Incidental Postcards from the City
Heliomass, an occasional reader of the blog, has done an excellent blog post covering various features and parts of town he hadn’t yet seen, or not in their current state. Good photos too. It reminds me to get out and do something similar while summer is still in effect.
DeWolf 11:22 on 2025-08-10 Permalink
That was a fun read.
I’m curious though, the writer alludes to disliking downtown, but doesn’t go into any detail. I hear a lot of comments like that, and sense a general antipathy towards downtown, from quite a few different people.
Is it streets like President Kennedy, René-Lévesque and the especially grim area around Central Station? If so I certainly understand — those streets are awful. But they’re also just a small part of downtown. There’s the unique energy of Ste-Catherine. The squares are beautiful and always lively. There’s always something interesting happening at the Quartier des spectacles and the wide open space of pedestrianized Ste-Catherine is refreshing. The lower McGill campus is gorgeous. Shaughnessy Village has some lovely streets and even the ugly bits are filled with a very dynamic multicultural energy with a lot of interesting restaurants. I’ve even grown to appreciate the Habitations Jeanne-Mance over the years — the trees are amazing, there’s a nice community life and little unexpected features like the statue of Toussaint Louverture.
That’s not even getting into Old Montreal which is definitely (and officially) a part of downtown.
All of this to say that, having visited a number of other North American downtown areas in the past couple of years — Toronto, Vancouver, Boston, Chicago, Pittsburgh — Montreal really holds its own in terms of liveliness, quality public spaces and architectural interest. Especially post-pandemic. (Large parts of downtown Chicago and Boston now feel pretty moribund.)
walkerp 11:35 on 2025-08-10 Permalink
Thanks for that eloquent defense of downtown, DeWolf. I also was struck by Heliomas’ disdain for downtown. I have spent a bit of time there due mainly to Fantasia and there are tons of quirky restaurants, a few solid bars, decent retail shopping and just a ton of diverse, lively human life along the entire St-Cat strip from Atwater to St-Laurent.
I did otherwise really enjoy the urban voyage and especially the attention paid to the walkway to Royalmount.
DeWolf 11:54 on 2025-08-10 Permalink
The blog post also reminded me that, now that on-island trips on the commuter trains are the same price as the bus or metro, it can be a fun way to get around if you can make the (terrible) schedules work for you.
A couple of winters ago I took the metro to Villa-Maria, walked all the way to Montreal West and hopped on a St-Jérôme train to get back home. It was only 15 minutes from MoWest to Parc, and because my entire journey was within the 120-minute transfer window — even with a brief coffee stop — it was only the price of a single ticket.
Another time I took the Candiac line to LaSalle station and explored the Highlands (a cute little prewar railroad suburb with a decent Greek café). Then I walked along the river to Lachine, up to the lighthouse, and pretty much to the border of Dorval, where conveniently there is a Bixi station. I cycled back along the canal and stopped for a beer at Messorem.
There are lots of fun little adventures you can have in Montreal!
Orr 15:40 on 2025-08-10 Permalink
Met some tourists downtown and one of their destinations was Place Raoul Wallenberg Square.
it’s a lovely oasis, and memorializes one of the great savers of innocent lives of WW2.
Kate 17:53 on 2025-08-10 Permalink
One of their destinations? That’s interesting, because they must have seen it on a map, and not realized it’s kind of a small space where somebody might take a break from downtown shopping, but not a place you’d expect anyone to make a special trip to see. Of course the history may be important to them.
MarcG 18:48 on 2025-08-10 Permalink
When I worked at the Bay it was a good place to smoke and eat a bag lunch – should I add my review to Trip Advisor?
Tim 09:17 on 2025-08-11 Permalink
@DeWolf: I have never confirmed it, but when you tap your transfer at a train stop, it’s supposed to extend your transfer time from 1.5 hours to 2 hours.
DeWolf 21:36 on 2025-08-11 Permalink
Interesting! But when the fare structure was unified a couple of years ago, 120 minutes is the norm right across Greater Montreal.
Unfortunately the STM still has its weird rules where you can’t transfer from metro to metro or bus to bus, so it has to be intermodal to work.
jeather 06:32 on 2025-08-12 Permalink
You can do bus to bus transfer, you just can’t do bus to same bus transfer (in either direction).