Why does everyone love Montreal?

[ssiguy]

Montreal is a truly wonderful city.

Vibrant, beautiful, diverse, welcoming, unique, backed up by great restaurants, shopping, killer nightlife, and vibrant arts scene. Montreal has a style and easy going nature that Toronto will never have.

Sophia Loren is the personification of Montreal.....graceful, warm, and gets bettwer looking with age.

Toronto will never have this and yet I prefer it because it has an energy, vigour, dynamic nature, cosmopolitan flair, urban chaos, big city feel, bitchy attitude, and urban grit that leaves you exhausted just thinking about it. These are things that Montreal doesn't have.

Canada is blessed to have 2 such great cities.

[FrAnKs]

Originally Posted by ssiguy

Montreal is a truly wonderful city.

Vibrant, beautiful, diverse, welcoming, unique, backed up by great restaurants, shopping, killer nightlife, and vibrant arts scene. Montreal has a style and easy going nature that Toronto will never have.

Sophia Loren is the personification of Montreal.....graceful, warm, and gets bettwer looking with age.

Toronto will never have this and yet I prefer it because it has an energy, vigour, dynamic nature, cosmopolitan flair, urban chaos, big city feel, bitchy attitude, and urban grit that leaves you exhausted just thinking about it. These are things that Montreal doesn't have.

Canada is blessed to have 2 such great cities.

Well said

[Klazu]

I must be the only one who wasn't thrilled about Montreal after visiting the city back in 2009. I give you that it is a city different from other Canadian cities and that's all good, but being from Europe I didn't find the local architecture that eye-catching nor the streets that lively. Actually the one thing I can remember is that I was surprised how dirty the city and its streets were compared to Toronto.

Perhaps it was the weather; cloudy three days in early spring with no snow on the ground anymore and not yet any leaves in the trees.

[Doady]

People love Montreal because it has the hottest girls. No other Canadian city comes close really. I say this as someone from Toronto, so there is no bias. People in Montreal are just better-looking.

[softee]

Originally Posted by Doady

People in Montreal are just better-looking.

I don't see how this could really be possible. Better dressed? Maybe, but even that is questionable. Better looking? Toronto has every type of person from just about anywhere you can can think of, and is certainly equal to Montreal in that respect.

[Fischbob]

My favourite thing about Montreal is its unparalleled urbanity: after living here for 4 years, there are still so many amazing neighbourhoods I have yet to explore. And while quite a few of them tend to gravitate toward the low-rise rowhouse style, many still manage to hang onto their distinctive feel in the process. Here are a few of my favourite things about the areas of Montreal I've explored the most (admittedly a central-west bias here):

-Old Montreal, with a sleepy, yet tangible European feel.
-Ste-Catherine Street, where the highest-end shops in the city and strip clubs share the same blocks.
-The influence of various eras on the built form of the Golden Square Mile.
-The telltale architectural flourishes on rowhouses in historically wealthy Francophone areas (e.g. around Square St-Louis).
-The Guy-Concordia environs, vaguely Japanese with its concrete apartment towers and glowing depanneurs.
-The almost New York-like apartment buildings along Sherbrooke Street West from the Golden Square Mile through Shaughnessy Village and lower Westmount into NDG.
-The nightlife of St-Denis, St-Laurent, Crescent and Le Village.
-The classic Jane Jacobs urban form (except for those infuriatingly long north-south blocks!) of Milton-Parc, the Plateau and Mile-End.
-Love it or hate it, the rapidly materializing and gentrifying Griffintown.
-The (multi)cultural gems of Chinatown, Little Italy, Parc-Extension, etc.
-The quiet grittiness of St-Henri and Pointe-St-Charles.

I also agree with many of the other reasons people have given for why they love Montreal. And although I intend to return to the Maritimes after I finish university (alas, my affinity for my hometown of Saint John is more compelling still), Montréal restera toujours dans mon coeur

[Black Star]

Ok...this is now turning into Circle jerk!!!

[feepa]

Next Up: Show your love for Edmonton thread!

[matt602]

It took me a few visits to warm up to Montreal, not gonna lie. My first visit I was a bit overwhelmed by the language barrier and kept comparing everything to Toronto too much. You can't do that. It's not a big city in the sense that Toronto is, with the skyscrapers and glitz and glamour. I also visited the city through the "punk" scene, so most of what I did the first 2 visits was get wasted on cheap, 10 percent forties and go to shows.

On my 3rd trip last winter I actually got some exploring done since my girlfriend and I were staying at a friend's place in Verdun. Got to check out and photograph Old Montreal, took a walk downtown and went up to Mount Royal. I gained a much better appreciation of how dense the city is and how freaking huge and urban it is. The amount of rowhouses, walkups and apartment buildings is absolutely insane. There is also a ton of nightlife, even in the winter. Transit is very reliable and the fare structure is one of the most flexible and affordable ones I've ever used. Since Pie-IX is about a dozen metro stops outside of downtown, I was expecting the area to be kind of suburban and lame but was surprised to see that walkups and urban structures were still pretty prevalent. Go 15 subway stops away from downtown Toronto and all you can see is commie blocks and townhouses. It's pretty lame.

Once you get comfortable with a bit of French, talking with people and getting to know people there becomes much easier too, although 80% of people just switch to English anyway. I mainly used my french at stores, metro stations, etc.

Anyway I think Montreal is a beautiful city with amazing architecture, a proud history and culture and I really can't wait to explore it more come summer time. I keep making comparisons to Hamilton a lot as well in terms of the geography (mountain, downtown under the mountain, bridge going across water in front of the city) and the general nature of people. They both seem like kinda laid back, down to earth places versus the ultra fake, rudeness of Toronto.

[YOWflier]

Not everyone loves Montreal. Sorry to spoil the circle jerk, but I find it highly overrated. Most peoples' positive opinions are from a visitor's perspective, but time spent living there would likely change some of those opinions.

[kool maudit]

i lived there for seventeen years and love the place. it's a complicated love, but it's love.

[MolsonExport]

Montreal born and raised. Montreal from 69-72, 74-94, 98-05. Lived it, loved it, love it more than ever. My second favorite city on the continent (after NYC).

[rousseau]

Originally Posted by Tony

It's got a certain je ne sais quoi about it.

Nah, I disagree. I love Montreal, but that's not the reason for its appeal. I can't put my finger on what it is about Montreal that makes it so special, it's hard to explain exactly, but it definitely isn't je ne sais quoi.

[MonctonRad]

Originally Posted by rousseau

Nah, I disagree. I love Montreal, but that's not the reason for its appeal. I can't put my finger on what it is about Montreal that makes it so special, it's hard to explain exactly, but it definitely isn't je ne sais quoi.

But doesn't je ne sais quoi mean I don't know what, or something that is difficult to explain....

If you say that Montreal has "something" that you can't put your finger on, then you are in fact stating that it has a certain "je ne sais quoi"

Or are you just jerking us around......

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Gerrard

I'm not sure the Office is a great example of culture in any country. Nor is Survivor etc. but American culture is so much more than that. I have this debate with my spouse all the time but what has happened in the last 40 years is a total shift in what and how America is defined. To me, the real representation of America are the New Yorkers and the the people of the original 13, not the mittle American values that politics plays to. Sometimes Americans are their own worst enemies in promoting this Rockwell version of a country that never really existed.

Taking the worst of American export culture and applying that broad stroke to the entire country is a mistake. Without the USA there would be no jazz or blues, there would be no rock n roll, there would be much less musical theatre, film would probably be a lot more dour. Television would never have risen to become an art form.

I think people tend to cast an unfavorably critical eye on American culture while ignoring the heaps of crap their own culture produces or fails to produce. It's easy to, they dominate like no other nation has in the history of this planet.

The Office and Survivor are just bloody examples. I don't think of them as high culture any more than you do.

You didn't really address my point by giving examples of cultural sectors where cultural imports are not virtually dominant to the point of squeezing everything out.

I can attempt to do it for you: élite culture in Toronto and in English Canada in general is probably the most indigenous of any cultural level. You know, the CBC Radio listening, Globe and Mail reading types. There is a pretty high level of Canadian content in their consumption. At least by English Canadian standards. There is also slightly more British stuff in the diet there to counterbalance the US stuff even a bit more.

The middle and lower classes' cultural diets are extremely Americanized. With a few notable exceptions like hockey which is a near-obsession for them. Maybe Trailer Park Boys in some circles as well. And Canadian rock bands too - Canadian popular music has penetrated all cultural levels remarkably well. A true CanCon success story.

[Gerrard]

Originally Posted by Acajack

The Office and Survivor are just bloody examples. I don't think of them as high culture any more than you do.

You didn't really address my point by giving examples of cultural sectors where cultural imports are not virtually dominant to the point of squeezing everything out.

I can attempt to do it for you: élite culture in Toronto and in English Canada in general is probably the most indigenous of any cultural level. You know, the CBC Radio listening, Globe and Mail reading types. There is a pretty high level of Canadian content in their consumption. At least by English Canadian standards. There is also slightly more British stuff in the diet there to counterbalance the US stuff even a bit more.

The middle and lower classes' cultural diets are extremely Americanized. With a few notable exceptions like hockey which is a near-obsession for them. Maybe Trailer Park Boys in some circles as well. And Canadian rock bands too - Canadian popular music has penetrated all cultural levels remarkably well. A true CanCon success story.

You didn't make that point. You made an observation about American culture being the ultimate "regurgitator". I defended it. In the same way I'd defend the Rolling Stones, if anyone said they were just a 2nd tier wannabe American bar band. Well they are but they're a damn good one (or were).

[flar]

In answer to the original poster:

Montreal is nice.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Gerrard

You didn't make that point. You made an observation about American culture being the ultimate "regurgitator". I defended it. In the same way I'd defend the Rolling Stones, if anyone said they were just a 2nd tier wannabe American bar band. Well they are but they're a damn good one (or were).

It is the ultimate regurgitator, and does not do that particularly well in most cases. It would do better to open its mind to stuff from other places and accept the way it is, instead of trying to Americanize everything to protect the sensibilities that it thinks it clientele has. (And after so many decades of them doing this, the clientele has in fact become conditioned to be almost hostile to anything that doesn't bear Hollywood's imprimatur.)

But this only means that the cultural pastiche is not its strong-suit, and doesn't take away from the brilliance of that country's indigenous cultural output from Jonathan Franzen to the Coen brothers...

[Gerrard]

Originally Posted by Acajack

It is the ultimate regurgitator, and does not do that particularly well in most cases. It would do better to open its mind to stuff from other places and accept the way it is, instead of trying to Americanize everything to protect the sensibilities that it thinks it clientele has. (And after so many decades of them doing this, the clientele has in fact become conditioned to be almost hostile to anything that doesn't bear Hollywood's imprimatur.)

But this only means that the cultural pastiche is not its strong-suit, and doesn't take away from the brilliance of that country's indigenous cultural output from Jonathan Franzen to the Coen brothers...

Still don't agree but somewhat get what you are saying. But in the same vein take a movie like La Femme Nikita. It was actually a popular French language film of the early 90s. And yeah it was remade into an American English language movie but I'd posit that it was precisely popular in the first place because it was a French movie that was essentially heavily influenced by American movies and except for the pesky subtitles thing was indistinguishable from an American movie.

What the remake came down to was $$$ and yeah a certain cultural bankruptcy that had begun to plague culture in Hollywood and now seems to have taken over.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Gerrard

Still don't agree but somewhat get what you are saying. But in the same vein take a movie like La Femme Nikita. It was actually a popular French language film of the early 90s. And yeah it was remade into an American English language movie but I'd posit that it was precisely popular in the first place because it was a French movie that was essentially heavily influenced by American movies and except for the pesky subtitles thing was indistinguishable from an American movie.

What the remake came down to was $$$ and yeah a certain cultural bankruptcy that had begun to plague culture in Hollywood and now seems to have taken over.

Nikita was a success in the US? It grossed 5 million dollars in the States. Point of No Return its remake got six times as much. I am not sure that 5 million bucks in the States (for a film in French) is a flop but it's not a resounding success either.

As for its popularity being due to its Americanesque feel, are we talking about the US or France? In the US, perhaps there was slight buzz about it (due in part to this) but in France movies don't have to copy the Hollywood style in order to be popular. There are tons of movies that are very successful at the box-office in France that Hollywood would not touch with a ten-foot-pole.

This also raises an interesting issue: how the American cultural and entertainment élite is much more worldly than the clientele it serves. The people who produce the stuff Americans consume have for the most part all seen the best foreign movies, and TV shows, and are familiar with music from other countries. Just to name these examples.

Your average rube who only swears by packaged rock and roll and pop music and TV shows with explosions and car chases might shocked if he ever got a chance to look at Jon Bon Jovi or Axl Rose's music collection, or which movies Jerry Bruckheimer has on DVD at his house. There'd be a hell of a lot of stuff our bubba has never even heard of.