A love letter to Montreal

What keeps me coming back to the city

Opinions Claudia Beaudoin — Published September 2, 2025 | Updated September 2, 2025 at 9:45am 2 minutes

Sidewalk cafés host hurried breakfasts and lingering conversations. Markets brim with chatter between neighbours and vendors. Music seeps from open windows, and the aroma of fresh food drifts from every restaurant. Each neighbourhood moves to its own rhythm, layering daily routines with decades of history, small gestures and unnoticed connections that quietly shape the city’s landscape.

Some corners, however, quietly become yours: a bench where you’ve paused to watch a street musician, a restaurant patio you revisit on sunny afternoons, a quiet park tucked between buildings where conversations stretch into the evening. These moments fold into memory, shaping your sense of place without ever announcing themselves.

Students, artists and longtime residents move through the same spaces, overlapping in quiet moments and sudden encounters, letting curiosity and chance weave new stories across the city. On warm nights, I walk through it all and feel both invisible and entirely part of the hum, as if the city is watching, noticing and holding me close at once.

I’ve always heard Montreal being called one of the best student cities in the world, and for a long time, I didn’t understand it. Too distant and living in the suburbs, I listened to my brother insist it was the place to be and thought he imagined something I couldn’t see. But each year here, each return from elsewhere, it quietly grows on me, revealing details I’d missed before.

There are always new artists, new projects, new ways people connect, mostly in the summer but spilling into every season if you pay attention. And behind it all stand the people: the creatives, the organizers, the ones who keep shaping it, who make it a city that rewards curiosity, persistence and care. 

It’s not perfect—buildings sit empty, winters feel endless, construction interrupts—but those flaws are part of every city. As much as I love to criticize, I can’t ignore the safety and comfort I feel here, a quiet privilege that many larger cities offer far less of.

Montreal frustrates me as much as it fascinates me. It challenges you to notice, to participate, to care in ways few other places do. And when you let yourself stay, when you let it quietly sink in, you realize it’s worth falling for.

This article originally appeared in Volume 46, Issue 1, published September 2, 2025.