Montréal's Little Portugal
An afternoon exploring the city and Little Portugal with a friend
Somewhere past Chinatown, I started to wonder if we would ever get there.
Bundled up in identical North Face coats except for the color (a weird coincidence - hers yellow, mine gray), we walked swiftly from Montréal’s Old Town, uphill from the icy St. Lawrence river, towards the only place I really wanted to see in Montréal before I left, Little Portugal.
Montréal has many beautiful landmarks. Indeed, it’s a city full of history, character, and fine dining. But I only had one day, one afternoon really, to explore before I flew back to Montana, so I had to make some tough choices.
It helped that my friend who drove to meet me was game to go to Little Portugal with me. Her grandfather had spent many years living part-of-the-year in Portugal, and part-of-the-year in Canada.
With a good brunch in our bellies, we hiked uphill for what seemed like miles (but was really only two). Stopping only to step into a French-milled soap store, where we purchased handmade soaps and bath bombs, my friend (who lives in northern Quebec) shared what little she knew about the city.
Montréal’s buildings (at least some) are crumbling (possibly because of organized crime).
The bagels are apparently to die-for (which I would have to do to eat them since I have celiac but they did look tempting).
Montréal is built on an island in the middle of two rivers, and it has to truck out all of its snow every winter because there is nowhere to put it in the city.
Canada does not have the equivalent of an American Ivy League university system, but if it did, McGill University (based in Montréal) might qualify.
The Quebec license plate includes the phrase, Je me souviens, which means, “I remember” and is a reminder to Quebec’s French-speaking citizens to remember their history and preserve their culture.
We should take the metro back instead of walking.
Our first sign that we were in Little Portugal was a restaurant. We passed three Portuguese restaurants, a Portuguese hardware store, and a Portuguese bank in the space of a few blocks.
What we were actually aiming for though, was a park. A small square in the middle of Little Portugal named Parc du Portugal that was renovated in 2003 to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the Portuguese community in Montréal.
When we found it, I took some photos of the square, which was largely covered with snow. A snow-packed path led to a gazebo in the middle, and Portuguese tiles decorated the entrance posts on each corner of the park.
The mural below is of Amália Rodrigues, a legendary Portuguese fado singer, and was commissioned by Portuguese-Canadian Herman Alves to be dedicated on the 100th anniversary of her birth. It was painted by a Portuguese-Canadian artist, Paulo Carreira.
Montréal is home to over 40,000 Canadians of Portuguese descent. Quite a few cities in Canada have large Portuguese communities, including Kitchener, Ontario, Winnepeg, Hamilton, and Vancouver.
Given its history of exploring the world, I suppose it’s not that surprising that Portuguese explorers were some of the first Europeans to land on the North American continent in the mid-1400s, but a fun fact nonetheless.
Later, Portuguese fishermen came to the Grand Banks to fish for cod. It wasn’t until the 1950s that Canada started to see larger waves of Portuguese immigrants, mostly from the Azores.
As we wandered back to the metro from Little Portugal my friend stopped to show me Montréal’s famed walkup townhomes.
We ended the day at Modavie, a French bistro in Old Town, and wandered the cobblestone streets back to the hotel before I grabbed a taxi to head to the airport.
No, I didn’t eat poutine (french fries with gravy and cheese curds), but I did have oysters from Prince Edward Island, maple candy on a stick, and a lovely mushroom risotto made with morels. Oh, and a pistachio ice cream I would love to try again.
It truly was too short of a visit.
Au revoir Montréal!
Looks pretty similar in general to what we see every day (other than the snow, of course). What a great afternoon!
Montreal is such a fun city. So lovely that you had a nice visit.