Introduction to Montreal

The duality of Canadian life has been called the "Twin Solitudes." One Canada, English and Calvinist in origin, is said to be staid, smug, and work-obsessed. The other, French and Catholic but highly secular, is thought of as more creative, lighthearted, and inclined to see pleasure as the end purpose of labor. Or so go the stereotypes.

These two peoples live side by side throughout Québec and in the nine provinces of English Canada, but the blending occurs in particularly intense fashion in Québec province's largest city, Montréal. French speakers, known as Francophones, constitute about 70% of the city's population, while most of the remaining population speaks English -- Anglophones. (The growing number of residents who have another primary tongue, and speak neither English nor French, are called Allophones.) Although both groups are decidedly North American, they are no more alike than Margaret Thatcher and Charles de Gaulle.

Montréal is a modern city in every regard. Its downtown bristles with skyscrapers, but many of them are playful, almost perky, with unexpected shapes and bright, uncorporate colors. The city above ground is mirrored by another below, an underground labyrinth of shops, restaurants, movie theaters, and offices where an entire winter can be avoided in coatless comfort.

To the west and north of downtown are Anglo commercial and residential neighborhoods, centered around Westmount. To the east and north are Francophone quartiers, notably Plateau Mont-Royal and Outremont. In between are the many dialects and skin tones of the immigrant rainbow.

Over the past decade, a bleak mood prevailed in Québec, driven by lingering recession and uncertainty over the future. After all, it still remained possible that Québec would choose to fling itself into independence from the rest of Canada. Lately, though, passions have cooled, and now, something else is going on.

Ripples of optimism have become waves, spreading through the province and its largest city. The Canadian dollar has strengthened against its U.S. counterpart. Unemployment in Québec, long in double digits, shrank to under 6%, the lowest percentage in more than 2 decades, and below that of archrival Toronto. In another (perhaps connected) trend, crime in Montréal (already one of the safest cities in North America) has hit a 20-year low. Favorable currency exchange and the presence of skilled workers have made the city a favored site for Hollywood film and TV production. The rash of FOR RENT and FOR SALE signs that disfigured the city in the 1990s has evaporated, replaced by a welcome shortage of store and office space and a billion-dollar building boom that's filling up vacant lots all over downtown. The beloved old hockey arena was converted to a dining and entertainment center called Forum Pepsi, and La Ronde, a popular amusement park that was experiencing a sharp decline that threatened to end in bankruptcy, was saved by its sale to the Six Flags empire.

To be sure, not every project has enjoyed smooth sailing. A plan to build a downtown baseball stadium collapsed soon after it was proposed, as did a plan for a new theme park. But those stumbles won't matter to American visitors, for whom Montréal already might seem an urban near-paradise. The subway system, called the Métro, is modern and swift. Streets are safe. Montréal's best restaurants are the equals of their south-of-the-border compatriots in every way, yet they are as much as 20% to 30% cheaper. And the government gives visitors back most of the taxes it collects from them.