13/9/96

Montreal and Toronto: A Whale of Two Cities

By: Sam Orbaum

Montreal is the greatest city in the world. Well, that's what I thought when I was growing up there, and to prove it to myself, I sometimes pretended to be a tourist. I was always very impressed.
    So it was, in the most literal sense, deja vu when my Air Canada familiarization tour swept through Montreal.
    "Been there" -- yes; but "done that" -- no.
    Just about everything we saw didn't exist a couple of decades ago. The Montreal Casino was then the rusting France pavilion from Expo '67; the Biodome was a leftover from the 1976 Olympics; there was no beach, no tower over Olympic Stadium, and the city's tallest building was not yet even a blueprint.
    About the only thing that hadn't changed was the smoked meat at Ben's. And the world-record potholes. And the gloom.
    The gloom. To be fair, it was noticeable to me not as a visitor but as an expatriate. The city, despite being throttled by fascist language laws, is still vivacious, beguiling and elegant. The others in my entourage, all of them native-Israeli journalists, were enthralled by Montreal. But they didn't see -- and there's no reason they should -- the grim defeat of biculturalism, the ominously ubiquitous "For Sale" signs, the economic decline, the decayed spirit of many residents. They didn't notice that "Schwartz's Hebrew Delicatessen" had become, forcibly, "Chez Schwartz -- Charcuterie Hebraique."
    Despite my civic chauvinism, it escapes me how Montreal was rated, in a poll published last year by Time magazine, the world's most livable city (along with Melbourne and Seattle).
    My view so jaded, I had to believe these foreigners that Montreal is still a special place.
    Much of its allure is due to its physiography, unusual for a metropolis of two million-plus: Montreal is a river island with an extinct volcano in the middle. Mount Royal, or as it is known, The Mountain, is really just a 243-meter nub. It juts up humbly in the city center, a wooded parkland with chalets and stately mansions and monuments and rolling slopes. Each of its four sides is graced by a major university.
    Between the southern slope and the St. Lawrence River, the city's finest charms are squeezed into an area you can cover on foot in half an hour: grand old McGill University, downtown, the financial district, the Old City, the Old Port; each area segues with one another seamlessly. Walk 30 minutes thataway, and you're strolling through the old Jewish ghetto made famous by novelist Mordecai Richler; it is now a curious mixture of teeming ethnic bazaar and stylishly gentrified cafes, galleries, boutiques and bistros.
    Walking is the thing to do, because the compact city center is perfectly safe -- even after midnight, and at four and five in the morning, when Montreal really comes alive.
    Then there's the invisible Montreal, a vast 29-km. underground warren, with access to 1,700 shops, linking practically every downtown building. It enhances the city's livability -- and visitability -- during the harsh winter.
    One of the great new attractions is the Biodome, an environmental museum embracing the globe's ecosystems. You walk among the flora and fauna of recreated climates of tropical jungles, polar regions, marine and forests.
    Next door is the Olympic Stadium (there's a fabulous view of the city from the tower above it), and across the street the Botanical Gardens, together with its Insectarium, its Chinese and Japanese gardens and dozens of exhibitions.
    If you can get tickets, a must-see is the Cirque de Soleil, a boggling human circus that, when it's not touring the world (it drew rave reviews at the Israel Festival) is at home in its Old Port tent.
    If you can't get in to see this, you don't have to sit in your hotel room and pout: this is Festival City.
    Mark Twain said, during a 19th-century visit here, "You can't throw a stone without breaking a church window." Well, nowadays, you can't step into Montreal without hitting a major festival. The Montreal World Film Festival, the jazzfest and Just For Laughs ("the world's biggest comedy event") are the most famous. But there's much, much more: the world's largest fireworks competition, the continent's largest kite confab, a citywide bike race that draws 45,000 cyclists, the Fete des Neiges winter carnival, plus festivals for classical music, gastronomy, cars, fringe theater, folk dancing, beer, French culture, and not far off, the Hot Air Balloon Festival. It's enough to make one forget the political problems.

FORGIVE ME for saying this, but Toronto is a nice place to visit.
    I always hated Toronto, but now, I found it had an exuberant panache that belies its sneering nickname Toronto the Good. (Political correctness was probably born here.)
    There is still a zealous righteous bent, and the city does roll up the streets every night as Montreal's night-life traffic jams are just forming, but there was something new and exciting here.
    I asked a local what happened. "It's all those Montreal immigrants," she said. I should have figured.
    The cities are only 55 minutes apart as the plane flies, but as different as, well, Paris and London -- culturally, spiritually and of course linguistically.
    We stayed at the Royal York Hotel, a grand downtown landmark that, with its 1,365 rooms, was once the largest building in the British Empire. It fights for space with towering skyscrapers including my favorite, the shimmering Royal Bank Building next door, whose jagged glass-and-steel exterior is entirely covered with gold dust.
    Any self-respecting spot on earth has record-breaking superlatives to boast about, and Toronto is no different. It has the world's tallest structure (CN Tower), the world's longest street (Yonge Street, which is 200 years old this year), and, until recently, the world's worst exhibition. It was the ultimate in tastelessness, and they're proud of it: "The Tackiest Souvenirs in the World" brought together more than 200 of the very worst in touristy thingies. The trash exhibit ended earlier this month at the Harborfront Center, but can be seen year-round in selected stores along Yonge Street.
    Toronto is one of the world's (there I go again) most ethnically diverse cities, and every nationality has its presence in one or another of the colorfully quaint older neighborhoods. Chinatown, Greektown, Cabbagetown, the Corso Italia, the various old-style market districts -- it's a carnival for the senses.
    When you've worn out your shoes strolling around, the place to go is the Bata Shoe Museum (sorry, no free samples). The 10,000 artifacts include shoes worn 4,500 years ago, and boots worn on the Moon; horrific Chinese bound-foot slippers and Elton John's ostentatious footwear; exquisite handmade Eskimo kamiks and Napoleon's socks.
    The most original -- and fun -- restaurant I've ever been to is Marche Movenpick, an idea imported from Europe. It's both Old World market and resto-boutique, an 18,000- square-foot area crammed with crates, wagons and barrels of the freshest foods (no produce stays around for more than a day). You select the potato or tomato of your choice, present it to the chef specializing in the dish you want, and have your meal prepared to your taste, as you watch. The danger is buying more than you can consume, because it's such a kick.
    Marche Movenpick is adjacent to an architectural joy, the promenade of BCE Place, a breathtaking cathedral of glass and light. Next door, in a restored century-old building, is the all-new hands-on Hockey Hall of Fame.
    Not everyone likes hockey, but everyone loves a good murder mystery. Don't miss the chance to see Mysteriously Yours, a rollicking interactive murder-mystery dinner theater at the Royal York Hotel. (You can skip the pricy meal and just catch the show itself.) The fast-paced performance I saw was an Internet intrigue titled "Tangled Web! (or: Kiss of the E-Mail Female!)" The audience is intimately involved as Sherlock Holmes, Sam Spade, Professor Plum, Inspector Clouseau, Miss Marple, one of the Hardy Boys, a delightfully moronic Charlie's Angel, and you, clash and combine to solve a spoof whodunit.
    Toronto the Good has come a long way if it can allow this sort of fun without so much as a tut-tut.
    And that's what I like about new-and-improved Toronto: its good nature, its self-confidence, even its sense of whimsy.
    Not to mention its political sanity. Here, when they call a delicatessen a charcuterie, it's because they want to add cultural color, not remove it.