| We moved on from Ottawa to Montreal, which occupies an
island in the St Lawrence River. Our selected
campsite was in Laval, another island almost as big as Montreal. Unfortunately it
is nowhere near where I thought it was
and thus we were miles out. Fortunately we could catch a bus to a metro
station to get into Montreal, but it was all terminus to terminus and took
over 1.5 hours each way.
We wandered through Montreal looking at the old buildings and found this
old style market built in 1847 down by the dockside, and now full of trendy
boutiques. Impressive building though, it also served as the city hall until
1878. |  |
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The harbour/marina was full of the usual collection of yachts including this
unusual research schooner called Sedna IV. The masts are steel and the sails
are pulled
out from the masts horizontally by motors thus requiring minimal crew. It
had just completed a voyage with filmmakers filming the break up of arctic
ice as a result of global warming. |
| Also in the harbour was the goélette
Marie-Clarisse, 130ft long and 40ft wide with 88ft masts. A goélette is a
schooner particular to the St Lawrence River as it has an unusually flat
bottom which enables it to be run up on to the shallow sandy banks of the
river for loading/unloading. These days it sails between Montreal and Quebec
at up to 6 knots carrying tourists. |  |
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The view from the harbour looking back towards the city looks like many
other cities. Below the flags are a set of boards commemorating the role of
modern women with the pictures of 1000 women. Art I guess!. |
| City centres are short of garden space, even the roofs
are occupied by chic restaurants and drinking places. |  |
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A reminder of one of the principal exports via the docks is this huge
collection of grain silos. Although you can't see them I suspect there were
ships on the other side although the traffic on the Great Lakes is much less
than it used to be. |
| A reminder of a past age is this rusting tug
theoretically awaiting restoration. They need to get a coat of paint on it
soon or there won't be much left to restore. The Daniel Macallister was
built in 1905/6 and was originally called Helena. She is the largest and
oldest ocean-going tugboat still afloat in Canada and the second oldest in
the world. In 1967 she used to help berth ships like the Empress of Canada
for visits to Expo 67. She was retired in 1981. Originally steam powered,
she was converted to diesel in 1940 and returned to the lakes from the north
Atlantic at the end of WW2. |  |
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We stopped for lunch in a bistro on the dockside and were treated to this
amazing sweet, and I don't normally like chocolate!. |
| Heading into the city from the docks we passed this
statue in the Place d'Armes of Paul de Chomedey, Sieur de Maisonneuve (1842)
who was the founder of Montreal on the 18th May 1642. The statue dates from
1895. It is sufficiently important to have more statues (shown below) around
the base. These depict early inhabitants of the area. |  |
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Not all statues are old, or outside. This is in the foyer of the HSBC bank,
where we stopped for some Canadian money. |
| We eventually found the way into underground Montreal.
There are 33km of pedestrian tunnels under the city centre which connect
most of the major shopping malls, office blocks and hotels in the city
centre. It is strange to consider that Montreal is on the same latitude as
Bordeaux, France and yet in winter can be too cold outside for survival.
There is a map of the tunnels but it is very difficult to follow and we got
lost several times. This is one of the connecting tunnels, but note the
curved bar on the left, which is designed to give less able users a resting
place during their travels. |  |
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The shopping malls are huge, each the size of Meadowhall, Sheffield or the
Metro Centre, Gateshead. We wandered rather aimlessly past unfamiliar shop
names and just marvelled at this underground city. |
| Outside and above ground, there are some quite stylish
buildings reminiscent of a bygone age. Today they are used mostly as offices
rather than as the private houses which they were once. This area houses
McGill university, one of the most prestigious universities in the world. We
think the building was called McGill cottage. Other buildings in the city
are on a larger scale, and from a different era, but all highlighting
Montreal's importance and standing in the world. |  |
| At the other end of the scale is this house at the bus
stop at the end of our day out. I'm not sure why the aerial is so large.
Perhaps it too is a reminder of an earlier age. Many other houses in the
road had much smaller aerials although this is not an uncommon size in
Canada. |  |
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