It’s a hat trick: Wearing my Expos cap in L.A. draws out all the expat Montrealers | Canada Voices

There’s a particular kind of magic stitched into the faded red, white and blue of a Montreal Expos cap – and I didn’t fully understand it until I left.

Out here in Los Angeles, where allegiances are as fluid as freeway traffic or Hollywood marriages, and last week is already vintage, I’ve found that one constant travels with me wherever I go: that cap. Curved brim, the iconic “M” that somehow holds an entire city’s nostalgia inside of it. I throw it on without thinking. It started as a way to conceal a receding hairline but has grown into a nearly religious ritual. And without fail, by the end of the day, someone has said something about it.

“Montreal?”

“Expos – that takes me back!”

“I had that hat as a kid.”

It doesn’t matter if I’m grabbing coffee at Bob’s Big Boy in Burbank or sitting at a Little League game in Encino, the Expos cap is an invitation. An icebreaker that cuts through the small talk and goes straight to memory.

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And then there’s the restaurant.

Tucked away off Beverly Glen Boulevard is one of those mom-and-pop Italian spots you only find if someone tells you about it, or if you’re lucky enough to wander in once and keep the matchbook. Il Segreto Ristorante Belair is where the cap seems to matter most. The moment I walk through the door, I hear him booming across the room:

“Adam, my friend! What, St-Viateur Bagel was closed so you’re here?”

Nicola, the waiter.

He’s from Ville-Émard – a tiny, working-class pocket of Montreal you couldn’t find on a map. He came to Hollywood decades ago chasing stardom. Life had other plans. Now he glides between tables like it’s his stage, his voice carrying just enough for the whole room to feel like they’re extras in an indie film he’s starring in.

But with me, it’s different.

The cap does it. Suddenly I’m not just another guy scarfing down carbonara – I’m family. A paisan, he’ll say. Like we both stepped off the same boat in Le Vieux Port, even though the only thing we really share is a Montreal upbringing and that unspoken understanding of the two-cheek kiss, Les Tam-Tams, Leonard Cohen and Mitsou, Just for Laughs and DiSalvio’s.

Pop Goes the World, as the Québécois song goes.

He’ll grab my shoulders, lean in and call me cugine while I call him mishpocha, and for a moment, Beverly Glen might as well be Sherbrooke Street.

We talk about nothing and everything. The weather back home. How the pastrami here doesn’t cut it. He’ll mention a real cugine still in Ville-Émard; I’ll mention a street I used to know or an Italian friend from Dawson College. It all fits.

Sometimes I’ll come across another expat from Montreal – you can hear it instantly, the nostalgia baked into their Franglais dialect. And almost immediately, the inside jokes start.

“Still the best smoked meat at Schwartz’s Deli or has Snowdon Deli won?”

“Depends – are we talking 1 a.m. after a Prince Arthur pub crawl or a shiva platter?

“And what about those cultural spots on St. Catherine if you know what I mean … purely for research?”

We laugh because we don’t have to explain. It’s shorthand.

“You ever hit up the Orange Julep on biker night? Feels like you’re in the middle of a turf war!”

That one always lands. The restaurant and roadside attraction is the kind of place that makes no sense until you’ve experienced it – with its huge glowing orb in the shape of an orange outside big enough to be a beacon to 747 pilots, and its sweet drinks rumoured to be part OJ and part egg white. I remember the summer air with a whiff of French fries and steamies (Montreal hot dogs), diesel fumes rising just far enough above the Décarie Expressway to make you light-headed. We trade stories about the infamous Olympic Stadium, and about a team that, even when it wasn’t winning, was still ours.

One night, it was a movie theatre security guard in a rough stretch of L.A. – the kind of place where you don’t expect a tap on the shoulder. He clocked the cap immediately. His whole demeanour shifted.

“My dad used to take me to the Mets games. I’m from New York,” he said, the accent still lingered.

“Gary Carter, right?”

We both paused. We didn’t need to say it out loud. The weight of that catcher’s name – what he meant, how it all ended a few years later with inoperable brain cancer at only 57 years old – just sat there.

“But Andre Dawson though?!”

And just like that, we were grinning again, now transported back to the summer of 1991, watching Expos pitcher Dennis Martínez pitch a perfect game against the Boys in Blue at Dodger Stadium.

Here, in L.A., wearing that cap is like a secret handshake.

He leaned in. “I can hook you up with an endless popcorn refill. Don’t tell the manager.”

He didn’t have to explain why. Youppi!

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In Hollywood, at the famed Comedy Store in the middle of the packed Main Room, I heard a voice from on-stage. “Expos hat!” It was Howie Mandel, spotting it from across the room like a heat-seeking missile. A quick nod, a grin, no handshake attempted (out of respect for Howie), no long conversation needed. That unspoken bond was strong enough to interrupt his finely tuned flow with memories of Nos Amours.

Another time, in a crowded lobby in Winnipeg, I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned around and there he was – Kevin McDonald. One of the Kids in the Hall. The one I’d been obsessed with growing up. And somehow, it was the hat that opened the door. We talked. Not just a passing moment either – we stayed in touch kicking around a TV show idea about a rag-tag team of Canadian astronauts being recruited from Manitoba (since Winnipeg’s winters are colder than Mars).

All of it starting with that same Québécois bat signal: the Expos logo.

That’s the thing about the cap.

The way a defunct franchise sparks more genuine connection than most current teams is deep. Maybe it’s because the Expos never got a proper goodbye. Or maybe it’s because Canadians, even when we scatter across places such as Los Angeles, carry our stories with us in special ways, neatly packed away in an old fading Steinberg’s shopping bag.

Because that cap brings an exclusive membership more valuable than Costco or Soho House. Wearing it is like being quietly “made” in the mob, not in the dramatic sense you see in Scorsese films, but in that way where you’re instantly trusted. You can do no wrong.

In a city forever under construction, the Expos cap is stubbornly unchanged, like a Wilensky Special. If you want your sandwich cut or without mustard, maybe you should be rooting for the Nationals!

I’ve come to rely on my cap as a reminder that identity isn’t something you leave behind when you cross a border trading ice storms for earthquakes. It’s something you wear forever waiting for the right person to notice.

Or the right waiter (hey, Nicola!).

Or a familiar voice across a crowded room.

Because they always do.

And for a brief moment – standing in a dimly lit restaurant off Beverly Glen, a multiplex lobby or a comedy club – you’re not in Los Angeles.

You’re back in Montreal praying that roof stays on at least until the bottom of the ninth.

Adam Steinman left Montreal for New York in 1998 (on a Greyhound bus the same day as the infamous January ice storm) but is forever a Montrealer at heart. He is now based in Los Angeles working as executive vice-president of Global Formats and Acquisitions at Blink49 Studios where he criss-crosses the globe in his Expos cap looking for the next hit TV show idea.

Special to The Globe and Mail