I’ve never read a book set in Montreal.

There’s many books set in Montreal. There’s movies set in Montreal. I just can’t think of any. I haven’t heard anyone recommend any, or read any myself. This is in contrast to that other famous French city, Paris. Sometimes I just go to the library and search the catalogue for “Paris,” and read whatever book comes up (they tend to be fluffy romances). But when I do the same for Montreal, I get travel guides or books in French. There just isn’t that same long list of novels set in the city. You’d forgive me for thinking Montreal must have less “magic” than Paris, right?

I went to Montreal last September and Montreal absolutely does have magic. I thought it must be “not quite” Paris, not as interesting but good enough for a Canadian city. I thought it would have that bland non-atmosphere that most Canadian cities have, but with more historic buildings downtown and maybe some more appreciation for art and culture. If it had atmosphere and character, wouldn’t it have been a setting for more things I’d read? But it turned out that did have that magic!

It’s expensive to go to Paris from North America, so why on earth don’t we set more books in the French-est place on this continent? Especially romances.

Montreal isn’t the same as Paris. It’s self confident about its character in the same way Paris is, but it feels rougher and grittier. Paris somehow conveys and convinces its own elegance. If Paris is an impressionist painting, Montreal feels more like street art in a classical frame. But Montreal is romantic—romantic in a way that suits the rest of us.

If you wrote about Montreal, here’s a few things your characters could do:

Eat

You could convince yourself you were in France with some of the food—little bakeries will absolutely display croissants and macarons. Maybe this is for tourists who expect that sort of thing. But if you want a more Montreal taste, you’re digging into something more solid. It could be a bagel (Montreal-style bagels…) It could be Montreal smoked meat. Or it could be the absolute pinnacle of Québécois cuisine—a poutine. Fries dripping with gravy and cheese curds is hard to square with Parisian elegance, but it fits right in in Montreal. The French-Canadians who invented this dish were not thinking of serving it to aristocrats.

Food can be a window into a person’s soul, and is deeply tied to the way they experience a place. I’d give better guidance to exactly what to try in Montreal but I’m limited by my experience of celiac disease. And this shaped my experience of the city deeply, in my relief at how much I could eat, how good what I could eat was, and what I couldn’t eat (not the bagels or the smoked meat sandwiches). Sharing and exploring food for characters in a novel could reveal a lot about how they live and what they expect in life too. For example, the absolute best thing I ate in Montreal was buckwheat crepes drowning in maple syrup—I thought I knew how good maple syrup can be, but this was even better. And yet buckwheat crepes are more a staple of Brittany in northern France than Quebec. Maybe this is just to demonstrate yet again that both types of French resonate with me in different ways!

Explore Montreal Vibes

When I wrote about Paris, the best feedback I received about the manuscript was to inject more of the feel of the city into the story. This meant dredging my memories for every detail of the sights, sounds and smells and putting them in my characters’ minds when it made sense for them to experience them. Montreal has its own vibe, distinct from Paris, and this would be its own challenge to translate into prose. Like I said, it feels grittier (and I was not surprised to hear it was once a major centre of mafia activity—or possibly still is). It’s beautiful to look at, but not as tidy. Paris gets its own complaints over dog poo on the sidewalk and overflowing garbages, and yet it has a European-city tidiness that for whatever reason I don’t see here in Canada. I think it’s the winter, when the freeze-thaw makes everything crack up and break down a little, and as a result things don’t line up properly. But Montreal still has a lot of that European flavour, in the way you can turn a corner down a little street and it’s a pleasant walk, not a slog through a suburban wasteland, or a wind tunnel made of skyscrapers.

But what is Montreal’s character? It has an old historic centre, it’s true, and the medieval feel (it’s not actually medieval, just so you know) gives it a lot of that “European” flavour. But in my head, the style of Montreal is very much tied to the style of art and design that was tied to Expo 67, the world’s fair it hosted in 1967. I’m sure this style of design wasn’t invented in Montreal. But it expresses something about the city—the interest in design, its ties to the New World rather than the Old, and a unique concern with progress, humanity and the future. Montreal feels like a city with a heyday in the 60s, but not in a way that suggests it is in any way dead today. It’s not like Venice, which people complain is a museum and no longer a city. The vibrancy of its past lives in conjunction with the vibrancy of its present, and buildings like Habitat 67 are buildings that people do live in.

A few things that give Montreal its vibes: the metro, the streets that are full of people and cafes where patrons sit in the sun, the street art, the old mixed with the newer, the high front stairs going up to the second story of most houses, its walkability, and the streets that are restricted to cars. And the wide St Lawrence River, and of course, Mont Royal.

Climb Mont Royal

If I wrote a story about Montreal, I think the characters would climb Mont Royal. One reason is simply that Mont Royal is what Montreal is named after, so it’s an obvious thing to do. Another is that from that point, Montreal truly spread itself out before you. Another is that after the exertion of walking up so many stairs, to emerge at the top and be rewarded the wide open view and the St Lawrence River beyond is a perfect capstone to the experience.

Talk to People

I wrote a novella about Paris (called Paris in Clichés) and in that story my character meets another traveller and explores some of Paris with him. This was simply an element to create more of a story, but it also underlines how much connecting with other perspectives enriches your experience of a place. You could write a purely introspective novel, but if you went yourself you’d enjoy hearing from residents, business owners, café waiters, interns at the hostels and fellow travellers about their impressions of the city. Being able to meet and mix with strangers, and finding it possible to do, is one of the joys of travelling, because we don’t often think to have these random conversations with people we don’t know in our normal everyday life. If you go, take a moment to risk chatting with someone you meet. If you write about the city, tell us whether your characters love or hate the place.

Well, that was my own experience, as well as some thoughts on how Montreal could be a fun, different backdrop for a novel! I hope you enjoyed these thoughts, and if you’ve read something excellent set in Montreal, do let me know! I know it features in many literary works, it has just never come across my path in the same way Paris did. But I know there should be great works about this city out there!

Read my posts about Paris here:

Paris is Still Always a Good IdeaShakespeare and CompanyBerthillon: An Astonishing Ice Cream Shop on the Île Saint-LouisBateaux Mouches on the River SeineDon’t Miss the Eiffel TowerGet Lost in the LouvreTake in the View from the Sacré-Cœur

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