On and Off the Beaten Path by Carole Bell Ford
Montreal
By Carole Bell Ford

Part I- Montreal in the summertime.      

(Next time: Part II-  Montreal’s 30^th World Film Festival)

We have been making an annual trek to Montreal in the late summer for the World Film Festival since we-can’t-remember-when. This year the city was celebrating the 30^th year of the festival which began the same year as the Montreal Olympics in 1976. My husband Steve and I were there in 1976, to attend the Olympic Games, but we don’t remember going to see any films; it may have been a small, start-up effort, hardly noticeable at the time.

What we do remember is that we fell in love with the city and have been hooked ever since. In the early days, we used to camp about twenty minutes from the city center, near a town called St. Catherine. The campground was situated on an island right between the St. Lawrence Seaway and the Lachine Rapids, in the river itself. Rather, the “flueuve”; an ordinary river is called a rivière in French-speaking Canada, but the St. Lawrence (St. Laurent in French,) with its majestic expanse, has the distinction of being called the “flueuve.” The seaway—a giant canal—was built to bypass just such rapids, and other non-navigable areas in order to connect the Atlantic Ocean with the great lakes. To get to the island-campground we had to cross over a drawbridge, sometimes waiting half an hour for a seaway tanker to pass through. Often, sitting out by our tent, we would catch a glimpse of a tanker making its way past the island, looking as if it were floating through the trees and shrubbery.

Then, one year we went back and the campground was closed. Although there are some others close to Montreal, by then we could afford to stay in the apartment-hotel that was, at that time, managed by our good friend Jack Weiss (father of Michael Weiss, the wine instructor and sommelier at the CIA, who was my student at Empire State College). We still spend the end of the summer there, at the Tour Belvedere. We’re able to rent a one bedroom apartment for about what an inexpensive motel costs in the states, compete with housekeeping services, a fully equipped kitchen, a dining area, and a living room with a sofa bed for when we have company. A few years ago our visitors were none other than Erin Quinn, her husband Kajik and their firstborn son, Seamus, who was about a year old. (The apartment used to be an even greater bargain when we had the advantage of an exchange rate that was 70¢ Canadian to the American $. Now it’s 90¢, but still a very good deal.)

When I go home to my city, that is New York City where I was born and raised, and where I spent half of my adult life, I never fail to feel a little thrill at seeing the skyline and crossing over the Hudson into Manhattan. I have a similar feeling when I see the Montreal skyline, and we cross over the fleuve. I love it, I am in awe of it; it’s a magnificent river. When we’re lucky, our apartment is high enough that we have a view of it. We did this year, from the 16^th floor. 

Having visited Montreal regularly over the past thirty years, we are so comfortable there it almost feels like home. We know our way around, either by car or by the clean, quiet, efficient Metro. We know the neighborhoods: Chinatown, or as they say much more elegantly in French, the Quartier Chinois; the Latin Quarter, which includes the gentrified Rue St. Denis, loaded with boutiques and restaurants and on which sits the Québec school for culinary arts and management, much like our CIA.

The Plateau is the very center of the center, while Westmount is a very upscale community, especially the area that climbs and winds around the western slope of Mont Royal, the hill from which the city gets its name. Westmount used to be exclusively English when the English ran the city, but now, more and more French Canadian families have bought the huge homes, some of them mansions, with their manicured lawns and sculpted gardens.

The Old Port, similar to South Street Seaport in New York City, feels very European with cobbled streets and many outdoor cafes. Although, in the summer, it seems as if every bistro and restaurant all over the city has either an outdoor dining area, a terrasse, or can turn itself into open-air dining by removing the large glass windows that front the streets. Montrealers love to be outdoors—every apartment in every building has a terrace or balcony—and they take in as much of the sun as possible since their winters are not even colder than ours, but much longer.

In the Old Port you can ride in a calèche, a horse drawn carriage, or you can take the amphibian tour bus that turns into a boat when it reaches the water; or one of the boats that tour the harbor, the bateaux mouches. There is a crêperie on the Rue St. Jacques in the Old Port where you feel as if you’re sitting smack in the middle of Paris. The large square, the Place Jacques Cartier  is lined with cafes and restaurants. Street musicians and entertainers are always performing there. The old Bonsecours Market is now lined with fairly pricey boutiques. And the pride of the city, Notre Dame Cathedral, is in the Old Port as well.

Place Jacques Cartier, with its traditional architecture, in the Old Port.

Montreal is, like New York City, a city of ethnic neighborhoods. The dominant groups, the Anglos of British descent and the French Canadians, live all over the city although the French are mostly concentrated in the eastern part of Montreal; that is, east of Boulevard St. Laurent which divides the city into east and west. But as you travel north on St. Laurent you reach a Portuguese neighborhood, then the large Italian section near the Jean Talon market. On Park Avenue there are still the remnants of a Greek neighborhood which has recently been overtaken by orthodox Jews. Outremont also has a Jewish neighborhood, an old one, but is now heavily Middle-Eastern.

In the twelve days we spent there at the end of August and early September we had lunch or dinner in Portuguese, Lebanese, Indian, Italian and Chinese restaurants—we’re addicted to the Shanghai noodles at a shop near our hotel, and we  love the huge buffet in Chinatown—and French, of course. Particularly the Moisson Doré; a restaurant in a snug little cove of the St. Lawrence, Berthierville, a little town some distance from the city. But well-worth the drive which has become an annual ritual for us and the Weiss’, our friends Jack and Sabine.

We had our other meals in the apartment, having shopped for our groceries at the wonderful Atwater Market where they have the freshest salads, tenderest young vegetables, freshly baked and crisp-crusted breads (the bread is a feast in itself,) and a variety of patés and cheeses.

It’s fun to be in a French-speaking city although, in fact, you almost never have to speak it; Montreal is completely bilingual. But if you try to, the bonus is that you don’t have to deal with impatience and disdain for non-native speakers (as you often do in France). Today, French is the first language in all of Quebec, in official documents, on street signs; even the lettering on shop signs must be larger in French than in English. Although the language police sometimes are ridiculous in enforcing the rules, the bias for French is completely understandable when you realized that, under British rule, the language was suppressed: not even taught in the schools.

Montreal has very respectable cultural offerings. This year, at the Beaux Arts museum, we saw a stunning exhibit, La Moda Italiana, of 20^th century Italian design. There are contemporary arts and ethnic museums that dot the central city. Montreal has theaters (we saw an unexpectedly impressive production of Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde, in a little, black-box fringe theater). Montreal has a world-renowned ballet company and symphony orchestra. Also an opera house. There are dozens of movie houses (many in use during the film festival); comedy clubs; jazz clubs and venues for popular music of a variety of sorts. In the summertime there is a succession of “festivals”: the annual Jazz Festival and the Comedy Festival draw huge crowds to the city.

Depending on their schedule, you might catch an Alouettes football game. If you check the newspaper on Friday, when it has the listing for the coming week, you can also find a lot of free concerts in the parks, churches and other places, as well as other goings on such as folk dancing or tango lessons. In addition, Montreal is home to two major universities—Concordia and McGill—both right in the center of the city, where there are always lectures or other events open to the public.

Close to the Olympic Stadium, you can tour a unique nature area. In the Botanical Gardens, you can walk through acres and acres of flower gardens and arbors. Or you can take a tram which you can get on and off of as many times as you like in order to see the special areas such as the Chinese or Japanese pavilions, the Native American garden, herb gardens, kitchen gardens. There is a fascinating Insectarium nearby, and something called the Biodôme in which you can experience four different ecological “environments.”  They often host special events. Last year we saw Monarch butterflies being tagged and released for tracking their almost 4,000 mile journey to Mexico. This year there were conversations with Canadian scientists aboard a ship in the Antarctic, where it is winter, and where they’re stuck in the ice for another couple of months.

Of course, I know that I’m writing as a tourist. For two weeks in the summer, and an occasional visit in the winter, we don’t have to deal with the politics, economics, social issues and unrest, or any of the problems or issues that—as they do other major western cities—plague Montreal. For us, it’s a time to enjoy all the benefits of a major city, everything within easy reach, in blissful ignorance. And when the weather is good, as it was this year—crisp, clear, in the 70s—it’s fantastic.

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