Michael Powell's Blog, page 47

Montreal’s Gay Village

One of the largest gay villages in the Western Hemisphere is in Montreal. A large square of blocks centered around Rue St. Catherine, Le Village has provided a place of acceptance and inclusion for the city’s gay community since the 1970s.

Our personal observation is that “gayborhoods” such as Le Village seem to be on their way out, and we’re alright with that. Jürgen and I were lucky to come of age just as gays were being accepted in the mainstream community. When I came out to my friends,...

The Circus and (Much) More at TOHU

You know what every city needs? That’s right: an environmentally-conscious community center with an adjacent eco-park, and a theater for year-round circus performances. This is as succinct a summary as you’re likely to find for TOHU, an utterly unique space in the neighborhood of St. Michel, which focuses on the environment, community, and circus culture in equal measure.

A culture-based community center makes sense, but what’s with the concentration on “circus arts”? The answer to that can...

The Bagels of St-Viateur

This came as a surprise to me, but Montreal is apparently famous for its bagels. It makes sense, given the city’s strong Jewish community, but still: when I think “bagels,” New York is what comes to mind, not Montreal. That mental association might have changed forever, though, now that I’ve been introduced to the bagels of St-Viateur.

St-Viateur was established in 1957 by Myer Lewkowicz, a Polish immigrant who survived the horrors of Auschwitz. Based in the Jewish neighborhood of Mile End,...

The Marché Bonsecours

Constructed in 1844, the Bonsecours Market borders the old port of Montreal and the Notre Dame de Bon Secours church for which it’s named. For most of its life, Marché Bonsecours was the city’s main produce market. Today, you’ll find clothing stores, restaurants and craft shops inside, as well as a textile museum.

A regal building inspired by the Custom House in Dublin, the Marché Bonsecours looks more like a place for government than for shopping. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise to learn...

Boulevard Saint Laurent, aka “The Main”

Cutting straight across the Island of Montreal, Boulevard Saint Laurent is considered to be the dividing line between the city’s French-speaking half on the east, and the English to the west. Known colloquially as “the Main,” the boulevard itself has always been a heavy area of immigration.

The Main’s total length is over ten kilometers, and walking the entire distance would take most of a day, so we were content to see about half of it, starting at Rosemont and heading south.

The neighborho...

The Château Dufrense

A mansion constructed in the early twentieth-century for a pair of brothers, the Château Dufrense is found on the border of Montreal’s Olympic Park. Although it looks like one massive residence from the outside, the chateau is actually comprised of two separate houses, one for each Dufrense sibling, Oscar and Marius.

The chateau was built between 1915 and 1918. Oscar (a shoe magnate) and Marius (an architect), were French-Canadians in a day when the great majority of Quebec’s business and we...

A Stroll Down Crescent Street

Downtown Montreal’s Rue Crescent extends for just three blocks, from René Levesque in the south to Sherbrooke in the north, but a lot is packed into its small area. Bars, clubs, restaurants, and a line-up of quaint Victorian houses make Crescent one of the city’s most attractive streets. We took an initial tour on one of the first sunny afternoons of spring, and couldn’t believe the number of other people who’d had the same idea.

Rue Crescent is a study in contrasts. If you start at the bott...

St. Patrick’s Basilica

I’m only going to give you one guess as to which group of immigrants the Saint Patrick’s Basilica was built for. It was the Irish, of course, legions of whom started arriving to Canada in the early nineteenth century. Set atop a hill in downtown Montreal, the imposing Gothic Revival church was completed in 1847.

The 1800s weren’t exactly good times in Ireland, with problems like overpopulation, the tyrannical British and famine forcing a huge percentage of the island’s population to leave ho...

The Montreal Museum of Contemporary Art

Founded in 1964, the Musée d’Art Contemporain was the first museum in Canada dedicated entirely to works of contemporary art. In 1991, the MAC moved into its new location on the Place des Arts, where it puts on wide-ranging exhibitions from the world’s most famous contemporary artists.

The works displayed at the MAC run the gamut from video and sculpture, to media-painting and performance art. Although they do have a permanent collection of over seven-thousand works, only a small number of t...

Montreal’s Chinatown

Centered around the Rue de la Gauchetière, Montreal’s isn’t the biggest Chinatown you’ll find in North America, but it’s among the most historic. Chinese families began immigrating to this area in the 1860s, and today the neighborhood is a vibrant mix of Asian restaurants, shops and culture.

Montreal’s Chinatown doesn’t take much time to walk through; it extends just a couple of blocks in each direction. But there’s a lot packed into the small area, and a thorough exploration might take hour...