Montreal's Chinatown

Montreal’s Chi­na­town (蒙特利尔唐人街) is quite small: it’s mostly one pedes­trian street with an arch and many lit­tle shops and restau­rants along the nar­row alley, par­al­lel to the René Levesque boule­vard. It seemed to be a tight-knit com­mu­nity: I saw many posters adver­tis­ing for activ­i­ties, as well as a few asso­ci­a­tions headquarters.

In the Heart of Montreal

The “vieux Mon­tréal”, the old Mon­treal, def­i­nitely has a Euro­pean feel­ing to it. Far from the tall build­ings and the end­less boule­vards that stretches across the “other Mon­treal”, the area nearby the old port feels homey and historic.

The tem­per­a­ture has since gone way up (it was 25°C over the week-end) but last week was still bit­terly and unex­pect­edly cold in Mon­treal. I was caught by sur­prised and had left my win­ter coat in Ottawa — I had to buy a long scarf in a des­per­ate attempt to at least block the wind.

St Catherine Street

Rue St-Catherine is the pri­mary com­mer­cial artery of down­town Mon­treal. The end­less street that stretches over the city crosses the cen­tral busi­ness dis­trict from West to East. It is home to many flag­ship stores, such as Apple, Roots, Chap­ters, Future Shop etc. It also fea­tures some of Montreal’s promi­nent depart­ment stores, includ­ing Hudson’s Bay Com­pany and Com­plexe Les Ailes.

St-James United Church

On Sat­ur­day morn­ing, I escape from work for an hour to go visit a church I had noticed the night before, as I was pac­ing St Cather­ine street up and down look­ing for food. St-James United Church is a national his­toric site of Canada and a Que­bec reli­gious her­itage build­ing. The church was hid­den behind com­mer­cial build­ings for 70 years before they were finally demol­ished in 2006. The church was there­after opened to St Cather­ine, in the heart of Mon­treal, and came to life again.

Montréal's Jean Talon Market

Lit­tle Italy was our last stop in Mon­tréal. I wanted to go back to the famous marché Jean Talon, a farmer’s mar­ket located in this area.

The open air mar­ket is occu­pied by about 300 ven­dors, sell­ing fruits, veg­eta­bles, cheese, meat etc. There are many other food busi­nesses in the area, includ­ing bak­eries, fish and meat stores and restaurants.

Modern Montréal

Like I was say­ing last time, Mon­tréal is not just the cute European-style city a lot of peo­ple imag­ine. There is the old Mon­tréal… and the mod­ern down­town, which is just like any other Amer­i­can city.

Old Montréal

Right after arriv­ing in Canada for the first time in 2002, Feng and I took a road trip. We had landed in Toronto, went through Ottawa, and then Mon­tréal, Québéc city and the sur­round­ings. It was Feb­ru­ary and it was cold, bru­tally cold, espe­cially con­sid­er­ing that we were com­ing from Brazil, had no win­ter clothes and that I had never seen snow before.

The Killers In Montréal

On Sat­ur­day, on an impulse, Feng and I decided to drive to Mon­tréal to attend The Killers’ con­cert. Ini­tially sold out, the show had been moved to a big­ger venue at the last minute: the Bell Center.

We hadn’t been the Mon­tréal since the very muddy Radio­head con­cert last year. This time, the weather was gor­geous… but we were indoor.

Always Take The Weather With You

Radio­head was play­ing in Mon­treal and we drove the 400 km there and back to attend the show. By the time we got through the secu­rity, we were soaked. The park where the con­cert was held was extremely muddy — let’s just say I hadn’t been that dirty since I was 5 and loved to jump in poo­dles of water.