Montreal:Taste of bagels and smell of cannabis

Construction, industry, detours and cannabis…these were the first impressions which this city gave me. Nothing impressive, nothing, which would touch my heart, nothing, why I would like to come back to this place. I kept wondering first hours how can I enjoy my so much wanted vacations when I was walking through noisy streets full of dust and trucks, upset, that I do not see any waterfalls, any mountain tops, rocks or sea. Flat piece of country covered by skyscrapers and old industrial buildings. Where was my dream about Canada? Where was the country covered by national parks, untouched nature full of wild animals? Instead of cathedrals we were reading a history of old industry in this city since the old factories were kept here as historical monuments.

And I slowly started to find my way how to enjoy this stay. There was so little to impress me, but in the middle of destruction, boredomness and factories were entangled pieces of art - hidden in the buildings without windows, in signs showing new detour through the streets and painted on walls by finest artists. To enjoy, I started to explore. Discover how this bilingual city somehow joins American and French culture. Next to local speciality (double fried fries) people are moving all the time on bikes and enjoying their glass of wine in nice fancy cafes. I was exploring the historical city centre where streets are shared between trucks and cute boulanderies with awesome delicious small cakes. Searching for new street art, which made each walk through the city a new adventure. That was how I slowly found the other face of Montreal – face of cycling, art and French boulanderies – face, which I enjoyed a lot.

Industry

The city was built on industry. In 1535, Jacques Cartier came to Canada and standing on the top of Mount Royal saw such a nice country that he decided to build a new city here and it was called after the mountain - Montreal. Taking part by part from old nation of Mohawks (who have now on the other side of the river just a small protected territory called Kahnawake), the city grew and grew every year and in the 18^th century became centre of industry. Starting from cotton and juta to pipes, for 100 years industry was the moving power of this place. Channels were built to enable easy transport of products because the strong upstream on the river made shipping very challenging. Power of river was used to move the logs from Canadian forests down to the sea and then further to Europe. Logs of wood were joined to cages and later to 1.5 km trains which were steered on the river through rapids. Today, the way around channels is here just for tourists – cycling paths (with some construction works) can’t be called beautiful, but it is quite interesting to see the rests of the former glory.

Bikes

Cycling culture in the city is amazing. Whole city is covered by Bixi chain and stands of these shared bikes can be found literally on every corner. A 30 minutes ride costs $2.95 and 1 day $5.25 (infinite number of max 30 minutes rides). Sitting on a bike instead in the bus was then quite obvious choice. And it brought also some funny situations like the case when you can’t find in the last minute of your 30 minutes ride a free stand 😊. People in Montreal like cycling. One day we borrowed normal bikes for a whole day and went for 90 kilometers around the city on peninsula in the river and I hoped to visit Kahnawake Mohawk territory, but then we arrived in the beginning of the territory to the sign ‘Trepassing forbidden’ and we decided better to go back…

"Go, white!" is our new joke since in Montreal they do not have green for walkers, but instead it is white. There is typically no zebra on the road and very often, there are also no special lights for pedestrians and cyclists - they just follow lights for car.  

Constructions and Detours

I have never seen a place which would be whole under construction as much as Montreal. Constructions are in every street, on every corner, every road, simply everywhere - almost incredible. We saw even new construction sites appearing during our stay. Our Airbnb host told us, that it is quite normal that every spring construction flood the city. Anyway, we are still not sure if it is to employ people, or that after winter really  everything needs to be repaired.

Sign ‘Detour’ is one which you should get quickly used to if you want to visit this place

Art

Together with bikes, this was for me the nicest face of Montreal. Unfortunately, we haven’t visit any concert – there are many clubs and also big cirque in Old Port which offers interesting shows. But what we saw was street art around Mile End and other parts. It was funny, it was nice, it was touching…Walking through the streets and seeing all walls painted with different styles of graffiti from photorealistic paintings to very abstract works. In the streets we listened to concerts, tried singing swings with lights which were making tones as people went to swing on them, touched colourful dogs with grass seats on the main street, enjoyed interesting statues and sit amazed by the underground colourful fontain…there was always something to explore.

Taste of bagels and smell of Cannabis

Not only art is touching your senses in the streets of Montreal, but there is also food (oh, those nice French design cakes in boulanderie at Atwater) to tune your taste and always current smell of cannabis. In 2018, Canada made marihuana legal and it seems that it became a typical smell of the city. It is super present here, especially around parks such as Mont Royal. As I didn’t have any strong opinion on the topic of legalization before, I made one after this visit. The smell is spreading to big distances and although it is definitely more pleasant than cigarette smoke, after some days it is not that pleasant anymore and after a week of walking through the streets full of weed smoke, my head started to hurt from it. When you legalize something, it spreads, it becomes common and more young people get used to it. What scares me maybe the most is the fact that if I would be a kid and marihuana would be that available at each meeting and party, I would have way higher temptation to try it than for cigarettes or alcohol. So, all of this is now making me quite sure that I don’t want this in our streets. Why to bring more temptation to people?

Underground city

Canadian winters can be cruel and therefore there is a second layer of the city. The one hidden under the ground. Congress centre, fountain, railway station, university, markets…all of that is connected by kilometres of underground tunnels to create an underground city of Montreal.

We didn’t see Canada, as I imagined it, but we in the end enjoyed it anyway. And in the plane on the way home instead of magazines advertising vacations and beer we got Air Canada magazine describing Canadian technological start-ups as an advertisement for the country. The best advertisement for a country I have ever seen.