Montreal - view of a landscape architect let loose in a new city

August 27th and a week on....

They say that the danes are the happiest people in the world. Maybe so, but in summer the people of Montreal are so content, laid back and tolerant that if happiness is measured by how much capacity one has for being freindly and openminded about other people and life in general, then I think this place is hard to beat.

In some ways Quebec reminds me of Scandinavia, in the way that once the long hard winter is over, the city comes to life, and the parks and streets are used to their full capacity. Except here everything is more extreme - the winter temperatures at minus 30 and the summer at 35.

Montreal is the kind of city that grows on you. At first the shock of the ugly high rise in downtown contrasting sharply with old 18th centurary churches and big industrial buildings, all mixed up in one big mess - seems very far from the charm of the center of European cities, and hard to relate to. The old port is based on the history of the huge industral port that once was at the very heart of the city. The industry has now moved futher away, but the old buildings and canals now set the scene for a number of leisure activities along the water.

Then, as you explore, you discover Le Plateau de Mont-Royal, with it's charming coulored houses, and lively streets of shops, bars and restaurants. The plateau, is as the rest of Montreal, laid out in a grid structure, with long streets running across the entire city east to west and north to south. The city is shared into two halves, east and west, by the Boulevard St-Laurent, and the numbering starts from this street in both directions, as from the river and outwards. Once you now the system it's pretty simple to figure where you are from just the number and east/west. What really struck me though was the way that the town is not divided into areas that are a certain way, but just streets. In this way you would enter a shoping street which would stretch for miles, where all the shops were, and then cross over to the next street which would be just offices, then the next which would be old abandoned industrial buildings, and so on. Very confusing.

The plateau of Mont-Royal is the french community's stronghold. The houses are similar, all about 2 storeys high, but they have such complexity in building materials and styles, coloured bricks, turrets, window pots. Each house expresses it's individuality inside the boundaries of the grid. The houses are so unique, it kind of reminds me of Christiania....

Here too, the landscape architect Olmsted, who is best known for Central Park in New York crated a big park on the mountaintop of Mont Royal. The park is used in all seasons, it's wide paths becoming a skiing track in winter. It's so big, you feel as if you have left the city far behind you.

On sundays, when the wheather is fine, musicians from the town gather for a huge unorganised jam sesion. Mostly tam-tams, but other instruments too, and the music and dancing goes on all day....

The park is filled with people, each with thier own activity - basket, juggling,dancing , - oh and roleplay fighting! Lovely way to spend a sunday after a big night out on satuday!