A sketch of early workers in the metro
Le Devoir’s Caroline Montpetit writes a semi‑impressionistic piece about the people taking the metro at 5:30 am. It should come as no surprise that everyone she speaks to is an immigrant, making the whole piece a statement.
Reminds me of the Gérald Godin poem “Tango de Montréal” that’s inscribed on the wall behind Mont‑Royal metro:
Sept heures et demi du matin métro de Montréal
c’est plein d’immigrants
ça se lève de bonne heure
ce monde-là
le vieux cœur de la ville
battrait-il donc encore
grâce à eux
Blork 15:25 on 2025-11-29 Permalink
Wow, that one guy who lives in Villeray and works in St-Bruno. It takes him an hour and a half each way. I thought it would be longer (although that’s long enough!)
I worked for three years up by the Orange Julep, and that took me about an hour and fifteen minutes each way. It sounds worse that it actually was, since only a smallish bit at the home end was by bus. (It’s the bus-to-bus or Metro-to-bus transfers that kill.) I got a lot of reading done during those years!
Ian 18:12 on 2025-11-29 Permalink
Mile End to Ste Anne is an hour and a half, at best – but up to 3 hours each way when they were rebuilding the VME.
Uatu 16:27 on 2025-11-30 Permalink
I commute at this time and it’s pretty accurate. Lots of foreigners and working class Quebecois. Health care staff, construction, security guards, etc. dressed in uniforms, utility clothes and most wearing safety shoes. Very different from later rush hour where people are dressed to impress with leather shoes and fancy portfolios. The writer missed the foreigners talking on overseas calls (I guess because who else is awake at 5:45am to yak?). There’s one Russian and a guy speaking Farsi on my commute and it’s annoying as hell because they insist on using speaker phone and I’m trying to nap lol. Of note there’s a lot less people on the Orange line heading west after the opening of the new REM stations. The commute of that guy to Bruno really highlights that we need transit that doesn’t mainly serve downtown at rush hours. The working world has moved on from that limited model.