The Redpath opened in 1882 as the first purpose-built museum in Canada, and it houses excellent exhibitions of geology (gorgeous mineral and crystal samples), natural history (a wonderful shell collection, fossils and taxidermy) and world cultures (various artifacts, coins and musical instruments). Acquired objects are use daily in various university courses and research projects, and items are loaned to other institutions to contribute to research.
We continued our walk up through the attractive hillside campus to meet Mount Royal’s Grand Staircase (top left intro photo). 339 steps later, we arrived at the broad terrace overlooking the city skyline.
Instead of descending down the Grand Staircase, we took the winding Chemin Olmsted, a wide gravel carriage road, named after the park’s designer. Frederick Olmsted was a prolific 19th Century landscape architect, best known for his work on Central Park in NYC.
At the bottom of the road, we skirted around the Fan Village set up for the World Championships and caught a bit of the junior men’s race. Along the way, we encountered Isaac del Toro, the 22-year-old who nearly won last year’s Giro d’Italia and finished 3rd in this year’s Tour de France, out for a training ride.
We had been on our feet most of the day and still had a half-mile walk to the Metro station. The decision to take the short bus ride from the Cartier Station back to our Port-Viau neighborhood was made quickly!
At the bottom of the road, we skirted around the Fan Village set up for the World Championships and caught a bit of the junior men’s race. Along the way, we encountered Isaac del Toro, the 22-year-old who nearly won last year’s Giro d’Italia and finished 3rd in this year’s Tour de France, out for a training ride.
We had been on our feet most of the day and still had a half-mile walk to the Metro station. The decision to take the short bus ride from the Cartier Station back to our Port-Viau neighborhood was made quickly!
Starting from the UQAM (Univ. of Quebec at Montreal) Metro Station we headed east on the Rue Berri, out to the port area of Old Montreal. There had been a little bit of construction and a fair going on in the area, so it wasn’t as easy as it normally would have been using the bike lanes.
We rode the excellent bike lane along the north side of the canal for a couple of miles, passing the St. Gabriel Lock then crossing over the Atwater Footbridge (despite the name, riding over it is okay when clear of pedestrians). Another mile down, we passed the lock in the Côte-Saint-Paul neighborhood, and just for the heck of it, crossed the Passerelle, an old truss bridge crossing, now closed to auto traffic.
The canal zigzag ended when we traversed the bridge at Dollard Avenue, which had a separate bike lane and fun banked spiral ramp down to the bike path. Our final destination was the Point of René Levesque Park, built out on a long spit of land that protects the entry basin at the Lachine Lock (they were really creative with that name), almost nine miles from the other end of the canal. We snapped a photo before looping back through the park - the Lachine Front Range Lighthouse can be seen way in the background.
After passing through a fun tunnel that dipped under the train tracks, we struggled up a nasty climb on Rue des Erables (makes “Maple Street” sound boring) called Devil’s Hill. We entered the neighborhood of Montréal-Ouest, and from here we would be riding the Boulevard de Maisonneuve, named after the founder of the city, Paul de Chomedey de Maisonneuve, all the way back to our starting point.
The bike lane on the boulevard traversed a variety of scenery along the way, as it started with a mix of commercial and residential buildings along the St. Jerome Line commuter train tracks. After a couple mile, we crossed over Autoroute 15, and the tracks split off to the left. We were riding through a medical center, then the street became a lovely tree-shaded neighborhood, leading into Westmount Park. Here the route was just a paved bike path, gently weaving through tennis courts and soccer fields.
The shady boulevard continued on the other side of the park, but within a mile or so, we were into the heart of the city, passing the old Montreal Forum building (photo below). You would hardly recognize the glorious home of les Canadiens, where fans witnessed 22 of the team’s 24 Stanley Cup seasons, until they moved to the Bell Centre in 1997. The Forum building is now an entertainment center housing a cinema, restaurants, a bowling alley and pool.
The boulevard was now a two-lane, one-way route, and the bike lane was completely separated from autos by a curbed barrier. We were now passing through an area of hi- and low-rise apartments, mixing in the occasional street-level restaurants and shops. Soon we were in Ville-Marie borough, the high-rise business center of the city, and passed along the edge of McGill University.
We were soon descending from the plateau, and in about a half mile later we doing a dogleg around an open-air concert/theater venue near the Place des Arts. It was just a couple of blocks to the Metro station where we started, on Rue Berri.
I had already mapped out in my mind (it was pretty direct) the return route to Port-Viau, if I wanted to do some more miles on my own, but Sue informed me that she’d like to continue. The Metro line ran parallel to the streets on which we would be pedaling, so I assured her that it would be easy to cut out, if she changed her mind at any point.
I don’t know if it is the cycling culture, with so many people riding, that causes warnings to be a hassle, if it is the uncertainty over what language (and with the city's international flavor, I’m not solely referring to French-English) someone might be speaking/receiving with courtesy call-outs of “on your left”, or if the Quebecois are just plain rude, but we became aware that shoulder to shoulder passing was the norm, without any words of alert. It wasn’t an issue on some of the wider offroad bike paths or in streets with sharrows allowing the full lane width, but on the narrow city bike lanes, someone closely passing, particularly when buzzing by with an e-bike, can be quite a startling experience. By the way, I don’t think there is any e-bike regulation in Canada – I swear some of them were doing 30 mph or more. There were a couple times during our trip when it was VERY dangerous!
There was a bench area off to the side alley where I could unwrap my small box of goodies, and Sue waited patiently (mind you, she had her fill of Montreal-style bagels during our stay) while I savored every bite! A young woman, also with a Bianchi bicycle - though hers was a white, vintage steel version – pulled into the alley and asked if we would watch her bike while she ducked into the bakery. “Of course,” we answered, and when she returned with her own package of treats, we compared our “brother bikes”. When she said, “Oooh, so modern,” I replied that I preferred her style!
I was a bit surprised that, even though we were nearing the 30-mile mark, Sue said she’d like to ride a little more, when we reached the bridge crossing the Prairies River back to Laval. She approved of the idea that we do a short loop retracing some of the nice bike paths on the southern end of the route I had done the other day. There was even a cool crossing back to Port-Viau on a bridge shared with the railroad.
With all the walking and riding we had been doing the past few days, we were always feeling hungry. Despite some snacks during the day and a solid dinner later on, we were craving some kind of treat. We put our three-day passes to more use by hopping on the bus and heading back to the Metro at Cartier. Our final destination wasn’t too far from the bakery I had visited earlier in the day, except the goal was homemade ice cream.
Monsieur Crème Glacée ended up being a quirky location that, despite rave reviews, looked more like a phone/electronics store than a joint selling tasty, frozen desserts! However, the reviews were correct – the three-scoop combination of black cherry, strawberry and vanilla that I had was excellent. When we returned to our apartment, I did a search to see exactly where we were, and THIS little music clip popped up in the results. Sue and I had the tune stuck in our heads for the rest of the evening!
