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Ryan Reisert

When Mark Twain visited Montreal in 1881, he told guests at a banquet held in his honour that it was his first time visiting a city where you couldn’t throw a brick without breaking a church window. He reported hearing of plans to build one more: “I said the scheme is good, but where are you going to find room? They said, ‘we will build it on top of another church and use an elevator.'”

Many churches have gone up since Twain’s day, and many more have been torn down. Still, the cityscape is dotted with spires and belfries, and a self-guided walking tour is a great way to spend the day.

There are some obvious choices: Notre Dame Basilica on the Place d’Armes (go during services so you don’t have to pay admission); Mary, Queen of the World Cathedral near Place du Canada downtown (a scale model of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome); and Notre-Dame-des-Bonsecours in the Old Port (the oldest of Montreal’s large churches, built in 1771).

Fed up during class one day in first year, I skipped out and aimlessly walked downtown. I entered Mary, Queen of the World and sat in the pews and felt much better.

Philip Larkin wrote a poem about a visit by a disbeliever to an old, empty church. It concludes:

A serious house on serious earth it is,

In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,

Are recognized, and robed as destinies.

And that much never can be obsolete,

Since someone will forever be surprising

A hunger in himself to be more serious,

And gravitating with it to this ground,

Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,

If only that so many dead lie round.

Lachine Canal Bike Path

The Lachine Canal was opened in 1825 as a way for ships to climb the St. Lawrence; they had trouble getting through the Lachine Rapids (originally called the Saint-Louis rapids by Samuel de Champlain, the founder of Quebec, after a crewmate who drowned there). When it was built, the canal was heralded as a modern industrial marvel, and made possible the development of the Canadian interior.

But after the St. Lawrence Seaway was opened in 1959, allowing even bigger ships to bypass the rapids through a different route, the canal was rendered useless, and the neighbourhoods adjacent to it, Pointe-Saint-Charles and Saint-Henri, fell into rapid decay. However, recent efforts to clean up the area have been met with universally acclaimed success. The canal is now home to one of the most interesting and beautiful parks in the city, with long, winding bike paths and well-maintained green spaces.

Just 15 kilometres from its downtown entrance in the Old Port, the canal empties out into the vast expanse of Lac Saint-Louis (also named after Champlain’s dead friend), and the bike path ends in Parc René-Lévesque, which juts into the river on a thin peninsula across from the church spires of the historic town of Lachine.

There’s a little café in which you can buy hot chocolate and snacks, and a sculpture garden to explore. There’s also a sense of accomplishment: the rush of exercise, the excitement of adventure, the beauty of autumn, and the sense of distance from your life of habit back in Montreal.

The Biodome

“This is my habitat,” boasted my friend Sébastien as we entered the Laurentian Maple Forest room of the Montreal Biodome last May. Séb, like many of us, generally eschews the typical constructs of his inherited national identity. However, this doesn’t mean he’s not proud to be Canadian—he’s just not going to be proud for the reasons he’s told to be proud.

But Séb’s giddiness upon entering the Laurentian room was spontaneous and infectious. He led us Americans around the room, talking up the fascinating aspects of the beaver, the river otter, and the various reptiles he’s known and loved. In some small, artificially reproduced way, he was giving us a tour of his world. Séb’s attachment to his natural habitat, so to speak, isn’t “constructed,” it’s innate. His excitement at the Biodome that day was pure pride, and it was awesome.

Much more than an ordinary zoo, the Biodome features five whole ecosystems existing approximately as they do in the wild. The vegetation, the climate, the animals, all the way down to the underlying cycles of life and death through which those elements interact – it’s all reproduced at the Biodome.

Surely you’ve heard of it, and maybe even thought about going. It’s one of those things that tourists who come to Montreal almost necessarily go see, but residents—especially university students watching their wallets—just never think about.

I highly recommend putting those long dormant plans into action. A ticket is only $12.50, which, let’s face it, is the same or less than the amount you blow on booze on Saturday night even after you’re already too far gone to care. Save up, go with a friend. The Biodome is right next to Olympic Stadium, out by the Pie IX metro station. It’s also a very easy ride straight down the Rachel Street bike path.

Maison Smith

Should you ever find your regular place in the library taken by that one person you, for no good reason, absolutely despise, don’t be consumed with anger. Don’t curse his or her first born child and don’t mumble your frustrations to your boots as you circle round and round without finding an open seat.

It’ll take 15 minutes, tops: take the path that begins at the top of Peel Street. Breathlessly climb the 200 or so steps from the Olmsted Path. Walk briskly past the chalet, barely glancing at the view you’ve seen a thousand times. Keep walking up the path, bear left towards the sculpture garden and enter the old stone house on your right.

Smell the coffee and the fresh pastries. Find an open table. Relax. You’ve come up here to study—and you will—but for now, just relax. Let the classical music soothe your cold ears; let the endorphins massage your brain; let your muscles whisper that they love you.

Café des Amis (open daily 10 a.m. – 5 p.m.) is inside Maison Smith, one of the last reminders that, before the city started buying out property to make a public park, Mount Royal was private land, owned by people who lived there year-round.

H.B. Smith, an industrialist, built this house in 1858. Edgar Collard, author of Montreal: The Days That Are No More, cites what he calls “a dubious tradition” that attributes the notable thickness of the house’s walls to “a belief, held at the time, that this massive construction would fortify its inhabitants against infection from epidemics.” These precautions were unnecessary: the house was secluded enough to render any bacterial journey up the mountain and into the Smiths’ bodies ineffective.

An afternoon of quiet study and relaxation in the café provides a similar secl
usion, and a level of concentration one simply can’t attain on campus.