Entrée interdite
This week we are shopping for a piano, and that takes us to the major city nearest to Nova Scotia. No, not Halifax…
Instead we are in what I lovingly refer to as “the world’s largest and longest standing construction zone, and greatest monument to the automobile.”
Yes, we’re in Montreal.
Let me start by saying that I honestly love Montreal - the buildings, the history, the shops and museums are all wonderful. And yes, I’m one of those people who comes home with a bag of St Viateur bagels.
Montreal refreshes me, and for my money it’s the best city in Canada.
Except for two things…
First, the sheer staggering number of multi-lane car expressways that divide the city, and neighbourhoods, into discontinuous chunks. I’m not talking about the North/South and East/West highways that run into and out of Toronto, I’m talking about a veritable rat’s nest of four and six lane roads, some elevated, some buried, and the endless roundabouts and connectors that sew them all together to ensure you can go from anywhere to anywhere else without ever seeing any actual part of an otherwise beautiful city.
The level of highway building in Montreal far outstrips any other city in Canada. It’s a level of blacktop dominance that some cities like Vancouver and San Francisco are choosing to (slowly) abandon.
(As an aside, I will applaud the Montreal Metro system, which can also get you from A to B easily and quickly. The transit system is good enough that honestly you often don’t need a car.)
The second issue though, builds on the first: for as long as I’ve been visiting Montreal, the city has been one large and endless construction zone.
Every highway and freeway has lanes blocked, exits blocked, and endless orange signs directing you to detours or dead ends. If, like 90% of the population, you rely on Google Maps to direct you out of town - and dear god you really have no choice - you also realize very quickly that the surfer boys in Silicon Valley cannot possibly keep on top of the ever changing construction landscape.
It’s not just roads though, there is major construction everywhere, and sidewalks, parking spaces, and anything else that humans need are blocked off or constrained with little or no warning. Outside of the prime neighbourhoods it’s tough to get around on foot in Montreal, and with construction it’s much harder yet.
All of this leads to one other challenge: living in the middle of a miles wide construction project leads to a city that is cluttered, and dirty, and filled with debris. Admittedly some of that comes from us arriving at the end of another long and snowy Montreal winter, but still - it’s unpleasant.
This is a wonderful, magical city. Around every corner you’ll find a shop or cafe that will delight you. The museums and music are second to none, and Montreal’s literary and arts communities put Vancouver to shame. It is a city where people thrive, and live, and enjoy their lives in ways that many other places will never manage.
It is a city where every other block will have a shuttered business, or a large industrial building that has long been abandoned, but which nonetheless is building and opening up in every direction with ideas and concepts that might seem unlikely, but which, in this place, just might survive and succeed.
Montreal is, if we’re to be brutally honest, the place that Toronto believes itself to be.