Montreal: Marie-Reine-du-Monde and Place du Canada

After a morning wandering around Mount Royal, it started to rain, so I ducked into Café Humble Lion for coffee and a fresh-from-the-oven scone. Once the rain stopped and my feet were rested, I searched around for something nearby to explore quickly before catching the bus back to the airport. I settled on Cathédrale Marie-Reine-du-Monde, a minor basilica (all of of the major ones are in Rome) and the seat of the Roman Catholic archdiocese of Montreal, which also borders the Place Du Canada and Dorchester Square.

This cathedral was built to replace the previous cathedral, which burned down in 1852; the ground was broken in 1875 and construction was completed in 1894. Many other churches in the area, such as the Notre-Dame Basilica, were in the neo-Gothic style, but the bishop of Montreal decided instead to build the new cathedral as a scale model of St. Peters Basilica in Rome (at a scale of 1:5), with a few exceptions.

Even the ciborium imitates St. Peter's Baldachin.

This is the view of the cathedral from the Place du Canada, an angle from which the resemblance to St. Peters is perhaps even clearer.

The Macdonald Monument, built to honor Canada's first Prime Minister, is in some ways the focal point for the whole plaza. There's an interesting photo of the sculptor, George Edward Wade, working on the sculpture of Macdonald.

Across the street is Dorchester Square, which together with Place du Canada once made up Dominion Square before the two were officially separated in 1967. There are several monuments in the square including the Wilfrid Laurier Memorial, the back of which shows the provinces of Canada as the trunk of a single tree.

Random fact: the Boer War Memorial is the only equestrian statue in Montreal.

As I wandered around the square, the rain started again, which I took as my cue to catch the next bus to the airport. But I was already looking forward to the next weekend when I'd spend another 24 hours or so wandering the city.

Montreal: Mount Royal

As soon as I decided to spend a few hours in Montreal, on either side of a trip to eastern Canada, I knew I would want to visit Mount Royal. Mount Royal Park is Montreal's equivalent to New York's Central Park (and in fact was originally designed by Frederick Law Olmsted); it is a green oasis for the city, where residents like to walk, run, bike, and picnic. The name Montreal is generally thought to derive from the name for this small mountain, itself named by Jacques Cartier in 1535.

While Mount Royal is not very tall--arguably more of a hill than a mountain, at all of 764 ft (233 m)--it is quite steep, but the rewards at the top are well worth the climb. Perhaps most famously, it provides panoramic views of the city, the St. Lawrence river, and the other two constituents of the Monteregian Hills beyond.

Here's the full panorama.

This spectacular view is from the courtyard of Chalet du Mont-Royal (Mount Royal Chalet).

Inside the chalet ... there are squirrels! Well squirrel statues of a sort. I've never seen squirrel...well, whatever these are, they're not exactly grotesques (and lacking downspouts, they're certainly not gargoyles), but they have a similar effect.

You can see all sorts of landmarks from up here, but one of the strangest is the Olympic Stadium (which looks a bit like the Starship Enterprise after a crash landing).

There are many other attractions throughout the park, including sculpture gardens, Beaver Lake, and many small trails through more forested sections.

This pretty--but terribly invasive--flower is a creeping bellflower (Campanula rapunculoides).

One of the other major attractions is the Mount Royal Cross. The first cross here was built in 1643, when the colony Ville-Marie narrowly avoided flooding, but the current cross dates to 1924. It is illuminated at night with a system that has been updated over the years from 240 incandescent light bulbs, to a 30-bulb fiber-optic system, to modern LEDs.

I must say, it reminded me quite a bit of the Eiffel Tower.

Having wandered over much of Mount Royal, I descended towards the northeast, passing the Monument to Sir George-Étienne Cartier, a father of Canadian Confederation.

From there I wandered through McGill's campus. I had a few minutes to explore the Redpath Museum and to visit their Gorgosaurus libratus.