[mistercorporate]

Maybe I should better explain what I meant. One thing that became obvious to me quickly when I first arrived in Canada, was that we have a disproportionately high number of brutalist buildings and very spacious streets, avenues and open spaces between buildings, especially compared to most European cities. Toronto and Montreal both share this vernacular to varying degrees in different neighbourhoods.

Both Toronto and Montreal are oversized Hamiltons and Ottawas in many ways, architecturally speaking. Increasingly this is changing as there's more Vancouver-style shiny polished condos and Toronto style shiny polished glass office towers thrown into the mix.

I'm sure Montreal had a great influence on Toronto as well being the older city and original metropolis, before the 70's, but I'm not old enough to know what that was.

US cities tend to have tons of turn of the century architecture and 80's architecture, that whole 60's/70's brutalist stuff doesn't exist to the same extent (I'm assuming it's due to Canadian cities essentially booming and coming of age during that time).

Being the two largest examples of the Canadian vernacular, that's why I felt a sense of familiarity in downtown Montreal that I also felt in downtown Toronto. This is changing rapidly, however as Toronto's recent boom is rapidly changing the architectural mix in the city and Montreal is also polishing up its urban environment. The two cities are indeed very unique with very different personalities, but as someone who was once an outsider, I can see how they are definitely siblings.