Montreal – A right royal pleasure

As I got on the plane and left Vancouver for Montreal in late July, I was wondering what to expect. Five days later as I left Montreal for New York, I had come to realise that, much as had happened with my visit to Hong Kong, Montreal was a whole lot more than I had planned for and imagined.

In a way I had expected Vancouver to be more interesting and entertaining than Montreal, and if I’m honest that’s definitely partly to do with my French upbringing, where the Quebecois are often a source of ridicule, complaints and jokes. And it’s also to do with my family’s comments that Montreal wasn’t all that and I probably wouldn’t enjoy it that much. My dad had said the same thing about Kuala Lumpur and Hong Kong, telling me that KL would be the more interesting of the two, yet it turned out HK was the much more entertaining and appealing city. As for Montreal, it was so good that I can honestly say it’s the only place of all those I visited in this entire trip that I would seriously consider moving to. On the other hand, I already had a feeling before leaving Vancouver that Montreal would probably be more interesting than I originally thought, as quite a lot of the people I met and hung out with in Vancouver told me that Montreal was amazing and had, in a way, a lot more to offer than Vancouver (aside from the nature that is).

I was lucky enough to have a friend (big up Lewis!) living in town who not only offered to put me up but also showed me the good spots. As luck would have it, there was another friend of his (big up Ben!) staying at the same time as me, so for the first time in nearly two months I actually had someone to hang around with everyday rather than doing the solo traveller tip. I arrived late on a tuesday, and after making it to the central bus station in downtown Montreal, I waited outside for Lewis and Ben to show up while taking in the surroundings – the city was pretty quiet, given it was nearly 2am, but one thing that struck me straight away, even though I couldn’t see too well, was the architecture and how diverse it was from other North American cities I’d been in so far. And the next thing to hit me was hearing people speak French, as a bunch of African cab drivers were standing outside the station chewing the fat, and speaking in a very strange, but fascinating and attractive, mix of Quebecois French and, from what I could gather, African patois. Within five minutes of being in town I could already feel that this was going to be a lot more interesting than what I’d thought, and I wasn’t wrong.

Montreal was definitely the highlight, in a way, of the North American leg of my trip, and I don’t mean that to put down the other spots I visited. It’s just that after five days, and even just after less than one day, I’d realised how unique and attractive the city is, and how different it is from anywhere else I’d visited. The main appeal for me was its incredible mix of Europe and North America. Simply put, it’s like Montreal has the best of France, Canada and America rolled in one. I’m sure that spending more time there might throw up some counter arguments to that, but talking to people who live there, and to Lewis who’d moved there about 5 months before, there didn’t seem to be that many. This mix comes across in the city itself, its architecture, its layout, the food and in the people, with English and French the two official languages, and an at times clear divide between the English- and French-speaking halves of the city. While I spent most of my time in the French half of the city, there seemed to be an obvious balance between both languages and cultures, with maybe more of an inclination towards French, and that alone gives the city a very unique atmosphere. I can’t think of many cities I’ve visited where there is such a strong feeling of bi-culturalism. Nice and some of the cities I grew up around have a strong French/Italian cultural combination, but in those cases it’s more of an unofficial thing, a remnant of the old days and something that lives on through certain parts of the cities and certain groups of locals, not like in Montreal where the bi-culturalism is everywhere you look and in everything you hear.

Within a day of arriving I could see what Kelly and a few other people in Vancouver had already told me about how Montreal was a lot richer culturally and historically. Considering how disappointed I was to an extent about Vancouver as a city, Montreal was not just a breath of fresh air, it was a real surprise. Nothing like what I’d imagined and yet familiar and interesting.

The familiarity came from the strong European element in the city’s architecture, with monuments, houses and various other buildings all striking a resemblance to the cities I grew up in and visited in my youth. Everywhere I looked were architectural styles I hadn’t seen since leaving Europe. The old port and the Latin quarter both had that strong European element, so much that at times walking the streets felt like being back in Europe, until an element of North America appeared in a shop or a sign and reminded me that this wasn’t Europe. I can see how other people in Canada would consider Montreal to be so much more culturally rich, and it’s impressive to witness just how much of its colonial origin it has kept and yet how independent and singular it also is. For the same reason I can also see why so many French people would have a love/hate relationship with the city and the province, considering that Montreal wears its heritage quite proudly in a sense but is also fiercely independent, something maybe not so obvious in the architecture but definitely obvious in the language and the people.

Walking around the city on the first day was a real trip as we wandered away from the town center, with its skyscrapers and more sober architecture, towards the old port and its very European atmosphere before finding our way past the docks, which had some incredible abandoned warehouses and tanks, and towards one of the smaller islands on which was Habitat 67, a totally surreal architectural project that was spawned by and constructed for the 1967 World Expo in Montreal. We’d spotted it from the port side of the docks and after about an hour or more of wandering around the docks looking for a way to cross by foot, we made it to the right island. It is as impressive from up close as it is from afar, a sort of retro-futuristic building that looks dated and yet feels fresh. We managed to make it inside the building, sort of, where it takes on another dimension as you notice just how the blocks that form the whole structure interconnect with each other and create a space that at first looks odd but with a bit of time seems strangely appealing. The first thing Habitat 67 reminded me of was the Barbican in London, which shares a similar retro-futuristic architectural element, but isn’t quite as impressive. Walking away from Habitat we made it to the next island, which housed another remnant from the Expo 67, the Biosphere, a museum dedicated to water and the environment. It wasn’t so much the museum that attracted us, as we didn’t even go in, but the way the sphere sticks out of the park it is housed in, Parc Jean-Drapeau. Walking towards it across the bridge, it looks totally surreal, and more impressively for me, it is actually see-through so that as you approach it you see things that are behind it as if they were inside, playing with distances and shapes in an interesting way depending on where you’re standing when looking through it.

We made it back to the Latin quarter after our island hopping, but the breadth and mix of architecture I’d witnessed in the four or five hours we spent walking around town really surprised me. It continued throughout my stay in town, as we walked and biked around other parts of town, from the actual Mont Royal (from which the town gets its name, something I didn’t know but always worth adding to the list and pretend like you always did) to the suburbs and from the Jewish quarter to the Latin quarter and more. Everywhere we went there was always something striking or arresting about the architecture or the surroundings. On the way down from Mont Royal we found these tall buildings, housing flats, reminiscent of the ones I saw in the suburbs of Beijing. Impressive and a little cold and somber from the outside they marked a stark contrast with the surrounding park and the monument that stuck out in between them, as this historical dome was seemingly sandwiched between two concrete blocks. In the suburbs on the other side of the Mount it became a lot more English all of a sudden, with houses all neatly lined up in a very suburban way with gardens and garages reminding me of the nicer neighbourhoods of London. Cycling back through the town center it changed once more, with more skyscrapers and modern buildings giving downtown a very North American feel, and the odd spot of culture and history as university buildings or churches appear alongside the more modern structures. And then the Latin and Jewish quarter and their surroundings were also a strange and vibrant mix of old and new, European and North American, with some beautiful and fascinating buildings providing an incredibly entertaining scenery as you cycle or walk past, picking out things at the corner of your eye and realising just how diverse the city actually is.

The people also formed an integral part of the city’s diversity and appeal. The even mix of spoken French and English, and its cultural implications, make Montreal, and to a greater extent Quebec, a real ‘anomaly’ in North America, a sort of enclave of the continent’s colonial origins, something I’d never really thought about until visiting. This ‘colonial’ idea is even more true when you consider that Quebecois owes a lot more to ‘old French’ than it does to modern French. It has mutated the French language from a certain point in time, about 400 years ago, with elements of North American English and kept a very strong ‘provincial’ accent, all of which have led to it being more often than not ridiculed by the French and which also makes it quite difficult to understand at first, even if you’re fluent in French. After a few days though, my attitude towards Quebecois started to change a lot, as I broke down the conditioning from my French upbringing and realised that there is a real beauty and appeal to the language and how it has evolved in such a strange and fascinating way. As Lewis pointed out on a few occasions, a majority of the insults and exclamations in Quebecois are linked to religion and religious words, a remnant from a way of speaking French now long gone. Once I let go of the stereotypes of my youth, I actually started to find Quebecois appealing and even found my French adopting intonations and words from Quebecois.

In terms of the people, one thing that never ceased to surprise me during my time there is just how perfectly fluent most Quebecois are. Having been raised speaking 3 languages I am well aware that there aren’t many spots worldwide, especially in the English speaking world, where an entire group of people are essentially bilingual (Holland would be one, but it’s also ‘unofficial’). And yet in Quebec it’s totally normal. People move from one language to the other. Depending on which part of the city you’re in, people in shops will speak to you in French or English first, and if you can’t answer in one language, they’ll switch to the other. It adds to the city’s feeling of diversity but also gives it a very surreal feeling, as you see non-French speaking English or Americans struggle with French, even though you know you are in a North American city. And that’s another thing with the Quebecois, like I mentioned, they seem fiercely proud of this heritage but are also very clear on being independent from the French, creating a very odd situation where as a French person you can sometimes feel a little uncomfortable. In most cases, as soon as people know you’re French, or speak it, they’ll switch to French instead of English, and yet they are also very clear about not ‘being’ French. Being that I’ve developed a love/hate relationship with the French and the language since leaving the country 11 years ago, I must admit that the Quebecois’ attitude strikes me as a bit odd, but then again their situation is quite different to pretty much any other cultural group in the Western group.

As I mentioned before I didn’t know Montreal was named after the mount of the same name. Something else I didn’t know was that in winter the weather gets so cold, on par with Siberia apparently, that Montreal has its own underground city. Why this isn’t more widely known I have no idea, considering how cool a concept it is. More likely it is well known, looking around on the internets, and I just never heard of it. Recently renamed as Reso, this underground city is one of the biggest such complexes in the world, and spans some 12 square kilometres and 30 kilometers of tunnels, connecting with the surface and some of the Metro network across pretty much the entirety of downtown Montreal. The name city is a little deceiving considering it’s essentially a glorified shopping mall, with everything you could need above ground replicated below, but still the idea of being able to conduct a majority of your daily business underground when necessary during winter months is pretty dope in a weird futuristic, nerdy kind of way. Considering I was in town during the summer, I wasn’t particularly interested in spending much time beneath ground, but walking around parts of it and just taking into consideration the idea of it was pretty crazy. As Lewis explained, in winter he can just walk from his flat to a nearby entrance and then walk all the way to his workplace undeground before walking into an elevator and emerging right inside his work building. And that’s pretty sick. I saw a fair amount of underground complexes in Japan, primarily shopping malls in stations like Shinjuku, but nothing like Montreal’s underground city.

Back overground, something else you can’t help but notice about Montreal’s cityscape is just how colourful it is thanks to the mass of graffiti that covers huge parts of it, from throw ups and tags to what looked to me like an impressive amount of legal walls decorated in beautiful and intricated pieces. I don’t think that it’s necessarily a case that Montreal has more graf than other big cities around the world, but to me the graf was a lot more obvious and evident than in most cities, especially because there seemed to be legal walls pretty much everywhere you looked in certain parts of town, with entire shop walls, fronts, sides and more done up. And this in a way only emphasised the obviously non-legal pieces. I can’t remember the last time I walked around a city and came across this much graf without explicitly looking for it, it’s just there, unavoidable.

Montreal also threw up a fair few interesting culinary bits, including poutine. Now I thought I was prepared for it, having had a fair few chats about it with Canadian friends and seen pictures of it, but the reality was a lot more ‘heavy’, literally. Poutine is chips and gravy with melted cheese, kind of like a weird Quebecois twist on a nothern English favourite (depending on who you speak to of course). Sounds bad? Try having it baked with chicken on top. I did, and even though I then spent about 5 hours drinking beer and numerous shots I actually stayed sober for the whole night, the poutine somehow soaking up any alcohol and leaving me with a massive hangover but nothing to show for it. Still it was pretty tasty, and the whole baking it is a nice touch. The one culinary surprise I wasn’t particularly expecting in Montreal was bagels, and Jewish smoked meat. With a big Jewish community and heritage, as I learnt cycling around, the city is home to some amazing Jewish delis, to rival East and South London’s finest. We copped a dozen bagels in St. Viateur’s, one of the city’s most famous bagel spots, and then on our last night there we wolfed down a lot of meat in Schwartz, another unmissable spot, which I must admit totally smacked it compared to Brick Lane’s equivalent and was only equalled by the pastrami I found in New York the following week.

Last but not least, I should mention Montreal’s nightlife and music scene, which I didn’t really get to experience in a very hands on way, aside from getting totally trashed on the last day and going to Coda, a club I’d wanted to check out as it’s the home of the Turbo Crunk nights which I have an interest in. Still though, from the few bars and other spots we hit up over my five days there, and from talking to Lew, it’s clear that Montreal has a vibrant and interesting night life on par with some of Europe’s best cities (bar the weird licensing laws that shut everything at 3am) and more importantly a very healthy musical and cultural tradition. Lewis pointed out to me that for the best part of four months over spring/summer the city is always host to at least one or two festivals, with entire blocks of downtown cordoned off and turned into open air live venues covering a range of music and various performing arts. I remembered meeting a few Quebecois on the train in Vietnam the month before who had also sung the praises of the city’s cultural life during the summer months, and I’m definitely more than a little gutted to have missed most of it with my awkardly planned visit, but I guess that’s just the excuse I need for a return visit. Seriously though, this idea of the city coming out of its winter slumber and turning into a giant home to various performing arts festivals, music and people in its streets somehow totally fits with the feeling I got from my short time there and only adds to its incredible appeal.

It’s ironic in a way, that as a Frenchman (well half of one) I would find Montreal the most appealing of all the places I hit up considering the history between France and Quebec, and yet I can’t help but feel that I’m most likely far from the only French to feel like this. In a way, Montreal for me is the ideal city because of its blend of French and North American culture and the way in which it embraces elements from all while striving for a distinctly unique whole. It’s the one place where I feel I could be comfortable about blending my French and Anglo Saxon tendencies without feeling like either is being forced, something I’ve never really been able to achieve living in Europe or Japan, where it’s always been one or the other that’s predominant. In Montreal, it feels like both would definitely be on an even level. Ok so it’s freezing cold for half of the year, but it more than makes up for it.

Massive, massive big ups and thanks goes to Lewis and Ben for the hospitalities and jokes and to everyone else I met, partied and got drunk with.