There are four main drags to keep in mind for a night on the town. Downtown's rue Crescent hums with activity from late afternoon until far into the evening, especially on summer weekend nights, when the street swarms with people careening from bar to restaurant to club. In the Plateau Mont-Royal neighborhood, boulevard St-Laurent, or the Main, as it's known, has blocks and blocks of bars and clubs, most with a distinctive French personality, as opposed to rue Crescent's Anglo flavor. In Vieux-Montréal, rue St-Paul west of Place Jacques-Cartier falls somewhere in the middle on the Anglophone-Francophone spectrum. And in the Village, rue Catherine closes in summer to cars and becomes flush with people; the cafes and bars that line the street build temporary terraces that fill with people in the afternoons and evenings.
In all cases, bars tend to open around 11:30am and stay open until 2am or 3am. Many of them have heures joyeuses (happy hours) from as early as 3pm to as late as 9pm, but usually for a shorter period within those hours. You'll see signs that read BIERES EN FUT; this means "beer on draft."
