Montreal, winter away gently. He was rude: up to 40 C . "Felt temperature", including "chill", Sesame here. It is "the weather is sensational journalism", said the newspaper "La Presse". Appeared a decade ago, "Windchill" belongs to the daily lives of Quebecers.
It has even been implemented equation: If T is the temperature and wind speed, cooling V is equal to 0, 13,12 6215 T 11, 37 V (power 0.16) 0, 3965 T V (power 0.16). Try the formula, it is to adopt it. Montreal is at the latitude of Bordeaux, the cold Labrador currents not save it. Time feeds all the conversations. The weather channel does that this, the temperature it here, but post-de-la-Baleine, Gaspé, Kuujuuak and Kuujuuarapik, Villeneuve and Rimouski; cooling of the body through the head, frostbite. Bigre... The viewer of the old world would hesitate to put the nose outside. Hard to take.

This is the time or never toboggan down the slopes of Mount Royal, highest point of the city to 232 meters "no drag with his dog", warns a sign , of skate, walk to cross-country skis. And, more prosaically, to survey the city under the snow, only or almost. Because the winter, Montrealers frequent the underground city built in the years 1970: 33 kilometers of corridors connecting a dozen subway stations, two railway stations, buildings, shopping galleries... The hotel gives on Sherbrooke Street, the large first quarter bourgeois of the Canada, built between 1850 and 1930.
Style "Holt and Renfrew.
The English-speaking dynasties Scottish often, fortified with the construction of railway and dams, built their mansions in red brick, witnesses of their opulence in this district renamed "The thousand Golden Square". A small Edinburgh air fleet here. "Do not, repeat Montreal is an English city with a French varnish", fun René Lemieux, our guide. The large Presbyterian Church Saint Andrew-Saint-Paul (1932) do not disown it. The Museum of fine arts (1860), in the face; toponymy, street Towers, Mackay Street, Bishop Street, rue Stanley, etc., the English-speaking University, not more. The street crosses the city from West to East, since affluent neighborhoods mixing high houses, banks, chic boutiques style "holt and renfrew", the Ritz, the fashionable restaurants of rue Saint-Denis and the latin quarter, to the Botanical Garden (more than 20,000 species spread over 75 hectares) and modest neighborhoods, several kilometres.
Montreal is not a monumental city to the European. It is a succession of quarters transfigured by the waves of immigration and enrichment through the generations.
Amours d'antan
The small Italy does have nothing to do with Sicily, although tomatoes and grape plants continue to adorn the backyards, even if the markets, trattorias, grocery stores are a nod to the Mediterranean. Mile End and Outremont talk more the Jews of Central Europe "shtetel" installed at the end of the 19th century, it is a chic neighborhood. As the Plateau-Mont-Royal, zone can no longer bobo "yuppie-Bohemian", said here. The old Montreal, with the château Ramezay, the statues of Vauquelin and Jacques Cartier, witnesses of the birth of the city three hundred and sixty years ago, presents the ideas in place. The old port, and its ferries frozen in ice, recalls the role of strategic lock of Montreal and les amours d'antan ("Suzanne takes you down to her place near the river, you can hear the boats go by", sings Leonard Cohen).
Westmount, one of the strongholds of the anglophone bourgeoisie; petite-Bourgogne, former working-class district; the Olympic Park who revealed to the world, in 1976, the uniqueness of Quebec; streets St. Lawrence known as the hand and Sainte-Catherine, where he made good "shop", the old New York-like business district... We know how to address this patchwork city. All entries are good to take.
After a few days, the newcomer place the pieces of the puzzle. The personality of the city is revealed little by little: provincial in his rhythm, air with its skyscrapers, neither really French nor really English, both at the time, but also American, multicultural, young, with his students around the world. On a desire to learn more. Another meaning song of Robert Charlebois. "I will return to Montreal / in a large blue Boeing sea / I need to review winter / and its northern lights.".