Montréal Guide
Introduction to Montréal
MONTRÉAL, Canada's second-largest city, is geographically as close to the European coast as to Vancouver, and in look and feel it combines some of the finest aspects of the two continents. Its North American skyline of glass and concrete rises above churches and monuments in a melange of European styles as varied as Montréal's social mix. This is also the world's third-largest French-speaking metropolis after Paris and Kinshasa, but only two-thirds of the city's three and a half million people are of French extraction, the other third being a cosmopolitan mishmash of les autres, including British, Eastern Europeans, Chinese, Italians, Greeks, Jews, Latin Americans and Caribbeans. The result is a truly multidimensional city, with a global variety of eateries, bars and clubs, matched by a calendar of festivals that makes this the most vibrant place in Canada.
Everywhere you look there are the signs of civic pride and prosperity. In the historic quarter of Vieux-Montréal, on the banks of the St Lawrence River, the streets and squares are flanked by well-tended buildings, from the mammoth Basilique Notre-Dame and steepled Chapelle de Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours, to sleek and stately commercial buildings and chic new boutique hotels. Old houses have been converted into lively restaurants and shops, abandoned warehouses into condos and the disused Vieux-Port into a summer playground with landscaped parklands facing onto the St Lawrence. Beneath the forested rise of Mont Royal, the boulevards and leafy squares of downtown are alive from the morning rush hour right through to the wee hours, when revellers return from the clubs of rue Ste-Catherine and the more intimate bars and lounges of the nearby Plateau and Quartier Latin districts. Below ground are the walkways of the Underground City and the outstanding Métro system, while towards the eastern outskirts the Stade Olympique's leaning tower overshadows the vast Jardin Botanique, second in international status only to London's Kew Gardens.