Where I Want To Be and Why: Montreal

Montreal, sometimes in spite of itself, is a great city. Four of these books—by Avi Friedman, Taras Grescoe, Kev Lambert, and Witold Rybczynski—suggest reasons why, while six others tell stories of people who have elected to call the city home. Their reasons vary, their level of happiness also. The constant is the possibilities the place promises, whether you are a Francophone woman from Saskatchewan (Michel Tremblay’s Crossing the City), a refugee from Chile (Caroline Dawson’s As the Andes Disappeared), an old Anglophone (Neil Bissoondath’s Doing the Heart Good), hip residents of a trendy neighborhood (Sarah Gilbert’s Our Lady of Mile End), an immigrant single mother (Dimitri Nasrallah’s Hotline), or a Black man fleeing discrimination and war (Fred Anderson’s Eyes Have Seen).

Mary Soderstrom writes fiction and non-fiction. Originally from the US, she has lived in Montreal since she was 25. Several of her 19 books deal with the problems and promise of cities, notably Green City: People, Nature and Urban Places and The Walkable City: From Haussmann’s Boulevards to Jane Jacobs’ Streets. Her books  Concrete: From Ancient Origins to a Problematic Future and Against the Seas: Saving Civilizations from Rising Waters explore what all that paving has done to the planet. Dundurn Press will publish her book about what comes next—Before We Forget: How Remembering Will Get Us through the Next 75 Years—in March 2026.