Square Dorchester & Downtown

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The National Geographic Traveler: Canada

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Together with Place du Canada on the far side of Boulevard Réné-Lévesque, leafy Square-Dorchester (Metro: Peel or Bonaventure) is traditionally held to be the heart of Montreal, though it has to be said that the city’s vibrant pulse beats in many places. For visitors, it is a good place to start exploring the downtown area, not least because of the presence of the visitor information center (Center Infotouriste) in the Dominion Square Building on the north side of the square.

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The Place des Arts, a huge cultural complex, includes several theater and musical halls.

Photograph © David G. Houser/Corbis

A glance at the buildings around the square takes in much of Montreal’s recent history. Starting with Place du Canada, nothing could be more British than the oldest structure, St. George’s Church (Corner of Peel & de la Gauchetière, +1 514 866 7113. Closed Oct.-May), a fine example of Gothic Revival architecture, with a hammerbeam roof. Next to the church is Windsor Station, a splendid Romanesque Revival building of 1889, the grand terminus of the Canadian Pacific Railway.
Despite the presence of several skyscrapers, the most compelling building is still the Cathédrale Marie-Reine-du-Monde (1085 Rue de la Cathédrale, +1 514 866 1661. Closed weekdays fall-spring, Metro: Bonaventure), consecrated in 1894 and dedicated to Mary, Queen of the World. A scaled-down copy of St. Peter’s in Rome, it is an emphatic statement of the power of the Catholic Church here in the western part of the city center, once the stronghold of British Protestantism. Gesticulating from the cornice are the patron saints of the various city parishes that helped finance the construction of the monumental building, while inside is a magnificent reproduction of the baldachino (altar canopy) in St. Peter’s.
On the east side of the square, a whole block is occupied by the pale granite Sun Life Building, begun in 1914 and progressively added to until it reached its present huge size. It is easy to believe the claim (made for quite a number of buildings in Canada) that it was once the biggest building in the British Empire. Bigger, but slimmer, is Montreal’s tallest (672 feet; 204.8 meters) structure, 1000 de la Gauchtière, with a quietly sumptuous interior incorporating a skating rink.

Other Downtown Sights
Begun in 1958, I.M. Pei’s Place Ville-Marie (corner of Mansfield & Cathcart) ushered in the modern transformation of Montreal’s center. Above the esplanade with its fine vista up Avenue McGill College rises the 42-story cruciform tower in glass and aluminum topped by a rotating searchlight. Below the esplanade is a covered shopping center. This was the first of its kind, and now forms the nucleus of the Underground City.
Leading north from Place Ville-Marie is Avenue McGill College, which was widened in 1988 in order to create a visual link between the city center, McGill University (Rue Sherbrooke Ouest, +1 514 398 6555. Metro: McGill), and Mont-Royal. The avenue provides a dignified setting for a number of highly individual new buildings. They include Place Montréal Trust, with its spectacular five-story atrium, and the crystalline blue glass BNP/Laurentian Bank Tower, (corner of Ave. McGill College & Ave. du Président Kennedy) with its landmark sculpture, "The Illuminated Crowd" by the British-born sculptor Raymond Mason.
Avenue McGill College ends, not surprisingly, at McGill University. You’re free to walk through the campus of this world-famous university, although you may stand out among the throng of students. There are about 30,000 of them, most, but not all, English-speaking. The campus is a wonderful oasis of green space in downtown Montreal, with an amazing variety of buildings that somehow blend effectively together to create an archetypal university atmosphere.
The Arts Building tops the rise. Although much modified this is the oldest structure, dating from 1839, not long after the university was founded in 1821 with resources from the estate of prominent Scottish fur-trader James McGill.
Musée McCord (690 Sherbrooke Ouest, +1 514 398 7100. Closed Mon.; Adm. fee Metro: McGill) is a testamen t to the inveterate collector David McCord. Despite this museum’s modern extension only a fraction of the tens of thousands of objects assembled by him can be shown at any one time. Their richness and variety enables the museum to stage fascinating exhibitions on all kinds of themes, from ice hockey to satirical cartoons, and you should certainly check on what is currently on display. One of the museum’s great strengths is its array of First Nations artifacts, symbolized by the magnificent cedar totem pole from far-off Queen Charlotte Islands. Another is the unique Notman Photographic Archives, an astonishingly complete record of Canadian life in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Christ Church Cathedral (Cathédral Christ Church) (635 Ste.-Cathérine Ouest, +1 514 843 6577. Donation, Metro: McGill) Montreal’s splendid Gothic Revival Anglican cathedral, was built in 1859 and has led a rather precarious existence. The stone spire turned out to be too heavy for the foundations to bear, and an aluminum replacement had to be fitted. A solution to the sinking of the foundations was found in the 1980s, when the whole building, all 9,000 tons [9,144.4 metric tons] of it, was jacked up and a new basement was constructed. This underground addition houses Les Promenades de la Cathédrale, a shopping mall, though no stores were permitted to be built directly below the church.
In the days of Quebec’s Quiet Revolution, a concerted effort was made to revitalize the eastern, more francophone part of the city center. The Université du Québec à Montréal was established here, as was the Complexe Desjardins (corner of Rue. St.-Urbain & Ste.-Cathérine Ouest), its huge atrium a forum for popular events and entertainment. Arranged around a public square, which is at its liveliest in summer, the Place des Arts (+1 514 790 ARTS, Metro: Place des Arts) comprises several auditoriums and the lavi sh new Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montréal (185 Rue Ste-Cathérine Ouest, +1 514 847 6212. Closed Mon.; Adm. fee Metro: Place des Arts). Opened in 1992, this museum is a spacious home for the province’s extensive collection of post-1945 works, mostly but not exclusively by artists from Quebec. Visiting exhibitions are a major feature of its program.
The largest of the auditoriums is the Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier, where up to 2,892 spectators can watch performances by the resident ensembles, the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, the Opera, and the Grands Ballets Canadiens.

West of Downtown
The Musée des Beaux-Arts de Montréal (1379-1380 Sherbrooke Ouest, +1 514 285 2000. Closed Mon.; Adm. fee, Metro: Guy-Concordia) is one of the most distinguished collections in North America, in terms of both the quality of its art and its architectural setting. The pictures, sculptures, drawings, and other art objects are housed in two very different buildings, linked by underground galleries beneath busy Sherbrooke Street. The 1912 North Pavilion is a neoclassic temple to the arts, as grandiose inside as out. Completed in 1991, the striking South Pavilion is the work of Montreal architect Moshe Safdie.
The South Pavilion has space for prestigious temporary exhibitions as well as for its extensive collection of European art, which ranges from superb medieval sculpture to Old Master paintings, including works by Memling, Mantegna, Rembrandt, El Greco, and Gainsborough. In addition there is a fine selection of 19th- and early 20th-century pictures. Contemporary Canadian and international art is represented too. The intimate spaces of the below-ground galleries seem just right for treasures from the ancient world, Asia, and Oceania.
The North Pavilion is devoted to Canadian art. The collection of paintings, drawings, and sculpture is as good as any in the country.
Adjacent to the Musée des Beaux-Arts is the Musée des Arts Decoratifs (2200 Crescent, +1 514 284 1252. Closed Mon., Metro: Guy-Concordia), a structure designed by Canadian-born Frank Gehry specifically to show off a fine collection of 20th-century objects from art nouveau onward.
Concerned at the loss of so much of Montreal’s fine architectural heritage, Phyllis Lambert saved the historic Shaughnessy House of 1874 from demolition, and incorporated it into the sensitively designed new complex known as the Centre Canadien d’Architecture (1920 Rue Baile, +1 514 939 7026. Close d Mon. June-Sept., Mon.-Tues. rest of year, Adm. fee, Metro: Atwater or Guy-Concordia). This fascinating center sees its mission as promoting a humane approach to architecture and its allied disciplines like urban planning and landscape design.

Mont-Royal
Known affectionately as "the mountain" though it only rises 768 feet [234.1 meters] above sea level, leafy Mont-Royal is a wonderful asset in a city where there is less public open space per head than in any other Canadian metropolis. Responsible for the tree-planting and subtle layout of roads, paths, and viewpoints was North America’s greatest landscape architect, Frederick Law Olmsted, designer of New York’s Central Park.
From downtown you can climb the mountain via a footpath and steps from the top of Rue Peel, but the easy way up is to take the No. 11 bus (which connects with the Metro at Mont-Royal station), get off at Lac-aux-Castors (Beaver Lake), and walk up the gentle slope to the big, stone-built Chalet. The lookout here gives a superb panorama of the city. A further climb brings you to the 120-foot [36.6-meter] metal cross, a great landmark especially at night, when it is illuminated. It is the 20th-century successor to the cross erected here by Paul de Maisonneuve in 1642 in thanks-giving for Ville-Marie’s escaping a Christmas flood.
Popular all year round, the mountain is just as crowded in winter, with skaters on the lake, skiers on the slopes and trails, and visitors in horse-drawn carriages.
Oratoire Saint-Joseph (3800 Chemin Queen Mary, +1 514 733 8211. Museum donation requested, Metro: Côte-des-Neiges), the massive pilgrimage church on the northern ridge of Westmount Mountain, grew from the humblest of beginnings. In 1904, Brother André, porter at Notre-Dame College opposite the oratory, built a small shrine to St. Joseph to receive the growing number of sick people who benefited from his healing powers. As the crowds of pilgrims increased, work was begun in 1924 on a great oratory to accommodate them. Interruptions and difficulties were triumphantly overcome by Dom Paul Bellot (1876-1944), the architect-monk also responsible for the abbey at St.-Benoît-du-Lac.
The i nterior is sparsely decorated with artwork and stained glass. Brother André’s remains are here, and there is a small museum dedicated to him. The original shrine is outside the main building where there are Stations of the Cross, too. The oratory stands at the top of a flight of 99 steps, which some pilgrims still climb on their knees. There is a view of all of northern Montreal from the terrace; the most prominent feature is the complex of the Université de Montréal, the largest francophone university in the world outside Paris.