power crazed look about us, they actually slowed their walk across, walking with confidence and power. The same sort of incidents occurred several times throughout the day. This includes bicyclists heading straight down our lane toward us! By Sunday we had mastered the game and laughed as while approaching a green light 2 pedestrians attempted to saunter across the road against the light. We stared right at them with our newly acquired "power look" and accelerated, sensing their weakness. Of course, they immediately turned around and got back on the sidewalk. Hah!