Much like what I just wrote about Quebec City, Montreal holds a very special place in my heart. In the early 1980s, childhood trips to the city with my dad were the first experiences I had visiting a big city. Those trips by train to Montreal to take in a few Expos games make me smile to this day and every time I get back to the city it feels like some happy ghosts from those days follow me on my current day explorations.

Montreal trips as an adult usually have a series of touchstones for me that have connections to the memories from my childhood trips. Having amazing meals in the city these days makes me think of getting to eat all kinds of food with dad that I didn’t normally get to have as a child. Touring craft breweries makes me think of dad letting me have a sip of his Budweiser as a kid while we got ready to head to Olympic Stadium. Wandering aimlessly around the old town takes me back to chasing pigeons with dad looking on and laughing at my childhood exploits. And exploring the city in search of public art takes me back to seeing Alexander Calder’s “Trois Disques” and having my mind blown as a seven year old as dad toured me around Île Sainte-Hélène.

While I’m partial to public art installations that you can move around and are a touch cheeky in nature like the one in the photo above, I also love mural art. Along Saint Lawrence Boulevard there’s a rich collection of murals and on my most recent trip I was most drawn to interpretations of some famous individuals with connections to Montreal.

Whether it was Patrick Roy’s likeness (above), one of the heroes of the last Montreal Canadiens Stanley Cup team in 1993, or Jackie Robinson (below) who made his professional baseball debut with the Montreal Royals before breaking the colour barrier in Major League Baseball with the Dodgers, I love these tributes to people Montreal continues to holds close.

Right in the downtown core, I ventured a bit out of my way to see one of the more iconic murals in Montreal of Canadian icon Leonard Cohen.

When I was there last year, Montreal was just coming into spring with a significant chill in the air. I loved being able to explore Old Montreal without its usual summertime crowds.

There is so much beauty in this part of the city. The architecture and cobblestone streets, the quaint cafes and galleries, and of course, Notre-Dame Basilica…. it can lull you into thinking you’ve been transported to somewhere in Europe.

Montreal has an amazing selection of craft breweries, some of which are among the best I’ve visited in Canada. On this most recent trip, I focused on some “new to me” breweries including Brasserie Mellön. I sat in a sunny window in their cozy tap room and sipped away on this amazing Japanese rice lager.

At Brasserie Harricana, the 1960s retro vibe interior was a great backdrop to this tasting flight including the beer on the far left – the first Grodziskie beer I had ever tasted – low alcohol and full of flavour, this might be the beer that gets me interested in a visit to Poland some day down the road.

There was no chance I was leaving Montreal without a visa to Messorem. They caught my attention two years ago with a beer I tasted of theirs at Superflux in Vancouver. One sip of that added them to my next Montreal adventure and it didn’t let me down. I tried a cross section of their IPAs and this cemented for me their standing as one of my favourite breweries in Canada.

And the food on this trip….. a reservation at Liverpool House and when my eyes caught the seafood special for the evening there was no chance I wasn’t ordering this – a mix of Eel Lake (Nova Scotia) and PEI oysters with fresh in-season snow crab from the Gaspé Peninsula.

With seafood as my first course, there was also no doubt about my main – their famous steak frites was one of the best things I ate in 2023.

As an adult, no trip to Montreal is complete without a visit to Schwartz’s. My go-to here is now part of my personal religion – arrive shortly after they open when others are thinking about breakfast, order a smoked meat sandwich (fatty; never medium or lean!), pickle, cherry cola and enter a trance like state of bliss from one of the great meals in a city of great meals. My next visit can’t come soon enough!