Places I've cried in Montreal

“I bought this jacket

Because the front said Montreal

That’s a town I had to leave I didn’t want to leave at all

And when I wear it

It makes me feel alone

It’s a reminder that I needed a reminder

Of a place I once called home.”

-Noah Reid, Tiff Song.

When I heard that song a few years ago, I had one of those incredibly teenage-Emo moments of ‘these lyrics are talking about my life.’ but I’m going to close with that. Sometimes we all need a reminder that we need a reminder, of those places we once called home. 

I lived in Montreal for a year of my degree, when I got there at 19 and left just before my 21st Birthday. And it was the year everything changed. It was a year I cried in every conceivable place in that city. I cried for the final time on July 1st (Canada day!) when I left, saying ‘goodbye house’ to the flat I’d shared with three strangers who became friends. I had one more taxi ride with broken French and vowed I’d return. A decade and a half passed, and I hadn’t been back. 

So when I returned 16 years later, I spent a good portion of the week going, ‘I’ve cried there’…I spent a good portion of the week crying there again. 

I cried on my way to the airport; I cried when there were problems with a visa. I cried when I couldn’t find the hotel. I cried when it turned out we were in the wrong hotel. I have no problem admitting I’m a mess right now. But maybe you need to go and cry in the places you used to cry in to move on. Except it turns out, you don’t move on from a place you called home. You just cry again. 

So here is a rundown of places I’ve cried in Montreal and why…

St Viateur Bagel 

This iconic bakery really is a beautiful place to cry. It’s my stand-in for all the cafes of the Plateau I’ve cried in. But one time in particular, I remember reading an interview with Hugh Jackman and crying there. Look it was a weird time ok? 

But also this place, feels like home. I was lucky to live within walking distance of this iconic Montreal institution (in case it’s not apparent I’m team St Viateur in bagel wars, I’m also team Montreal is better than New York in this instance too). 

But there’s something deeply lonely sometimes about being new somewhere. I’ve always been good at being alone, but I’m not immune to it either. That year I struggled. But going back? Those cafes felt like home, and despite all the tears, I also felt like that was a way I learned to be me, to be at home wherever and and on my own. And ok the bagels helped. 

Did you know Montreal has the second largest Jewish population in Canada? and the immigration of Jewish people, particularly after World War two led to a lot of Jewish restaurants and yes…bagel places. Read about St Viateuer here.

The Montreal Metro 

Fun story, my flatmate and a friend arrived in Toronto one weekend and all stood dumbfounded then laughed when the assistant in the station spoke to us. Why? As we said to them ‘We’ve just come from Montreal’

Look, living life in a language that isn’t your own is hard. Even though Montreal is bilingual, it’s French first mostly. As much as I can get by too, sometimes your brain struggles. The Metro was my nemesis this way when I lived there. I always seemed to combine getting lost with the people who really didn’t want to help in English. 

On returning, I found the opposite, I found my way around- I only went wrong once! And every person I spoke to was helpful. I could cry with relief. But also crying on public transport is a specialty. I cried the whole way down the mountain this time because I felt like everything was going wrong with this holiday. Is the holiday a metaphor for life? Is crying on public transport a metaphor for life? Maybe. 

But also did you know the Montreal Metro trains run on tires not rails? and that there’s public art in every station which you can view a list of here.

The Biodome

Ok this one is a cheat. I cried because penguins make me happy and I wanted to put a picture of a penguin here. LOOK AT THEM. 

But also the Biodome is a really cool repurposing of the old Olympic Velodrome and has four habitats that reflect different wildlife habitats.

The Bell Centre 

The last time I was here, it was to see Sarah McLachlan. I cried because I was that 00s teen ok? But look, my Lilith Fayre Sarah McLachlan self seeing her live at an emotionally fraught time…there were tears.

There were also tears when a neighbour came over to visit with mum, and a huge argument happened over some Sarah McLachlan tickets. Again Montreal was a messy weird place where I cried a lot. 

But this time? I got to see Ice Hockey at the Bell Centre. In the last 6 months, hockey has become my newest love, and it’s honestly been a saviour in difficult times. There’s a whole other post in that, but finally allowing myself to have a hobby, a thing I loved that perhaps wasn’t productive or expected and was just…joy was huge. And getting to see hockey at the home of hockey? Tears of joy, excitement, love. Montreal was the city I found a love of theatre and initially, I found it hard to let go of my usual holiday – which is going hard on 8 shows or more in New York. But instead, I found my quieter (ironically) love of hockey to be much more fulfilling. 

Did you know Montreal had the first indoor hockey game ? or that the Montreal Canadieans were formed in 1909 or that their nickname ‘The Habs’ comes from the nickname of Montrealers ‘Les Habitants’ which relates to the French farmers who farmed the land around the St Lawrence river (the Kaniatarowanenneh river on

A random bar on the Plateau

First of all is it even a bar in your 20s if you haven’t cried in the bathroom or somewhere? I cried a bunch of times in these in Montreal. For usual reasons (for me) not fitting in, not being a bar-pub-club person. Not being a dating/pulling randos in bars person. Or just having a bad day. 

On our trip, we had a gig booked for Sunday night. For whatever reason, I’d not looked up the exact location beforehand, just a vague area. On looking it up I realised it was exactly two blocks from my old apartment. In the taxi on the way there I couldn’t really tell where we were…turns out the city was more unfamiliar than I thought. But suddenly, like a vision in the dark I saw…a laundrette. Not to be dramatic (ha!) but I’d know that laundrette anywhere. To quote My Fair Lady, we were on the Street Where You Lived. I don’t know if I’m weird (I am) or dramatic (I am) but it was a wave of … something hitting me. That night, sitting in a bar that could have been any bar I spent time in that year (again, I was 20) finally hit me that I was back home. Sitting listening to some indie-folk singer the kind I would have ben utterly unhinged for in my 20s. The kind that sounds like home. It hit me that I was. 

Tim Horton’s

Call yourself Canadian if you haven’t cried in a Tim Horton’s at some point? 

The Tim Horton’s across from McGill campus I’m sure sees more than its fair share of tears. I remember one specific day for me however, right at the beginning of term; I was struggling with navigating the campus, the classes… everything. Retrospectively I can see this is hard stuff, and as a neurodiverse person the perfect storm of stuff I struggle with; directions, complex instructions, change…people, and being overwhelmed. But at the time, it felt like the end of the world. I decided to treat myself to a Tim Horton’s coffee…and they put sugar in it. I didn’t know they automatically did that if you didn’t ask (a double double). And I cried. That coffee was the only good thing about my day and it was ruined.

I sat in that Tim Horton’s again and bought some hockey trading cards and a coffee; it was…different. I survived that day, I survived a bunch more that year, and since and now I was back drinking coffee and eating donuts and collecting hockey cards. In some moments you get to realise how far you’ve come. 

McGill Library 

I mean did you even go here if you haven’t cried here? 

Like Tim Horton’s, I didn’t cry here this time. But many times before. I mean, who hasn’t cried in their University library? 

I have such a strange love for the frankly really ugly buildings of the arts and social sciences part of McGill. These concrete monstrosities are places I actually learned a lot (I know I’m as surprised as you are) and actually possibly the only year of education I didn’t feel like a spectacular failure. I think now any tears I’d cry are more for the wish of a career in academia that never was and the weird, yes somewhat romanticised longing for being part of a world that I’m not (Little Mermaid pun intended). 

This very cool LGBTQ+ campus activism exhibition was on there.

McGill has had many famous Alumni …but of course William Shatner is the one we remember. I was sad the Shanter Building is currently closed for renovation (it was voted to be named such in a 1992 student referendum proving democarcy does work kids)

1216 Rue Rue Stanley 

This building doesn’t look much but it changed my life. Above the weird Sushi restaurant and the weirder photo shop and down the street from a strip club…was the place I fell in love with theatre.

People like me didn’t do theatre growing up. We barely had it at school and kids like me didn’t got to drama clubs of stage schools. But durin a year abroad I decided to try theatre classes at a place I found via googling. Acting didn’t stck but in this palace I started writing my first play, and found the first theatre community I ever felt part of. 

The day I signed u for my first class i was so close to giving up on my year abroad and going home. That class changed me and the folks I met along the way change me, gave me a lot of something that lasted a long time. Most of them probably don’t even remember me, but they all were part of a group of strangers, changing my life. 

I cried in that place. I cried in scenes, I cried from exhaustion doing 24-hour film festivals, I cried when I had to say goodbye for the last time to a space and a group of people that were so special to me. It’s also the only place I cried about my dad dying; I went to class that night and told someone who was an almost stranger in my class and cried in the weird bathrooms. 

But I laughed more than I cried there. I met a friend who told me about a Masters’s course I’d eventually do. I won an actual silly award for acting there, and someone told me I was an awesome writer; people read my words and started me on a journey I’m still on. It doesn’t look much, but that building changed my life. 

(They seem to have moved a few years ago, but I hope they’re still going strong somewhere…)

Fun fact too, this strip club I walked past so many times is the site of Le Lime Light et Le Jardin an iconic club that long before Studio 54 in New York was host to people like Freddie Mercury, Elton, Grace Jones and more. Also once their security guard stopped me slipping in dog poop. So all important iconic things.

4087 deLorimier 

I went to visit the apartment. I did my route home from the subway and passed the giant orange circle (it’s by an artist called Mario Merola, and if you didn’t know, Montreal has public art in all its Metro stations and all new buildings fun fact). I can’t tell you why a giant orange circle feels like home, but it does.

We walked through Park La Fountaine, and did a walk that I rode my bike along so many times. Past the weird giant flags, past the pond, past the fountain, past the baseball and boules, and back to the streets of the plateau.

Past a hairdresser and two pet shops, and eventually to a supermarket. That looks like it dropped there in the 70s and never changed. I had to walk around it. Nothing had changed- nothing. I can’t explain why herb-crusted beef and bags of milk next to tubs of gummy sweets feels like a particular period in my life, but such is nostalgia (I didn’t say it was sanity, did I…). 

This place weirdly has an Instragram now. I’ve cried in there too.

I picked that apartment at random, taking only the second one I saw. It became home, the flatmates friends (who I’m still in touch with today). I arrived at 19 knowing nobody in the city, or the country. I was a kid and a total mess.

In that apartment, I heard the music of “Rent” for the first time. In that apartment, I watched “Angels in America” for the first time. Both things changed my life. 

In that apartment, I got a call saying my dad had died. And in that apartment, I went through another ten months of falling apart and (sort of) putting myself back together.

I left that apartment a few weeks away from 21, still a kid, still a mess. But altogether different. 

The thing is I knew I needed to visit the apartment. I knew I couldn’t cross the ocean and not. Is that weird? Maybe. But I knew I wanted- needed- to see it again. Nothing had changed really. The street was still the right mix of run-down and familiar. The outside looked exactly the same. Inside, in a weird way, I was relieved to see it was half renovated. Walls ripped out and everything glossed over white. My room wasn’t even there anymore. And weirdly that was better. It wasn’t like someone else just dumped their stuff in there…it was gone, bright orange kitchen walls and all. 

My book on Angels came out the week after we got back, and its got a dedication to my old flatmate from that place, who at the video store said, ‘it’s supposed to be good,’ and we rented it. She has no idea that day changed my life.

It’s a place I fell apart. I can never erase that it’s when I heard that my dad had died, and everything in the lead-up and aftermath. Looking back, I remember snippets from the days before and wonder how different those days would have been having I not been on the other side of the world. In a bubble, away from it all. But also the days after, when all my friends were asleep while I was awake, and I had nobody to talk to unless I stayed up half the night to talk on MSN (yes, I’m that old). Or in the months after, when I’d fight with my mother across an ocean on the phone because I was 20 and a mess and an ocean away. 

So I needed to see that place again, and maybe acknowledge everything that happened there. Things that shaped the course of my career, my life, and the things I love. And parts of who I am shaped too. It all could have happened anywhere, but it happened there. 

I also watched a frankly excessive amount of Family Guy, Seinfeld, and 24 there because…well, 2004. 

The street was named after François-Marie-Thomas Chevalier de Lorimier who was executed for rebelling against the British in the Lower Canada rebellion in 1838.

Trudeau Airport 

I’ve cried here repeatedly. I cried the day I left, obviously, but also because an airline employee yelled at me for having too much carry-on. I cried once because I got lost. I cried so hard when I left my mum there during a snowstorm and spent two hours trying to get home while she waited for a flight home. And I cried when I had to leave again. 

What surprised me was how hard it was to leave again. And how much I’ve missed it since I was back. 

On the last day, I kept catching myself wanting to burst into tears. To quote the Tenth Doctor, I didn’t want to go…and it was once again a weird push and pull of being holiday-exhausted and needing to go home…but already being home and not wanting to go. The idea, too, that this was actually ‘goodbye’ was something I couldn’t take. The last time I left, I was determined to be back soon, but ‘soon’ turned into a decade and a half…and I realised, I didn’t want this to be a goodbye-goodbye. I didn’t want the ‘closure’ I thought I was getting, couldn’t have it because somehow, a door had opened again. 

Since I’ve been back too, I miss it. Not in an ‘I want a holiday’ way (though I would in fact, like a holiday, thanks). But in a deeply elemental and inexplicable way that I’ve only felt once before, the last time I left. I never felt that for anywhere else I lived. Montreal and I weren’t done, and we’re still not. 

Going back wasn’t easy. Not just for these reasons, my neurospicy brain isn’t happy right now and travel was a struggle. On day two I tearfully declared I wasn’t going back…and yet…getting back has been on my mind since I left.

It’s funny, until I went back; I always assumed that my relationship with the city was part of a very specific moment in time. And it is, and it isn’t. That city raised me in a way, but that city also won’t let go. I can’t tell you what draws me back. I would make a terrible Tourisme Quebec representative. It has not so much my heart but a deep-seated part of my soul, and it won’t give it up. 

In my head…

I’ve spent a lot of the last year and a half in Montreal in my head. I decided to set the novel I started work on there. Specifically, really in my old apartment. I’ve walked those places a dozen times with my characters,, and that has been the most cathartic, tear-filled way to do it. 

When I got back, I wrote a version of my experience for my characters. We might not have met them in their full story yet, but this is what happened when Nick, my main character, went home again on my other blog. 

So in a first, we’re linking with my creative writing blog, head over there to read that story.