First off, I wanted to state that our Air Canada flight from SFO to Montreal went so well we actually started looking into where else they fly. It was a welcome relief from other airlines where we have had so many issues with boarding and flight delays. The Air Canada crew was particularly friendly and professional. Even the food was decent! Shout out to AC!
On our first day in Montreal we took a tour of the city so we could get our bearings. We used the always excellent Tours By Locals site to find Ronny P, and he was a perfect host, with a wide range of knowledge and a passion for the city. He met us at our hotel, Le Mount Stephen, which has a history of it’s own.
This hotel was built by George Stephen, the President of the Bank of Montreal and the Canadian Pacific Railway, in 1880. Impressive! It was considered the most lavish mansion in Montreal once completed. The former mansion now houses the lobby, meeting rooms and a restaurant. The actual hotel rooms are situated behind it.
Our first stop on our tour was this unusual half-fountain located in Dorchester Square. While it looks older, this was just installed during a refurbishment of the square in 2019. You can even see a cute little metal woodpecker on the side of the fountain. Interesting to note that this fountain was actually made in Alabama. A little bit of America in Montreal!
At one point, most of Dorchester Square was a Catholic Cemetery, with the bulk of the graves hastily arranged due to the 1851 Cholera epidemic. All of the graves were exhumed and moved to nearby Mount Royal in 1854.
In the middle of the square stands the Boer War Memorial, unveiled in 1907, the only equestrian memorial in Montreal. The memorial faces north towards the Mount Royal Cross, which would have been visible from the square up until 1929. Progress ruins every view eventually!
The below artwork called “The Ring” was just installed in 2022. I’m not so sure I would refer to it as “artwork”, but it definitely frames Mount Royal quite well!
Just south of “The Ring” is the Fairmont “The Queen Elizabeth Hotel”. This hotel is famous as the location of one of John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s “Bed-in for Peace” locations in 1969.
It’s also famous as this is where John Lennon wrote “Give Peace a Chance”. If you enlarge the below photo you can actually see the words (Hair Peace, Bed Peace) on the window in the room where they stayed. The suite is available for $2000 a night…like a hippy could afford that!!
Ok, enough hippy crap. Our next stop was the Olympic Flame from the 1976 Montreal Olympics. The stainless steel statue has the name of every Canadian citizen who has ever medaled in the Olympics. I’m not entirely sure why they couldn’t have had an actual flame versus the fake light sticks….global warming perhaps??
Our guide then took us to Victoria Square, named after Queen Victoria. There is a Metro station entrance that looks like one I’ve seen in Paris. It turns out this is an original metro sign from Paris, designed by Hector Guimard, gifted to Montreal by the Mayor of Paris in 1967. It’s interesting to note that this entrance still has it’s original glass lamp globes (that look like something out of War of the Worlds), the only ones remaining in the world, as Paris replaced all of theirs with plastic ones. Hey Paris, plastic is a derivative of fossil fuels! Glass is not! Just saying!
Of course you can’t visit Victoria Square without a photo of the Queen’s statue.
Our next stop was to see a section of the original Berlin Wall, gifted to Montreal from Berlin in 1992. Very cool piece of history! Reminds me of visiting the Reagan Library, where there is another section of the former wall, which he was instrumental in bringing down.
We took a brief walk along the waterfront, and our guide took us up in an observation tower so we could see the port area, including the cruise ship terminal, where our upcoming cruise ship will be docking in a few days.
This beautiful building was the last stop on our walking tour. This is the Bonsecours Market building. Opened in 1847, this building was the main public market in Montreal for more than 100 years. It was shut down on 1963 and slated for demolition, but was saved and refurbished, and now houses restaurants, outdoor cafes, and boutique shops. We had a beer at one of their outdoor breweries called BreWskey. This spot is a must stop on your Montreal tour.
Up next, our friends Tony and Julie join us, and we find the best of Montreal! Well, the best in our opinion, and we are rarely wrong.