Montreal: Like Going Abroad Without Leaving North America

People often refer to New Orleans as the most European city in North America. Montreal and Quebec would beg to differ.

Sure, New Orleans has a good number of businesses with French names, but the conversations you hear on the street are almost always in English (or at least the Louisiana version of English). In Montreal, it’s not just the occasional restaurant sign that’s in French; it’s almost every billboard, conversation and public announcement. You’re swimming in a language where word endings are dropped so every syllable can slide into the next in a slippery stream of sound. Unlike the English-speaking cities of Toronto and Vancouver, Montreal really feels like a foreign country.

Paris may empty out during July and August, but Montreal is crammed full of residents and Quebecois visitors from Canada Day on July 1 through the end of August (fireworks explode over the St. Lawrence River three days before our own Independence Day pyrotechnics). If they were going to leave town, the locals departed in January and February for warmer spots south of the border, only to flock back for the most enjoyable season in this northern city. 

Canada has a more humane immigration policy than its neighbor to the South, and Montreal is a dazzlingly diverse city full of not only Francophones from Europe, West Africa and the Caribbean but also Mandarin speakers from China as well as Arabic and Hebrew speakers from the Middle East. This mix is reflected in a vibrant variety of restaurants and shops, musics and fashions.

The city’s long-established Jewish population has given the world not only Leonard Cohen (painted on a huge mural that towers over the city) but also Montreal smoked meat and Montreal bagels. The latter have crisp crusts like their New York brethren but are more airy and less chewy on the inside—more like an upscale dinner roll than a dense bagel. St. Viator Bagels allows you to see how they’re made before you buy them fresh from the oven.

Montreal’s historic district is crowded along the north bank of the St. Lawrence River. Enough of the old houses, churches, restaurants and shops have been preserved that certain streets still have the feel of the 18th or 19th century. The neighborhood is thronged by tourists in the summer months (and by busking street performers too), but some of the restaurants still offer the traditional Quebecois dishes of game and casseroles.

The most famous Quebecois dish is poutine, a mix of brown gravy over cheese curds and French fries—available as both fast food and made-to-order restaurant dishes. Over the years, poutine has been adapted by more adventurous chefs into different kinds of gravy poured over different kinds of starches and proteins. At the Gingko Cafe, we had a poutine that was a Hollandaise sauce drenching a breakfast scramble. The gooey adhesion was the same, but the gratification was much greater than what you get at a St-Hubert. 

To the north of the historic district is Montreal’s large, thriving Chinatown, crowded with restaurants and hungry diners—about half Asian and half non-Asian. Our favorites included Sammi & Soupe Dumplings, which specialized in its namesake dish, both steamed and fried but always fresh from the kitchen. We also liked Nouilles de Lan Zhou, which served multiple thicknesses of noodles, which are rolled and stretched in an open kitchen. And fresh noodles make all the difference. A third restaurant, Chez Chili, offered a phonebook-sized menu of mainland Chinese dishes, and we were happy with everything we tried. 

Just north of Chinatown is the Place des Arts, Montreal’s version of Manhattan’s Lincoln Center, a grouping of arts venues for classical music, popular music, dance, opera, theater and modern art. In late June and early July, the complex is home to the Montreal Jazz Festival, which is notable for making two-thirds of its offerings free to the public. In late July it’s also usually home to comedy festival Just For Laughs’ gala shows, although the 40-year-old event took this year off.

To the west of this arts district is the business center and a bit farther west the museum district. The Musee des Beaux Arts de Montreal combines five different buildings into a single museum connected by subterranean passageways. While the museum contains modest representations of art from Europe and Asia, its strength is its collection of Canadian art—with both the original inhabitants and the later European immigrants well represented.

The museum has an impressive collection of contemporary Inuit sculpture, carved from the traditional materials of dark stone, white ivory and/or perforated whale bone. These modern artists draw on the folkloric vocabulary but put it to new uses as they depict scenes from daily life and from fabulist animal-to-human transformations. At the same time, they scrupulously avoid the kitsch of tourist gift shops.

The European current in Canadian art didn’t achieve a similar originality until early in the 20th century, when Toronto’s Group of Seven (plus such allies as Emily Carr, David Milne and Tom Thomson) fashioned a distinctively Canadian version of post-Impressionist art. It wasn’t just that the subject matter focused on the nation’s stark, Northern landscapes, but also that the crisp, dry light of those latitudes leaked through the paintings in a manner much different from the warmer, more humid light of Continental Europe. Montreal’s collection is remarkable, even though the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto has more extensive, higher quality holdings.

In many ways, though, my favorite place to visit in Montreal is the Botanical Gardens, a short ride from downtown on the city’s clean, efficient subway system. The 190 acres of flowers, trees and buildings are divided into different habitats: Alpine, First Nations, aquatic plants, shaded forest, lilacs, edible plants, roses and “flowering brook.” Nearby are such attractions as the Insectarium, the Biodome and Planetarium.

My two favorite spots, however, are the Chinese and Japanese Gardens, further proof of the city’s multi-cultural riches. Both are modeled on the traditional designs of Asia and achieve the desired contemplative balance between wild plants and human intervention. The Chinese area has a stone boat, a stone bridge, a pagoda and waterfall as a frame for the aquatic and terrestrial Asian plants. The Japanese area boasts a pond, shrine, teahouse, stone garden and bonsai collection. 

So, if you’re craving a foreign travel experience but lack the time or money to cross the ocean, consider Montreal, which offers an alternative as viable as Mexico City.