Montréal

In Montréal, which has neither the sunny feel of a beach town nor the nautical pedigree of a maritime community, it’s easy to forget you’re on an island. Your gaze is drawn inward to Mount Royal, the mountain at the heart of the city, rather than out to the water.

At Mount Royal’s eastern foot, where the buildings look like they’re congregating to pay homage to the crucifix that tops the summit, is the neighborhood of Mile End. Despite what this implies, Mile End is not at the edge, or end, of anything. For that, you’d need to travel nearly 3 miles (5 km) east to the Old Port, where the cobblestone streets that define Montréal’s Vieux France identity meet the Saint Lawrence River.

Mile End tells a different story. Italian, Portuguese and Greek migration surges in the mid-twentieth century have given the neighborhood a pan-European milieu. It has since experienced waves of gentrification, transforming from immigrant enclave to hipster hangout (having famously been home to musicians Arcade Fire and Grimes) to a hub of culture that’s charming to explore.

On a weekday morning at Café Olimpico, the sound of clinking coffee cups is intercut with conversations buzzing in English and Quebecois French. One man waiting in line has double-parked his car on Rue Saint-Viateur to wait for his latte; another has left his BIXI (a rental bicycle booked through Montréal’s bike-share system) leaning underneath the forest-green awning outside. This unpretentious, family-owned coffee shop, where espresso machines moan and whirr, soccer games are always on TV and psychedelic Khruangbin instrumentals play over the speakers, exemplifies the Mile End spirit. “It was a place to hang out with friends, make a little money and start a new life,” says John Vannelli, the third-generation owner who now runs the café with the same ethos as his grandfather, Rocco Furfaro.

In 1970, Furfaro brewed Café Olimpico’s first batch of coffee after immigrating from Rome to Quebec and settling in Mile End. Today the café is a local icon—an ascent that happened in tandem with the neighborhood itself. “It’s the story of immigrants creating a new life in Montréal. They had no place, so they settled here,” Vannelli says. By his count, there are now sixteen coffee shops on Rue Saint-Viateur alone, from no-frills ones like Olimpico (it only offers one-size cups) to specialty shops like Caffè in Gamba. Around the corner, on Boulevard Saint-Laurent, the all-pink, Wes Anderson–esque Pastel Rita café offers momentary pleasures like vegan pastries—and more enduring ones, like tattoos, from the adjoining studio. Right off Saint-Laurent, on Maguire Street, Café Éclair’s in-house microlibrary gives it the air of an off-screen oasis. And French lore abounds at Larrys, a local haunt beloved for its brunches and traditional cuisine, from terrines to tartare.

This story is from Kinfolk Islands

Buy Now

GETTING THERE
You can fly directly onto the island to Montréal–Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport, but if you’re driving, the Île aux Tourtes Bridge at the western tip of the island is the most efficient route to get into town. Mile End is very walkable, but for lengthier trips, roomy bike lanes make bike hire ideal.

SEE & TOUR
Visit Never Apart, a gallery space and performance venue with an inclusive approach to programming. Dragon Flowers—the small, family-run flower shop located on Rue Bernard Ouest—is a neighborhood institution. Beautys is still one of the local go-tos for breakfast (signature dish: the Mish-Mash).

STAY
There are no hotels in the neighborhood, but it’s easiest to immerse yourself in the Mile End experience when you’re renting an apartment. Just outside of Mile End, Casa Bianca is a rustic, romantic bed-and-breakfast that’s within walking distance from all of the neighborhood’s most memorable sites.

WORTH KNOWING
Outside of Mile End, closer to the center of the city, you’ll find the Fairmont The Queen Elizabeth Hotel, the site of John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s 1969 Bed-In protest, where they recorded “Give Peace a Chance”. Housekeeping had to vacuum the corridors frequently as Lennon was prone to scattering flower petals.

The original location of Café Olimpico, a stalwart coffee shop in the heart of Mile End, has become something of a neighborhood landmark. More than fifty years after it first opened in 1970, the beloved city institution has spawned two further branches in Montréal’s Old Port and Downtown. It remains a family business.

Back on Rue Saint-Viateur, the scent of freshly baked bagels—a global culinary emblem of the city—wafts from the doors of St-Viateur Bagel, where every bagel is hand-rolled and boiled in honey water. Mere blocks away, there’s another bagel shop where the door doesn’t lock and the lights never go out: Fairmount Bagel, which is over a hundred years old and operates twenty-four hours a day. Vannelli, the owner of Café Olimpico, refuses to name which is his favorite, given how divisive the dueling bagel shops can be (choosing between the two is akin to a New Yorker choosing between the Yankees and the Mets). A morning stroll on this island is not complete without sesame seeds spilling onto your coat and latte foam sticking to your top lip.

Generations ago, the affordable rents available in Mile End attracted an influx of artists and creative types, whose mere presence has left a long-lasting imprint of cool. But their arrival didn’t mar what had already been built by the city’s Jewish population: today the neighborhood remains home to a large Hasidic community. There are, of course, many places in both the province and country where communities of many different stripes live side by side, but in Mile End, there’s a coalescence of orthodoxy and bohemia that’s singularly seamless.

The storefronts on Mile End’s main streets offer a range of independent shopping options, like the bookstore Librairie Drawn & Quarterly, or Montreal’s secondhand crown jewel Citizen Vintage. The tree-lined side streets, too, are something to behold. Where other Canadian cities are inundated with high-rises, the streets of Mile End are populated with “plexes”—signature split-level walk-ups with whimsical, winding outdoor staircases. It seems like everyone has a balcony.

Canadians like to imagine their country is a mosaic, rather than an American melting pot. This means that you arrive and assert your identity instead of assimilating into a universal one. The individual cultures and the sense of community are what give Mile End its flair; it’s the residents that have earned the neighborhood its reputation as an enclave for creatives. “The small, tight-knit community makes it seem like we’re all living in a tribe,” Vannelli says. “It definitely feels like a little island.”

Montréal’s iconic modular housing complex Habitat 67. The building, designed for Expo 67 by Israeli Canadian architect Moshe Safdie, stands on a narrow, man-made peninsula just south of the Old Port, around 5 miles (8 km) from Mile End. Safdie designed the complex in an attempt to reinvent city living. The complex is one of the most recognizable buildings in Montréal and remains a functioning icon of 1960s utopianism.

Browse Categories

Travel Stories