Sylvie Garant

“People hear a French accent and they think of Brigitte Bardot or Genevieve Bujold,” says French-Canadian model, Sylvie Garant. “I don’t understand why it’s sexy. Where I come from, everybody speaks with that accent.” Sylvie—and her sexy French-Canadian accent—come from a little town just outside of Quebec City called Montmagny, in the province of Quebec. The all-natural brunette grew up speaking only French until her parents made her attend an English-speaking summer camp in Massachusetts, operated by nuns. “I remember walking into my first McDonald's. I said, ‘What's with this place? No hot dogs?’” laughs Sylvie who admits mastering the English language hasn’t been easy. “When you speak only a little English, you can get away with a lot. Someone tells you to do one thing and you do just the opposite. But, sometimes it gets you into trouble. Once, I found this T-shirt: It had a little Tweety bird saying, ‘Even I like a little pussy.’ It wasn't until I got to Toronto that I discovered that meant something else.” The differences between her small town of Montmagny and the big city of Toronto are plentiful, but the most striking contrast has to be how open-minded city folks are about sex. In small towns like that of our Miss November 1979’s, sex and anatomy weren’t discussed at home and they definitely were not discussed at her religious school. “I grew up in a very small town. When you went on a date, you counted kisses. Twenty kisses in one night was serious business. I wanted something different,” explains our Playmate of the Month. “We did not talk about the birds and the bees. I remember when my older sister got breasts. I said to myself, ‘where did those come from?’ I had to bump into them to find out if they were real. No ever told you anything.” Our Miss November 1979 lives in Toronto fulltime now, but this isn’t the first time she’s lived in the Canadian metropolis. “I first came to Toronto when I was 15, as a babysitter for the summer. I had three dates a week. Nothing much happened; I had to be awake the next morning, you know,” explains Sylvie. “When I finally moved here to stay, I went wild. I did everything. Now, I’ve slowed down. I actually think things over beforehand.” To be a man in Toronto during Sylvie Garant’s period of self and sexual discovery—the men of TO are definitely a lucky bunch.