Incidental Postcards from the City

Ever found the daily grind turns your city into background noise? I’ve found going through the motions of commuting, it’s all too easy to stop paying attention to the environment around you and switch off.

Sometimes you need a refresher of the place you live, to remind yourself what it has to offer and why you chose to live here in the first place… or why the city chose you.

So, armed with a short bucket list of things I’d wanted to check out and a day pass, I was going to re-familiarise myself with the city in which I live.

What did I find out there?

Saint Michel Flea Market

Inside the Flea Market at Saint Michel, all the stalls lie Higgeldy Pickledy in no particular order. Some are permanent shops, others seem temporary. The layout of the place and the juxtaposed nature of booths which don’t really fit together gives the sensation of wandering around a labyrinthine cave. I even got slightly lost at one point trying to find my way back through this urban bazaar.

They have pretty much everything you would expect from a decent flea market including furniture, collectables, antiques, vinyl stores and several retro gaming stalls. In fact, I couldn’t quite believe my eyes when I came across a rare Nintendo Game & Watch I’d been seeking out for years. And given it’s something rare enough that its eBay mark-ups are ridiculous, I was able to snag it at a bargain at this little retro gaming shop in the market.

So, I’d started this tour-de-force of the city on a high point. Where to next?

Université de Montréal MIL Campus

A short ride down the Blue line from Saint-Michel is Acadie, and the entrance to the new MIL Campus of the Université de Montréal. In spite of having passed by many times over the last year, I’d not checked out the modern campus in person.

It’s a little soulless, as is often the case with new education or business campuses. But it’s accessible, being situated across the street from Acadie Metro station, and as the walkway across the campus is rather elevated, there’s a gentle ramp up to the level to supplement the stairs.

Best of all, the campus provides a quiet and car-free pedestrian route into Outremont, and the Metro station of the same name is a short walk away to the north.

My main gripe is the lack of trees and shade amongst the reflective glass towers. It might look picturesque in these photos, but on a hot day there’s nowhere to escape the sun. Sometimes I wonder if that’s by design, to prevent visitors from loitering too long?

Outremont Station

Of all the stations on the Metro’s Blue Line, I’d rate Outremont as a bit of an underrated opus in the architectural department.

Édouard-Montpetit Station

I decided to hop out at Édouard-Montpetit to check out the progress on the REM station. It’s basically complete at this point, and it was even possible to walk up to one of the entrances; A lone security guard patrolled inside to ensure no one enters.

With the stations looking done and trains seemingly running across the system in test mode, it really is looking like we’ll see the system open in a couple of months. At that point Montreal will see the biggest transformation to its transit landscape since the opening of the Metro in the 1960s.

Royalmount Luxury Mall

Before talking about the mall itself, we need to give a little call-out to the excellent connection to the Metro at de-la-Savane.

Typically stations on the western end of the Orange Line vomit their passengers out onto the side of the horrific city scar which is the Decarie expressway, and expect people to cross more than 10 lanes of traffic.

But things are different here. Even though Royalmount is located on the other side of the expressway, they’ve constructed a pedestrian bridge with its entrance right next to the exit from the Metro. Construction is ongoing around the Metro station, and it would have been good to have a proper canopy for people walking between the two structures. But, its refreshing to see what is a decent walkable connection across one of the most pedestrian-hostile parts of the city.

Having crossed the shiny new bridge, Royalmount itself reminded me a lot of the two Westfield Malls in London, or the outdoor section of Liverpool One. But looking at the brands, it’s more upmarket than any of those.

The inside was pretty dead, but outdoors there was a selection of restaurants – I didn’t check the prices, but I assume they’re not cheap. Unlike the mall’s innards, these restaurants had lots of people taking lunch. But, it just seems odd to me you’d come to a mall for fine dining and not go downtown. It’s not like Montreal doesn’t have lots of highly acclaimed restaurants to choose from.

It’s quite clear who the target audience is for this shopping mall, but I wonder how well it’s doing. Lately they’ve been having an advertising drive, even going so far as to cover entire buses in adverts for their mall, so it seems to me they’ve not been as successful in getting visitors as they’d hoped.

It’s the luxury mall no one asked for, and no one needs. But I’m glad they at least did an excellent job of making it transit accessible.

Vendôme Station & Glen Site

I decided to jump off the Metro at Vendôme and give it a bit of an explore. Although I used to live nearby in NDG, the exo (commuter rail) part of the station has since been redeveloped in a big way, resulting in exo having their own separate station building.

And both the exo and Metro stations have their own tunnels connecting to the nearby hospital complex on the Glen Site. The tunnel from the exo station is new and will take you underground directly into the hospital, and it’s the one I’d advise using if you’re at the station specifically to get to the Glen Site (don’t worry, there’s an exit from the Metro platforms directly into the exo station with clear signage to the hospital complex).

There’s another older tunnel from the existing Metro station which is far less pleasant and more smelly, but emerges in front of the hospital where you can enjoy the gardens.

In fact, if you’re hanging around for an exo service and you’ve got a layover of 15 minutes or more, it’s a far nicer place to wait than the platforms.

On that topic, I’d timed it just right to get one of the few exo services outside of rush hour to Lucien-L’Allier, which I knew was going to be more fun than making the same journey on the Orange Line.

Lucien-L’Allier Station

Lucien-L’Allier is one of Montreal’s two commuter rail termini (the other being Gare Centrale), and it recently received a refurbishment which I’d not yet had a chance to check out.

It seems like a big improvement from what came before, with canopies to protect waiting passengers from the elements.

However, I was struck once again by the lack of trains. There’s 8 tracks, and yet aside from our arriving train it was a couple of hours before the next departure. My mind boggles at the potential capacity of the line into Lucien-L’Allier, and yet exo elects to run hardly any services during the day.

And did you know Lucien-L’Allier wasn’t always the terminus of this line? In fact, barely 500 metres away is the original terminus, and it’s still standing.

Windsor Station

Windsor Station used to be the main terminus for services from across Canada. Over time, those intercity trains were cut back until only the commuter services remained.

Then hockey happened, and in the early ’90s The Bell Centre was was built over the tracks connecting to Windsor Station, and so the remaining services ran to a new station at Lucien-L’Allier.

But Windsor Station still survives as a heritage building. Somehow, I’d never managed to properly visit or explore it, but the main concourse is still present and the whole building – now mostly offices – is lovely.

I think it may eventually deserve a Station Stories.

Downtown

I think spending so much time downtown is the malaise which often makes me forget why I like living here. I’m inclined to agree with some of the conclusions in that notorious video about Montreal from Not Just Bikes, so let’s just skip over this topic for now.

Pointe-Saint-Charles

If visitors to Montreal get bored of downtown and want to experience a “true” Montreal neighbourhood, most guides direct the clueless tourist to The Plateau. And yet, Montreal has so many lovely neighbourhoods which are a bit more off the well trodden path.

Pointe-Saint-Charles is actually really close to downtown and right next to Charlevoix station on the Green Line, and it’s worth a leisurely explore. Rue du Centre is a long street full of cafes and boutiques. The houses are old, and differ from the rest of the city as several of them have courtyards (or as we Brits would refer to them: Mews… or is that a word in Canadian English as well? Please let me know!)

Due to the neighbourhood’s proximity to the canal, the river and the rail yards, one finds the roads wind more when compared to the rigid grid like structure in other parts of the city. This makes it a really fun place to wander around, and it’s full of historic buildings and lots of greenery.

It made me a bit envious as my own neighbourhood just doesn’t have quite the same number of trees, nor the number of parks.

Back Home

And with that I jumped back on the Metro and was home in no time at all. In fact, the easy accessibility of all the places I visited today made me appreciate how reachable these parts of Montreal are, and also made me question why I don’t go out and enjoy the city more often.

I’m still highly critical of downtown, but unfortunately it’s the part of Montreal I end up spending the most time in, aside of my own neighbourhood.

So, it seems I need to fill up my Montreal bucket list again. And if you, dear reader, have recommendations for interesting places to visit which are slightly obscure yet don’t require a car to reach, please let me know!