Travel Memories: Montreal, Montreal, Canada

For my first ever trip to Canada, I headed straight to its bilingual heart: Montreal, in Quebec Province. At first glance it seems like a pretty standard North American city, with glass high-rises and the typical outdoor fire-escape staircases that cling to the side of buildings - something I noticed was quite prevalent across the north-eastern part of the continent.

But delve a little deeper and the European, specifically French, influences become increasingly evident, not least in the language. I have a pretty decent level of French, and have little problem conversing with people from France, but I did struggle a lot with many of the Quebecois. The accent was often very difficult for me to grasp. Fortunately almost everyone in this town is fluent in both French and English, so when things got really tough, you could always take the easy way out - though some knowledge of French is still useful for reading signs etc. I have subsequently talked to some French people about this language issue and they have told me they too sometimes have difficulty with the Quebecois - so that made me feel a little better!

Nowhere is this Frenchiness more apparent than Old Montreal, wedged between the Downtown area and the Old Port of Montreal. Its main landmark is the 17th-century Notre-Dame Basilica. The Gothic Revival structure is more slender than its Parisian counterpart, but it still adds a definite Parisian feel - and is incidentally also where one of Canada’s most famous daughters, Celine Dion, got married in 1994. ...... (follow the instructions below for accessing the rest of this article).