A Beautiful Seduction

Strolling along Sainte-Catherine Street in Montreal, mingling with the stylish shoppers enjoying the most concentrated stretch of commercial activity in Canada, one might feel he has slipped into a temporal fissure where old world meets new, modern bustle coalesces with European hospitality, an air of ease and composure belies something exciting humming constantly near the surface. This is Montreal’s essential contradiction and its irresistible allure: Rather than a city caught between two eras, it is, instead, the model of a perfect marriage.

Its French-speaking population the largest in the world outside of Paris — half of the city’s residents speak both French and English — Montreal is the most bilingual city in North America, and one of its oldest. It is also, inarguably, one of the planet’s hippest spots, combining the buzz of New York with the elegance of Paris, minus the former’s aggressiveness and the latter’s condescension. Montreal is the stranger whose calm self-assurance is quietly enticing; whose magnetism is palpable but not flaunted; who is up for a private conversation, luxurious meal or spontaneous party at any time and with equal vigour.

Poised on the banks of Canada’s majestic St. Lawrence River, Montreal first rose to prominence as a pivotal fur-trading post contested between aboriginal Iroquois and soldiers seeking to forge a second empire for Napoleon. After French rule gave way to British in the 18th century, the city prospered into a thriving port, propelled by new shipping and rail lines and droves of industrious Central and Eastern European immigrants. By the turn of the 20th century, Montreal had established itself as Canada’s commercial and cultural nucleus.

In the 1950s, a new mayor, Jean Drapeau, overhauled the city, leading to its being appointed host of two international events — the World’s Fair in 1967 and the Summer Olympics in 1976 — which would catapult it permanently onto the global map.

One gets the feeling, however, that the typical Montrealer has little need for validation from the rest of the world. More than a century removed from its days as a fur-trading hub, the city, situated at approximately the same latitude as Venice, Geneva and Milan and an hour’s flight from Boston, Philadelphia and Washington, conveys a distinct international affinity and, at the same time, a proudly local self-satisfaction.

“Montreal is a big city with a small-town mentality,” says Wendy Kauffman, a resident of Montreal’s Hampstead neighbourhood for 19 years before moving away to attend university. “The pace and action are cosmopolitan, but when I visit I still see people I know on the street virtually every day. That’s a special feeling that never goes away.”

Indeed a true metropolis at three and a half million people, Montreal somehow comes across as a tightly knit neighbourhood, and the fierce pride shared by the neighbourhood’s citizens is amply justified. Like that unassuming stranger, Montreal seizes you in its spell before you’ve realized what has happened. There’s a good reason for this: With the amazing variety of cultural attractions pervading the city year-round, you scarcely have time to think. The International Jazz Festival draws nearly two million finger-snapping fans every summer. The Just for Laughs comedy festival features over two thousand performances, most free. (These two events have been ranked first and second among North America’s Top 100 events.) Thousands of frenzied Formula 1 fans descend on the Air Canada Grand Prix. Celebrity sightings highlight the World Film Festival (and, in many cases, showcase the city itself, since Montreal’s favourable exchange rate makes it a preferred location of U.S. moviemakers). The world’s top tennis players compete for bragging rights at the Rogers AT&T Cup. Pyrotechnicians from all corners of the globe vie for top prize at the International Fireworks Competition. Add to this some 60 theatre stages, nearly 200 movie screens, the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, the Montreal Opera Company, and such unique events as the International Dragon Boat Race, and you’ve found a place where, no matter the date, celebration is the catchword.

A clear statement of their European heritage, Montrealers seek cultural expression as instinctively as Parisians drink wine. It is the sincerity of this desire that lends the city both its richness and its non-threatening ambiance, inviting visitors to join at their own pace and according to their own wishes. Congruent with Montrealers’ innate love of culture is an intuitive feel for style — one of the reasons the city is listed alongside New York as one of only two North American representatives in the prestigious Cities of Fashion.

“Montreal makes you feel cool,” says Kauffman, “because the people who live there genuinely feel that the way they present themselves represents the city itself. That’s why even people with little money look like a million bucks. Montreal style isn’t about wearing name brands; it’s in the pride with which people put themselves together to walk to the grocery store.” With nearly 1,200 exclusive haute couture boutiques and funky ready-to-wear shops, tiny craft vendors and vast department stores, manufacturers of voluptuous furs and scanty swimwear, it would seem criminal to live here and not be sartorially inclined.

With the average Montrealer’s sense of style and inherent cultural savvy comes a fusion of confidence and familiarity that, often mistaken for arrogance, can disarm the uninitiated. Enjoying a glass of sparkling water on Crescent Street, one shouldn’t be surprised to find himself engaged in direct eye contact with a local at a nearby table. Outsiders might speculate that this lack of social inhibition results from being cooped up by winter half the year; locals would insist it’s merely the natural way to behave. (Be aware that Montrealers stamp this assumed social intimacy with the traditional French double-cheek kiss, as opposed to the polite handshake seen elsewhere in the country.) Should you engage in a chat with that local, don’t expect the tête-à-tête to be shallow: If Montreal is a stranger you feel you’ve always known (or at least wanted to), it is also the type of stranger whose intellect and attractiveness prove equals — the city has more university students per capita than any other city in North America — and whose charm, though beguiling, is rooted in substance, not superficiality.

An intriguing way to observe the locals in their most natural state — flirting — is from a table at an outdoor café during the “5 to 7,” a particular social ritual carried out between the end of the workday and the return home, allowing business teams to wind down, corporate climbers to hone their networking skills, or tentative colleagues to become more romantically acquainted. A hybrid of the French café-terasse and the American happy hour, the 5 to 7 not only allows locals to soak up the rays and engage in breezy conversation, it also allows visitors the guilty pleasure of watching.

The agreeable — and encouraged — sport of people-watching aside, visitors would be remiss not to indulge themselves directly in brunch consisting of a distinct Montreal bagel — if for no other reason than to weigh in on the continuous debate over which is superior, those lovingly made with eggs and baked in wood-burning ovens in Montreal, or the dipped-in-water New York version, which, to the native Montrealer, might as well be a sponge. (Want to really incite a Montrealer? Suggest that Toronto bagels are best. Montreal and Toronto, like Sydney and Melbourne, maintain a harmless rivalry pitting commerce and affluence on one side against culture and lifestyle on the other. Also like Sydney and Melbourne, Montreal and Toronto have between them a smaller city — Ottawa — that few people outside the country know is its national capital.)

If Montreal’s bagel is one side of its nostalgic coin, smoked meat is the other. Pilgrimage to Schwartz’s Delicatessen on Saint-Laurent Street is a delicious way to appreciate the city’s profound respect for tradition: Saint-Laurent — known, for as long as any local can remember, as “the Main” — is constantly redefining itself, but Schwartz’s broad, multicultural, belly-patting clientele are more than happy to see in front of them the same sandwich they’ve consumed a hundred times before.

To truly understand the appeal of Montreal, one is obliged to go beyond the brunch bagel or smoked meat sandwich and — following a day of shopping for antiques on Notre-Dame Street or clothes on Saint-Denis, soaking up the Museum Quarter, or inspecting the giant trees and picturesque Victorian faculty houses on the McGill University campus — dine at one of its five thousand restaurants. Combining European attentiveness and culinary pride with modern aesthetic flair, Montreal’s restaurant culture rivals that of New York and Paris, yet feels more akin to a friend inviting you over for a sumptuous dinner in an intimate setting. Almost any restaurant in the city, whether bistro or café, new or established, located in the heart of downtown or tucked into one of the dozens of ethnic pockets, demonstrates the elements that led to Montreal being named gastronomic capital of the world by the American Automobile Association: conscientious service, a social fabric that includes meals as much as it includes waking up and going to bed, and an earnest belief, shared by restaurateurs and patrons alike, that food is art. More important than the eclectic fare — after all, most large cities today offer a variety of ethnic foods — is the care with which meals are prepared and served and the precision with which the process is carried out, testimony again to the city’s European roots.

Perhaps the most telling illustration of Montrealers’ combination of joie de vivre and savoir faire is the series of festivals filling up the winter months, when the cold can reach levels that, to those unaccustomed, are somewhat surreal. To veterans of Canadian winters, only the harshest temperatures can serve to dampen the collective spirit. Consider the mouth-watering delights of the Winter Lights Festival (Festival Montreal en Lumiere), in which theatres, museums and restaurants team up for multimedia light shows and culinary extravaganzas featuring top chefs from around the world. As an alternative, try Fete des Neiges, the city’s largest outdoor winter event, featuring dog-sled rides and snow sculptures. Or, when your meal is done and the music has faded, simply take a stroll though the streets to understand, through the dazzling play of moonlight against fresh snow and brisk air, why those who love winter love it as much as they do.

Whatever the season, Montrealers exploit the great outdoors as much as they while away the hours in chic restaurants, trendy jazz clubs and pulsing discotheques. Their love for motion is evident in everything from fiery sashays across the dance floor — Montreal is the tango capital of North America, boasting the most tango dancers and dance halls on the continent — to the long, graceful loops of the Tour de l’Ile, the largest non-competitive sporting event in the world, in which over 45,000 cyclists take to the streets, preceded by 12,000 children a few days before in the Tour des Enfants. Acclaimed by Bicycling magazine as the number one cycling city in North America, ahead of Chicago and San Diego, Montreal accommodates cyclists of every age and skill level, with 350 kilometres of bike paths strewn ingeniously throughout the city and its surrounding areas.

A slower, but equally pleasurable, form of recreation can be had at any of the city’s 100 golf courses, including some of the best in Canada (as well as North America’s oldest course — Royal Montreal, founded in 1873). Finally, as the only major Canadian city surrounded by water, the city offers countless pools, ponds and lakes in summer that, months later, transform into crystalline ice skating paradises, or, more accurately, outdoor hockey rinks for both young and old imagining themselves members of the storied Montreal Canadiens — after the New York Yankees, the second most successful professional sports team in history (the Canadiens have won their sport’s championship 24 times, compared with the Yankees’ 25), whose players maintain near-reverential status.

With gardens, parks and green spaces incorporated throughout the city, translating to one tree per every two inhabitants (and 6,000 new trees planted every year), the blend of human innovation and architecture with unspoiled nature mirrors the overall feeling one derives in Montreal of old married with new, traditional with modern. The gem of this verdant network is beloved Parc Jean-Drapeau, an area encompassing two islands straddling the St. Lawrence River. The park, host site of Expo ’67, has become a favourite playground for Montrealers, who come from every section of the city to enjoy beaches, trails, romantic picnics, amusement park rides and the Environment Canada Biosphere, an architectural marvel and the only museum of water in North America.

Like its people, the city’s architectural tapestry is a work of harmony achieved through contrasts. Throughout Montreal’s 27 boroughs, triangular tops of Victorian mansions and 19th–century churches blend with the long, cool lines of modern skyscrapers, creating an effect at once visually compelling and serenely congruent. Even the exterior iron staircases that grace many Montreal homes, at first a curiosity, feel right, as though the residences they adorn couldn’t have been built any other way (when, in fact, they could have — the straight, spiral or L-shaped staircases date to a period when homes in wealthier districts were set back from the street, inadvertently spurring a trend throughout the city).

One hasn’t truly appreciated Montreal’s multi-faceted personality until exploring its old face — Vieux Montréal — at the city’s southern end. The name applies only loosely, since Old Montreal, recently made over, is one of the city’s most visited and, ironically, modern, sites. An enchanting example of the thematic paradox of Montreal, the old city juxtaposes the sounds of horses’ hooves on narrow cobblestone streets against refurbished wharves abuzz with youthful commotion.

Travel further, to the city’s southern tip, and you’ll find the Old Port, offering an up-close-and-spectacular view of the St. Lawrence River. Standing on the shores of this mighty waterway, one grasps the inevitability of Montreal’s transformation from a fur-trading post into North America’s largest international commercial centre. The area also boasts a variety of impressive habourfront facilities including romantic riverboat cruises and a recreational park hugging the river, ideal for a leisurely rollerblade, cycle or stroll.

Though overshadowed somewhat in recent years by the emergence of Toronto as Canada’s glass-towered corporate turbine and Vancouver as its bohemian sanctuary, Montreal remains, indisputably, the country’s purring soul. The unchecked real estate boom of its Canadian cousins has positioned the city as an opportune place to live and rent — with housing costs 41% lower than in Toronto and 15% lower than in Vancouver — complementing its status as one of the safest cities in the world, with a homicide rate twice as low as Frankfurt’s, eight times lower than New York’s and 13 times lower than Atlanta’s. Pleasant pedestrian walkways (both above and below ground; Montreal has 30 kilometers of subterranean pathways), an efficient subway system (referred to as the “Metro”), a manageable size (about one quarter the size of Sydney, with a downtown core far from overwhelming), and people unoffended by tourists (quite the contrary — Montrealers, dedicated to the philosophy of sitting, sipping and gazing, love to be watched) make the city doubly appealing to residents and visitors alike. In the United Nations’ 2001 survey of quality of life, Montreal ranked second, behind only Norway.

Even those hailing from that other French-speaking mecca, once caught in Montreal’s embrace, fall hard. Says Eliane Orléans, who grew up in Paris but has raised a family in Montreal, “Take Paris’ grandeur and blend it with the modest charm of a small village. Now you’ve got Montreal. As an ex-Parisian, I assumed it would be too small and too provincial. I was wrong: It’s the right size, right architecture, right people, right sense of discovery, right everything.”

In other words, there’s no sense in resisting.

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I.J. Schecter
43 Park Hill Road
Toronto, ON M6C 3N2
(416) 803-9847

© I.J. Schecter 2003