Montreal Streets & Suburbs

This Tour Comes From...

The National Geographic Traveler: Canada

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The downtown stretch of Rue Sainte-Cathérine, Ouest still attracts the city crowds with its stores and places of entertainment. Celebrated by Quebec-Irish singers Kate and Anna McGarrigle, it is a bit seedy in places and has lost some of its vitality to indoor malls and the Underground City, but a stroll here is an essential part of the Montreal experience. Between St. Catherine and Sherbrooke is Rue Crescent, which has kept most of its late 19th-century charm. Winter evenings and summer days see it blossom as a focal point of anglophone social life.

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- Oka
- Musée ferroviaire canadien

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The inclined Montreal Tower was built for the 1976 Summer Olympic Games.

Photograph © David G. House/Corbis

Traditionally the dividing line between French east Montreal and the Anglo-dominated west, Boulevard Saint-Laurent, or the "Main" as it is known, has been the conduit along which successive waves of new Montrealers have moved inland from the port to found their new communities. Hop aboard a No. 55 bus (+1 414 842 2281 for schedule) near Saint-Laurent Metro station and travel north past vendors of smoked meat and bagels, Greek travel agents, Portuguese restaurants, a branch of the Ukrainian National Bank, and a whole medley of multicultural shop signs. The Marché Jean-Talon is at the heart of the Italian quarter.
An island of an independent municipality in the ocean of Montreal, Westmount took over the role of the Golden Square Mile as the favored residential area of English-speaking Montreal and for many years its name was synonymous with anglophone style and power. Leafy streets lined with prosperous-looking villas climb the western slope of Mont-Royal toward Oratoire Saint-Joseph. By contrast, Westmount Square has a metropolitan atmosphere, its exclusive shops and Metro station topped by a trio of elegant black towers by the great modern architect Mies van der Rohe.
Between Sainte-Cathérine and Duluth, Rue Saint-Denis runs through Montreal’s Latin Quarter, thronged by students from the university. There are cafés, bistros, galleries, bookstores, and restaurants galore, some occupying the charming old town houses built here in the 19th century when this was the fashionable francophone suburb. Carré Saint-Louis is the prettiest square in Montreal, lined with row houses that somehow combine extreme picturesqueness with good manners. Running west from the square, pedestrian-only Prince Arthur Street (Rue Prince-Arthur) offers a bewildering choice of places to eat.

Oka
Oka (30 miles [48.3 kilometers] west of Montreal by road) has a wonderful location at the foot of the last outliers of the Laurentian uplands, overlooking the splendid stretch of water known as Le Lac des Deux Montagnes. The village is famous for its great Abbaye cistercienne d’Oka (1600 Chemin d’Oka, +1 450 479 8361. Closed Sun.), founded in 1881 by Trappist monks from France. Individuals can come here on a retreat, but the public is also welcome, and you can tour the gardens, look into the modest miller’s house that was the monks’ first home, and buy home-made cheese. Two miles [3.2 kilometers] away, Stations of the Cross were laid out on Calvary Mountain in 1742 by the Sulpicians as part of their campaign to convert the natives, and for many years the hill attracted pilgrims.
The contemplative idyll that Oka tends to induce in its visitors was rudely interrupted in 1990 when a dispute erupted over a proposal to build a golf course over a Mohawk burial ground. The Mohawks built blockades and a policeman was killed in an exchange of gunfire. The army was sent in, and a photograph of a masked Mohawk "warrior" eyeball-to-eyeball with a helmeted soldier helped the Oka Confrontation make headlines round the world. In the end, after two-and-a-half months of negotiations, the dispute was defused, but served to galvanize Canadian opinion about First Nations issues generally.

Musée ferroviaire canadien
Without railroads the Canada of today could hardly have come into being. The Musée ferroviaire canadien (120 rue Saint-Pierre, Saint-Constant, 12 miles [19.3 kilometers] south of Montreal, +1 450 632 2410. Closed Nov.-April; Adm. fee) is the country’s major rilroad museum, with a superb array of locomotives, rolling stock, and all kinds of railroad memorabilia. In addition to the giants of steam that conquered the Rockies there are engines from abroad, including the British locomotive that once hauled the Flying Scotsman. The director’s car used by Sir William Van Horne in the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway across the continent is also on show. On weekends there are live steam train and streetcar rides.