Why does everyone love Montreal?

[memememe76]

So, even Quebec City loves Montreal? I didn't quite get that when I was there. So, even small Quebec towns love Montreal? And doesn't France hate Quebec--is Montreal immune to that?

Besides, who hates Yellowknife?

BTW, I really loved my time in Montreal.

[Razor]

Hey Montreal! You blushing with all the 6 pages of love you've been getting?

Also, I know it's a little delayed but wouldn't the original poster stating that Montreal was just some city out east be like calling San Francisco some city out West ?..I mean It would be equally ignorant if someone called his or her city of Calgary some town out on the prairies somewhere.I mean most people with basic Canadian knowledge knows where and how important a city like Calgary is to Canada .Anyways, arrogance/ignorance like that really bewilders me. The original poster could of been just flaming though..Who knows carry on.

[Hali87]

There's just a certain spontaneity and "wackiness" to Montreal that I love; in the architecture you see it in the superfluously ornate Victorian era rowhouses on one hand, and on the other, in weird, modernist buildings like Habitat and the Olympic Stadium. It's the only place I've ever seen where the modernist aesthetic and ideals actually worked very well and yielded very cool results rather than just dreariness, ugliness, and impracticality. There's Bixi. There's pedestrian-only St. Catherine Street. There's beautifully strange parks and plazas that also happen to be works of abstract art. There's weird-ass late-night Quebecois television. There's tam-tams and Piknik Electronique. Things are advertised as being environmentally/socially conscious, and the advertisements seem to work. In much of Canada, it feels like the approach is to try to trick people into doing these things by saying they're good for the economy; in Montreal, the fact that it's the right thing to do is enough; at least that's the impression I get.

One of my favourite details is that whenever any person is depicted in a (wonderfully stylized) STM poster/ad/info sheet, their heart is highlighted. I can't find any pictures, but anyone who's used the Montreal transit system will probably know what I'm talking about.

There's just this sophisticated city-wide coherence of design/image that I haven't really seen anywhere else in Canada (even North America) other than possibly Vancouver. Although there's a certain underlying "Canadian-ness" to every Canadian city I've visited, Montreal seems closest to being its own, totally different, paradigm.

[leftimage]

Originally Posted by Razor

Hey Montreal! You blushing with all the 6 pages of love you've been getting?

I'm so proud I feel like uploading a scanned picture of my passport to show off my place of birth

And to think I could have easily been born in Laval. Phew, dodged a bullet there.

[Razor]

^ Well Montrealers should be proud of their city..It really is a special place..It has a great soul with great residents. We Love visiting it..

[logan5]

Just got back from Montreal. Easily my favorite neighborhood is St-Denis/Latin Quarter.

[matthew6]

When visitors praise Montreal, they are usually basing it on the popular neighborhoods - the Plateau, Mile End, Outremont, etc etc...... And these really are great hoods. There are plenty of boring and plain neighborhoods too though.

[kool maudit]

the plateau/lower outremont, as an inner-city residential and commercial district, is number one in canada by a similar margin as is toronto's financial district for areas of its type. i was just there — it really is a great place, and so effortlessly urban.

it makes up, to a degree, for the TMRs and montreal-ests of the place.

[travis3000]

I love Montreal. Anyone who hasn't been should seriously consider booking a trip. I could go on forever (which I think I already have) but for anyone who appreciates a great urban atmosphere, Montreal has this down packed.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by memememe76

So, even Quebec City loves Montreal? I didn't quite get that when I was there. So, even small Quebec towns love Montreal? And doesn't France hate Quebec--is Montreal immune to that?

Besides, who hates Yellowknife?

BTW, I really loved my time in Montreal.

FYI:

Quebec (City) and Montreal have a bit of a rivalry going on. People from QC consider Montreal to be an ugly and dirty place, people from Montreal consider QC to be a bland little village.

Small town Quebeckers generally dislike having to go to Montreal and would never want to live there.

The French almost always LOVE Quebec (which they actually call Canada. But they mean Quebec.)


Within the province, Montreal usually gets plenty of hate (more than its fair share, some would say). It's far from immune to that...

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by lio45

Small town Quebeckers generally dislike having to go to Montreal and would never want to live there.

It's not exactly the same but not dissimilar to feelings in the ROC about Toronto. Or Paris vs "la province".

Of course, young people in the "regions" of Quebec who have ants in their pants (which is not most of them) do tend to move to Montreal anyway. As they do to Toronto, Paris, and big cities everywhere in the world. Much to the chagrin of their parents sometimes.

[travis3000]

^ Toronto has the same problem. It's a big city thing. All the rural dwellers have this secret inner hate about city living. They just can't understand it.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by lio45

The French almost always LOVE Quebec (which they actually call Canada. But they mean Quebec.)


.

Agree with this. A decent-sized minority of French people don't much care for the Quebec accent, but even these people tend to get over that and still love the place and the people.

[kwoldtimer]

Originally Posted by lio45

FYI:

Quebec (City) and Montreal have a bit of a rivalry going on. People from QC consider Montreal to be an ugly and dirty place, people from Montreal consider QC to be a bland little village.

Small town Quebeckers generally dislike having to go to Montreal and would never want to live there.

The French almost always LOVE Quebec (which they actually call Canada. But they mean Quebec.)


Within the province, Montreal usually gets plenty of hate (more than its fair share, some would say). It's far from immune to that...

I have never met a Montrealer who had much good to say about Quebec City and I don't think they see it as a "rival". I even know several people from Quebec City who moved to Ottawa and cringe at the idea of ever moving back. The place has tourist appeal, but beneath the sophisticated façade it can be a very provincial and inward place.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by kwoldtimer

I have never met a Montrealer who had much good to say about Quebec City and I don't think they see it as a "rival". I even know several people from Quebec City who moved to Ottawa and cringe at the idea of ever moving back. The place has tourist appeal, but beneath the sophisticated façade it can be a very provincial and inward place.

Quebec City is often derided by Montrealers as "Le Gros Village". It's seen as a beautiful place (no one can deny this) with a good mayor but more of a museum piece than a "real" city.

I'd say it is a rival for Montreal in a way - since it has political power and therefore control over a good number of matters important to Montreal.

And even though Quebec City is the capital, you do get jostling between the two cities over the location of some provincial government departments (some of where are actually based in Montreal), and where the Premier of Quebec actually spends more time (he or she usually keeps offices in both cities).

[kool maudit]

i can't imagine preferring ottawa to quebec. i didn't enjoy ottawa as a city at all, really (i did like aspects of my life there, of course, it's just that i don't think much of it in terms of it's "city-ness").

[flar]

Originally Posted by kool maudit

i can't imagine preferring ottawa to quebec. i didn't enjoy ottawa as a city at all, really (i did like aspects of my life there, of course, it's just that i don't think much of it in terms of it's "city-ness").

I would put Ottawa maybe one step up from Calgary and Edmonton in that regard (ie, a long way from Montreal or Quebec).

[Acajack]

I've heard the same thing as kwoldtimer from the odd Quebec City person now living in Ottawa. Something about there being more "intellectual oxygen" in Ottawa. It could be true or it could also be that they want to prove their loyalty to their new city - since people from Quebec City are sometimes viewed as "suspect" in Ottawa.

That said, I also know lots of people from Quebec City who live in this region who dislike it intensely and constantly talk about moving back.

In any event, I personally have never found people in Quebec City to be any less worldly or sophisticated than your average denizen in Ottawa.

Sure, the population is much less diverse, but it never seemed that they were less likely to sample cultures from around the world - movies, music, cuisine, etc. In fact, your average person in Quebec City may be more in tune with this stuff than your average Ottawan. Of course, they tend to partake in a lot of this from the other side of the window looking in, but the interest is certainly there. It's actually very "in" in Quebec City to rave about a Danish movie, an obscure African band or some South American dish you just discovered. Probably a lot moreso than it is in Ottawa (certain very small circles excluded).

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by kool maudit

i can't imagine preferring ottawa to quebec. i didn't enjoy ottawa as a city at all, really (i did like aspects of my life there, of course, it's just that i don't think much of it in terms of it's "city-ness").

Ottawa vs. Quebec City

Certainly with two of the last three mayors (L'Allier and Labeaume), Quebec City has signficantly picked up its game. The mayor in between these two, Andrée Boucher, died in office and wasn't there long enough to make a big impact. But certainly L'Allier and Labeaume can serve as a lesson to all Canadian cities about the importance of choosing a good mayor with vision of what a city should be like.

Ottawa has never really had such a mayor - at least not in recent memory.

And as a result the last few visits to Quebec City I have found that it actually can feel more capital-esque than Ottawa does. Or at least, the capital-esque feel is felt more across a greater portion of the city than it is in Ottawa.

They really get urban grandeur there - even if it is still a work in progress, they are going in the right direction.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by kwoldtimer

I have never met a Montrealer who had much good to say about Quebec City...

And I have never met anyone from Quebec City who had much good to say about Montreal...


Also, inter-city rivalry is rarely a purely balanced two-way street; the biggest city tends to not want to acknowledge the smaller one as a possible rival, instead looking up. Montreal would rather see Toronto as its actual rival, even though within the province there is indeed a QC-Mtl "rivalry" on several fronts.