Category: Travel

Despite being right at the cusp of spring, the nights I recently spent in Montreal were decidedly mild and enjoyable. They made it more than worthwhile to lug around a tripod.

In addition to the sometimes intriguing distortion produced by very wide angle lenses, one useful property is how their short focal lengths allow for relatively long handheld exposures, without too much danger of camera shake. It is certainly novel to be able to shoot at 1/20″ with a lens lacking in image stabilization capabilities.

I think I was the oldest person at this party, by the space of several years. Nonetheless, it was a colourful and entertaining event and a nice counterpoint to the calmer parts of the weekend.

Climbing Mont Royal at night is certainly one of the nicest and most scenic things to do in Montreal. Personally, I think the city is best viewed from above at night, though it can also be quite pleasant around sunset.

I have fond memories of going up in the midst of an intense but very warm thunderstorm with my friend Viktoria, back when I was participating in the Summer Language Bursary program.

I like the interplay of colours here, particularly the orange and green on the stairs and the blaring purple from inside the building.

While Montreal does have a substantial urban core, it certainly cannot rival Toronto for sheer bulk or Vancouver for startling growth. Indeed, whereas Vancouver felt substantially denser when I visited in December than when I was there a few years before, Montreal basically seems like the same place now as it was in 2003.

Rue St. Denis may be a bit touristy, but it contains a substantial variety of pubs and restaurants, as well as some interesting murals and graffiti.

Fondue is actually a very nice dinner option, when you want to have an extended conversation. The need to individually cook each item to be eaten extends the meal in a rather pleasing and natural way.

I have always rather liked the standard architecture of Montreal lowrise houses: with a balcony at the second level and a staircase rising up to it either directly or in a curve.

It is around this monument in Parc Mont Royal that the famous ‘Tam Tam Jams’ occur, along with many other informal social activities. While I was taking these night photos, there was unusual shouting and drumming emerging from somewhere within the darkened trees uphill, along with the noticeable scent of wood smoke.

The distortion from a wide-angle lens does seem to have the commendable property of being able to make a vertical monument look like the heavy foot of some elephant or dinosaur.

The vertical lines here are lens flares, induced by the streetlights that run in front of the monument (and which make it so nicely lit for long exposures, from that direction).

Throughout the Easter weekend, these parks were full of people picnicking, playing sports, and generally enjoying themselves. At night, the area is rather more gloomy and desolate. The few people who you do encounter – often as they skirt along in the shadows – sometimes make you glad for being a relatively large and tall man, with a substantial aluminum tripod at hand.

These trees have a rather menacing look that matches the atmosphere of the area, at least on some nights.

Montreal has always been a city which I have appreciated. As an undergraduate, I was lucky enough to spend most of a summer there, participating in the Summer Language Bursary Program. The city is a layered and culturally engaging one. I was happy to visit my brother there for the Easter weekend.

The Montreal metro probably has the most character of any in Canada – largely owing to how the design of each station differs substantially. Vancouver probably has the nicest views from overhead track, but Montreal almost certainly has the most to offer underground.

While they are far from flattering, portraits taken on wide-angle zoom lenses can have an interesting quality. This one of my brother was taken in a diner where we were having a late breakfast.

One definite advantage of wide-angle lenses is that they allow you to incorporate people into images in such a way that they assume themselves to be quite outside the frame.

As with Paris, Montreal is notable for having excellent graffiti in places – though it is regrettable that vandals with no skill frequently decide to emblazon their insignificant aliases on the works of far better artists.

Heading up Rue Mont Royal, I encountered a very friendly bus driver who was eating her lunch. She encouraged me to explore the bus storage and maintenance depot around us, despite many ominous signs warning of grim consequences for outsiders who did do.

A firefighter I encountered was equally welcoming. Their approach contrasted substantially with a security guard at the Journal de Montreal building, at the foot of the road, who gruffly informed me that I had no right to be in their parking lot. Their building was boring, anyhow.

The Plateau area, where my brother is living presently, has a wide variety of attractive and interesting buildings. It’s remarkable how they serve as variations on a theme, yet still express such architectural scope.

Even with a rented Canon 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 lens, I could not resist making some use of the superb Canon 70-200mm f/4 L telephoto zoom. Of all the lenses I have owned or used, it may well have the best optical properties.

At the head of Rue Mont Royal, up against the mountain of the same name, there is a park with a stately monument. It is often a nexus for social gatherings, such as the ‘Tam Tam Jams’ which often permeate Sunday evenings with the sound of drum music, for many blocks around.

The same statue, seen from a wider perspective, gives some sense of how it looks in aggregate.

Among the many other spiral staircases of Montreal, this particular one led down from the balcony of a flat inhabited by a friend of my brother to a yard that has become a favourite hangout for cats. We saw at least a dozen lounging there at once, that afternoon.

This insignia adorns a fence somewhere in the slightly ambiguous zone between the park with the monument and the beginning of the McGill University campus.

While not the most attractive of photos, this one amuses me on account of how the car and building blend in a shape like a large clown shoe.

This angelic statue sits beside the largest contained green space at McGill, near the entrance to one of the libraries.

One of three bearers of a fountain within a fountain is shown here.

Here again is the park with the monument. During the Easter weekend, it was an incredibly active place, well populated with many locals taking advantage of the time off and very fine spring weather.

One odd feature of being a semi-regular visitor to Montreal is that I become familiar with bits of graffiti, only to see them subsequently altered, erased, or overwritten.

Tomorrow, I will put up some photos of Montreal by night.