20 ways you know you're a true Montrealer

In the mid-1800s, the Quebec government mandated a fixed date that all rental leases would begin and end to prevent landlords from forcing people to move during the province’s harsh winters. The date began as May 1st, but during the 1970s, the government felt it would be much better if the date fell on a pre-existing holiday during the summer, so children wouldn’t have to potentially finish the tail end of a semester at a new school and workers wouldn’t miss a day of work.

As such, Moving Day was cheekily changed to July 1st, and so, while the rest of the country celebrates Canada Day, Quebecers and Montrealers sweatily eat pizza and drink warm beer, squatting on the floor of unfurnished apartments between towers of cardboard boxes. It’s a delightful tradition, really.

Have you ever been riding the metro, and been struck with the sudden nostalgic pang of a good old-fashioned campfire so strong you swear you could smell it? You (probably) weren't having a stroke; you likely just experienced one of the Metro’s best-kept secrets.

Unlikely but true, Montreal’s old MR-73 subway trains, and even the newer AZUR metro cars both use eco-friendly locally sourced yellow birch wood as brake shoes. These wooden shoes are soaked in saltwater then fried in peanut oil for 10 minutes to render them fire-resistant. You can sometimes catch a whiff of these wood steaks gently sizzling in their peanut oil, and it makes the whole metro smell lovely.

Condiments and what they belong on are the source of some serious culinary contention. But for some Montreal institutions, you’re taking your life into your own hands when you try to blur the lines and destabilize the perfect harmony of some of the city’s most beloved snacks.

Speaking broadly, Montreal isn’t too keen on ketchup, and many Montrealers prefer mayonnaise on their French fries. Furthermore, if you order a hot dog ‘all dressed’ (with everything on it), it’ll come standard with onions, coleslaw/chopped cabbage, and yellow mustard. If for some abhorrent reason you want ketchup on that, you're going to have to order an embarrassing 'all-dressed with ketchup' and earn yourself a devastating eye-roll from everyone around you. Lastly, if you ever find yourself at the venerable Mile End lunch counter Wilensky’s Light Lunch; don’t for one second believe you can order your sandwich without mustard. And if you were to jokingly ask them to cut it in half, we’re all just gonna pretend we don’t know you.

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What’s Montreal’s true mascot? You might think it’s Youppi, the washed-up, abominable former Montreal Expos mascot who has somehow outlived its team’s demise, but you’d be wrong. Montreal’s true mascot is the traffic cone. 

Over 10,000 traffic cones circulate Montreal at any given time. You’ll find them in potholes, around broken water mains, lining the perimeter of our seemingly unending construction megaprojects, or sometimes just in trees (where we suspect they must grow.) These orange cones have become so ubiquitous in recent years, that just manoeuvring through the city for any distance without seeing one is not only rare, it’s downright suspicious.

As a visitor to the city, you’d be forgiven for thinking Montrealers move to the beat of a different drum. “Heck,” you may say to yourself, “it’s almost as if Montrealers use a whole different compass.” Well, good news and bad news: you’re not crazy, but Montreal does have cardinal directions all its own, and you’ve got to learn them to figure the city out.

It all flows down to the river. The Saint Lawrence River is the historical lifeblood of the city, and as such, it’s our primary reference point. So even though it doesn’t at all, try to imagine that the river runs west to east. That way, all streets that run parallel to the river (like Sherbrooke) are said to run east-west while streets that are perpendicular to the river (like Saint-Laurent) run north-south.

There’s much ado about Montreal’s ‘underground city,’ but tourists and even some locals never fully grasp just how extensive the network runs. Spend enough time getting to know the labyrinthian warrens below the city, though, and you can pull off some truly impressive (and time-saving) treks across town.

McCord Museum on Sherbrooke Street down to the InterContinental in the Old Port? Easy. Musée d’Art Contemporain to the Bell Center during rush hour? A cinch. Top of Place Ville Marie to the Palais des Congrès? Piece of cake. There’s over 30 km of tunnels, ten metro stops, two train stations, one bus terminal, loads of hotels, multiple universities, a cinema, a wax museum, and even an indoor skating rink linked under the city streets. All that and more can be yours when you fully devote yourself to life as a sunshine-averse mole person who calls the underground city home.

We Montrealers are a spoilt bunch when it comes to all the food that’s on offer here in the city, and paired with our penchant for nightlife shenanigans, it’s no wonder we’ve got some of the best late-night grub on the planet.

Special shoutouts go to our famous pair of duelling 24-hour bagels titans: St-Viateur and Fairmount Bagels, the cheap and dirty peanut butter sauce smothered $2 chow mein on Saint Laurent, and the shamelessly decadent all night poutine at La Banquise. Extra special mention also goes to one of the city’s finest French restaurants, L’Express, which stays open until 3:00 am every day of the week—for that truly special 2:00 am hankering that only a slab of foie gras can cure.

Sure, winters are a drag in Montreal, but it’s not so much their existence as it is their length.

Desperate to enjoy our sunny season to the utmost, we'll pack the terrasses of restaurants and bars across the city and despairingly eke out the dying dregs of summer even when there’s a noticeable chill in the air. Conversely, we’ll jump the gun far too early, bust out the beachwear, and rush to the terraces at the first ray of sunshine in March while there’s still snow on the ground. You’re bound to see Montrealers eating and drinking outdoors both far too late and much too early in the season, and after spending a winter here yourself, you’ll understand why.

While some cities around the world buckle at the knees after taking a light dusting of snow, Montreal has managed to adapt to the occasional blizzard without the city grinding to a halt, and when it happens, we usually manage to find a middle ground between complete chaos and regular day-to-day life.

A glowing example of this spirit can be seen in the creative license Montrealers take with street parking immediately after a blizzard. We’ll immediately abandon any hope of parking in nice, parallel lines along the sidewalk and instead, we’ll clear hasty 45 degree angled slashes into the snowbanks and park with our car noses jauntily pointed half out into the street to save us from having to shovel out the whole length of a regular parking spot. The city is not a fan of these blizzard park jobs, and it’s absolutely illegal, but many Montrealers get away with it in the aftermath of a big storm until the city can clear the streets.

If you’ve spent any time in Montreal during the winter, you’re probably familiar with the shrieking banshees that are the city’s tow trucks. You’ve surely seen them slow to a crawl, prowl up and down residential streets, and lay into their warbling siren for minutes on end, apparently for no reason.

Or so it would seem to the uninitiated! This roving patrol of incredibly annoying car snatchers are actually signaling to the car owners on the street that the city’s intrepid snowplows are barreling down on them, and they’d better scram.  If the car owners don’t rush out in a timely fashion to move their cars, they’ll be unceremoniously towed, ticketed, and thrown into some forsaken snowbank a few streets over.  No one messes around with Montreal’s snow removal efforts.

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Tam Tams, Montreal’s enduring anything-goes weekend drum circle at the base of the Sir George-Étienne Cartier monument in Mont-Royal Park, has become a stock standard tourist attraction for weekenders. Less common, however, is a visit to the medieval battleground hidden in a woodsy glade a little further up the hill.

On sunny Sundays in the summer, an impromptu gang of family-friendly live-action roleplayers (LARPers) gathers to have at each other with lovingly crafted homemade weapons and armour coated in foam. It’s anyone’s guess as to who’s winning after all these years, but it’s a nice place to come for a breath of sanity after being subjected to whatever the hell is going on at Tam Tams.

Every city has its traffic nightmares, and complain as we do (mostly about unending construction projects), for the most part, the city is at least navigable on most days.

Well, all that gets thrown right out the window when the city’s annual Tour de l’Île bike Marathon rolls around. This particular bike marathon actually comprises two events: a night tour on the Friday and the full pan-island marathon on the Sunday of a weekend in early June. While the event is great fun if you’re cycling in it, If you ever find yourself needing to cross-town either the Friday night or Sunday during the day, and you can’t get there and back relying solely on the underground city or the metro itself, you’d best just not try. If you’re determined, you could try to press-gang rideshare into making the effort (good luck), and you can dart between back alleys, trying to find a hole in the impenetrable barricades and road closures— but there’s just no winning. Take it from us, the only thing you’ll get is an unholy rideshare bill and the taste of bitter defeat. The real Montreal rite of passage only comes when you call the whole thing off.

Most visitors know the city for its weather, its food, its dual languages, or something else monstrously obvious. Very few people know the city as a surf destination.

Strange as it might seem, there are a gaggle of naturally occurring, continuous waves right in the Saint Lawrence River. Local favourites include the beginner-friendly ‘Bunny Wave’ ‘aka Guy’s Wave,’ and the aptly named ‘Habitat 67 Wave’ in the rapids right behind the iconic architectural landmark. If you’re not quite ready for the real deal, there are even a pair of artificial indoor wave facilities in Brossard and Laval to get you started hangin’ loose like a real beach bum or whatever.

Montreal has the dubious honour of being one of only two cities in North America where it’s illegal to make a right on a red light (the other being New York City.) The law sprouts from our population density and the fact that the city, (especially denser neighbourhoods like Downtown or The Plateau) have a heavy mix of pedestrian, bike, and automobile traffic, and to throw in the odd right turn on a red light would likely end poorly. Whether or not you’re a fan, or even think it’s necessary, if you spend long enough on the island, turning right on a red anywhere else in the world will feel downright transgressive.

Even in a city with so many standout restaurants, Gibeau Orange Julep, the classic 1950s casse-croûte set in a 3-story fibreglass orange on Decarie Boulevard stands in a league of its own. Although Orange Julep’s menu is top-notch, and its frothy, creamsicle-style orange juice is firmly ensconced in the city’s hallowed pantheon of food and drink delicacies—what has most solidified the Orange Julep as a Montreal institution is how it has served as a community hub since its founding in 1932.

In keeping with its retro roller skate drive-in aesthetic, Gibeau Orange Julep has singlehandedly been running Montreal’s most exciting classic car show every Wednesday night of the summer season since the 1950s. This classic car cruise remains the best place in town to get the pulse on Montreal’s collector car scene.

Montreal has become a city of festivals, and every summer, massive operations like Osheaga, Jazz Fest, and Just for Laughs draw millions of visitors apiece.  In addition to these gargantuan headliners though, Montreal has dozens of more festivals that serve smaller communities and are wellsprings for some of Montreal’s most interesting cultural productions.

There are far too many to cover in-depth, but special mention goes to music festivals like M pour Montreal, Mile Ex End, and Mutek. There are also phenomenal food festivals like the Martinique Gourmand Festival and First Fridays food truck festival at Olympic Stadium as well as world-class film festivals like Fantasia, the Festival du Nouveau Cinéma, and the Montreal International Black Film Festival, among many others.

Montreal is fortunate to have a cultural landscape that’s bursting at the seams, and for many visitors or short-term residents, it can be hard to take it all in. A real Montreal benchmark is taking a proper dive into Montreal’s absurdly high-quality English and French language theatre, dance, and independent music scenes.

For theatre, there’s the Black Theatre Workshop, the Theatre Rideau Vert, and Espace Go, just to name a few.

For dance, there are avant-garde performance spaces like Agora de la Danse, Usine C, and La Chapelle.

And for independent music, there are longstanding institutions like the Sala Rosa, the Fairmount Theatre, Les Foufounes Électriques, Cafe Campus, Ursa, and many, many more.

A night at any of these spots is guaranteed to give you a front-row seat to local Montreal culture as it’s created.

Montreal is home to a lovely collection of urban parks, and given our nasty winters, we try to use them to their utmost while it's warm, and the sun is out. Naturally, one of our favourite park pastimes is to settle in with a luxuriant al fresco spread and have ourselves a damn fine picnic. And what could possibly be more civilized than a sun-kissed picnic in the park, you ask?

How about one stocked with your favourite adult beverages, so you can get properly ripped outdoors? Though it’s normally against the law to consume alcoholic beverages in public places, there is a caveat in the Montreal bylaw on public peace that makes an exception if you’re consuming said beverages in a park as part of a meal!

Most cities in the world will bust out a fireworks display for holidays and special occasions, and Montreal is no exception. But in addition to all those displays, Montreal is home to an International Fireworks Competition that sees countries from all over the world try their best to colourfully set the sky on fire on select Wednesday and Saturday nights through June and July.

The fireworks displays are a huge tourist draw, of course, but only true Montrealers know all the choicest spots for watching the barrage. Some noteworthy spots include the Clock Tower Beach, certain hotel and restaurant terraces in the Old Port, and the Pont Jacques-Cartier itself, which gets completely closed to automobile traffic during the displays, offering some of the closest views you can get.

To get to know a city, you’ve got to see it. That may sound obvious enough, or even stupid,  but it’s surprising how many long-time Montrealer has never really gotten around to witnessing the true width and breadth of the city from all of the city’s classic lookout points.

If you’re looking to size up the city, clamber up to the top of Saint Joseph's Oratory, the four Mont-Royal belvederes (Kondiaronk, Summit Circle, Outremont, and Camillien-House), the Old Port Clock Tower, the observation deck at Place-Ville-Marie, the famous inclined tower at Olympic Stadium, and La Grande Roue.