Guidebooks to Montreal
There are many guidebooks to Montreal and this is a look at only a small selection of them. These are books that go a step beyond the standard guides and look at the city from new perspectives or offer very good information in specific areas.
Montréal
Éditions Ulysse
One of the attractive Ulysse travel book series, locally produced in both English and French editions, the Montreal guide has a reliable, no-nonsense approach to the city, with maps, listings of restaurants, hotels and other lodgings, shopping areas, a historical backgrounder and an exhaustive general information section. The heart of the book is a series of walking tours, starting with the tourist basics of Old Montreal and the downtown core, but – and this is the book’s great strength – going on to cover pretty much every other neighbourhood on the island.
Even as a lifelong Montrealer I found plenty of interesting new details here as well as pointers to notable features in less well-trodden neighbourhoods. Return visitors to the city might enjoy exploring Maisonneuve, Plateau Mont-Royal or Little Italy instead of seeing the standard sights over again, and this book will help guide them off the beaten path. Colour photos and line drawings. An updated edition is usually produced annually, with a new cover photograph.
Cheap Thrills Montreal: Great Montreal Meals for Under $15Nancy Marrelli and Simon Dardick
Véhicule Press
2003 edition
Ninety restaurants offering dinners at $15 and under are listed in this indispensable guide to eating well and variously without maxing out the plastic. The book is arranged alphabetically, but there are handy cross-indexes that also classify restaurants by neighbourhood and regional cuisine so you can apply the search criteria of your choice. With an amusing Josh Freed cadenza on the difficulty of looking up restaurant names in a bilingual city. Useful for visitors and locals alike. A new edition is out and will be reviewed in this space soon.
Montreal: The Unknown City
Kristian Gravenor and John David Gravenor
Arsenal Pulp Press 2002
This high-spirited book is the ultimate insider’s inside look at Montreal’s rakish history. The Gravenor brothers evict the skeletons from our collective closet and dance with them in the street. There are some maps and plenty of photos and chapters include headings like Media and Entertainment and Notoriety in addition to other more standard guidebook fare. The book offers a densely packed selection of trivia, unofficial history, true crime, old scandals and urban legends, anecdotes about Montrealers famous and infamous, and useful lists like “What you can get away with” and “FLQ: Where Are They Now?” I enjoyed this book immensely despite a book design that would give Edward Tufte a coronary. There are plenty of illustrations and some strangely oriented maps. Kristian and J.D. also run the blog Coolopolis, which continues the theme of Montreal and its quirkier stories.
Montreal Restaurants
Zagat Survey 2006
One of the newer entries in the New York-based Zagat series, the Montreal edition contains a quirky selection of restaurants and short but pertinent lists of bars and clubs, general city attractions and hotels, rated in a way that will be familiar to anyone who has seen any other Zagat production, but easily graspable even if you haven't. The book has the typical minimal Zagat design. A page of maps of the denser restaurant areas and some cross-indexed lists of restos by cuisine and location are useful features.
Exploring Old Montreal:
An Opinionated Guide to Its Streets, Churches, and Historic Landmarks
Alan Hustak
Véhicule Press 2002
from the Walking Tours series
Another “opinionated guide” by Alan Hustak, this 90-page book covers the oldest parts of Montreal in the same spirit as Hustak’s Downtown book. There’s a lot of interesting and curious data to be found here that illuminate the gray stones of Old Montreal with the gleam of history and legend. Photos both old and new, plus maps, website and restaurant listings.
Barry Lazar's Taste of Montreal
Barry Lazar
Véhicule Press
This eclectic little book will appeal to cooks, foodies, chowhounds and anyone in search of culinary pleasures and specialties in Montreal, a city known for its cornucopia of world cuisines. The heart of the book is a collection of dozens of short essays, arranged alphabetically from Anchovies to Zershk, with recipes, anecdotes, occasional photos and all manner of arcane information on ingredients, spices, products and specialties and – most crucially – where to find them. The listing of interesting food outlets and restaurants is good too.
Below this point, books may be out of print or hard to find, but reviews may still be useful for those seeking specific information.
Downtown Montreal:An Opinionated Guide to the City's Squares, Churches, and Underground City
Alan Hustak
Véhicule Press 2002
from the Walking Tours series
This little 80-page "opinionated guide" is filled out with a few listings of bars, tourist bureaus and websites, but its chief charm is Hustak’s own eclectic knowledge of the history and development of the downtown core. It’s organized in several walking tours, each with specific directions and detailed commentary. The book is especially useful as a guide to Montreal’s famous Underground City. There are black-and-white photos of buildings and vistas past and present, and several maps. A nice little book, small enough to pack alongside more generic guidebooks, and a pleasure for anyone with an interest in urban textures and history.
Montreal: A Guide to Recent Architecture
Steven Ware
Ellipsis
This sexy little square book, one of a series on city architectures, has an appealingly monochrome cover and a beautifully designed interior. It contains dozens of short articles and photos nominally on buildings constructed in Montreal since 1983, but this date is arbitrary and items like the Orange Julep are included. Contents are divided into 14 general neighbourhoods. All kinds of structures are covered, from metro stations to private houses to corporate headquarters. The writer is a working architect with a sharp eye who includes many sidelights on the buildings. Inevitably the text and black & white photos are small, as the book's only five inches on a side. Could have been a little better copy-edited: one section is entitled "Ville de Mont-Royal to Villeroy" and another section makes the common error of thinking Saint Hyacinthe was female.
Secret Montreal:The Unique Guidebook to Montreal's Hidden Sites, Sounds, and Tastes
Tod Hoffman (1997 edition)
ECW Press
ECW Press has been promising an updated edition of Secret Montreal on and off for awhile, but even the 1997 edition is worth a look, even if some of the entries are out of date. It’s a pretty book, elegantly typeset in two colours and printed on thick matte paper, and with ineffably arty captionless photographic illustrations. Categories include Cadavers, Espionage, Exotica and Imbibing as well as more conventional listings. Entries are well edited with addresses and phone numbers for each “secret” location discussed.
Get outta town!, Montreal:52 fun things to do within easy reach of Montreal
Get around town!, Montreal:
52 fun things to do right here in Montreal
Leif Montin
No Fixed Address Publications
Disclosure up front here: I drew the maps for these books, published in 1997 and 1999. But I didn’t have anything to do with providing the rest of the contents, which are excellent listings of places to go and things to do. These are a good resource for families with kids to entertain, or locals with out-of-town guests to show around. They introduce fun features of Montreal’s far-flung neighbourhoods and surrounding towns and countryside in a well-designed and approachable format. Inevitably some of the information is out of date now, so don’t base any excursions on these books before googling or phoning first.
