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    The Main

    Montreal's Cultural Directory

    Help us improve! Share your thoughts on how we can make your experience better.

    Leave feedback

    For partnerships and collaborations:

    partnerships@themain.com

    Content

    • Articles
    • Food & Drink
    • Arts & Culture
    • History Lesson
    • Bulletin
    • Events

    Guides

    • All Guides
    • Best Restaurants
    • Best Cafés
    • Best Bars
    • Best Brunch
    • Best Bakeries

    Explore Montreal

    • Browse Directory
    • Restaurants
    • Bars
    • Cafés
    • Bookstores
    • Leaderboard
    • Editor's Picks
    • New Places

    About

    • About us
    • Subscribe
    • Shop
    • Advertise
    • Pitch us
    • RSS Feed

    Legal

    • Terms of service
    • Membership Terms
    • Privacy Policy
    Follow us
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    The Main Media Inc. 2026

    ✦ Built By Field Office

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      Your cart is empty.

      --°C|Tuesday, June 23, 2026|
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      --°C|Tuesday, June 23, 2026|
      Subscribe today to get 3 free articles per month.Get 50% off your first 5 rides with Lyft
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      EN/FR
      The Main Logo
      Magazine
      Sections
      • Arts & Culture
      • Beyond Montreal
      • Design
      • Food & Drink
      • History Lessons
      • The Bulletin
      Explore
      Popular Guides
      • The Best Restaurants in Montreal
      • Best new Restaurants
      • Best Cafés
      • Unique Boutiques
      • Romantic Restaurants
      • Best Bookstores
      • See all Guides
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      • Downtown
      • Le Plateau-Mont-Royal
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      • Mile-Ex
      • Saint-Henri
      • See All
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      • Boutique / Store
      • Bar
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      • See All
      Near the Metro
      • Peel
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      A Complete Guide to the Best Festivals of Montreal, Season by Season
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      The Main

      A Complete Guide to the Best Festivals of Montreal, Season by Season

      Snowstorm or heatwave, Montreal finds a reason to celebrate all year long.

      Things to Do in Montreal This July
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      Everything on in Montreal this July, and friends, there's a lot.

      Montreal Is a Complete Circus, and the Whole World Knows It
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      Our Hero, Balthazar Takes Aim at the Internet’s Crisis of Masculinity
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      Oscar Boyson’s feature debut uses dark comedy and mounting tension to explore what happens when the need to be seen becomes something far more dangerous.

      MUTEK Is Coming to Rewire Your Brain
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      MUTEK Is Coming to Rewire Your Brain

      From live audiovisual spectacles and outdoor installations to workshops, talks, and late-night performances, MUTEK’s 2026 celebration of art, electronic music, and technology will infuse six days with future-facing experiences.

      Backrooms Is a Technical Marvel Trapped Inside an Empty Maze
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      A Complete Guide to the Best Festivals of Montreal, Season by Season

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      The Main

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      Montreal Is a Complete Circus, and the Whole World Knows It
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      The festival’s first wave mixes legacy acts, internet-era names, and a familiar attempt to prove Montreal’s comedy institution is firmly back on its feet.

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      Léonie Poulin @ URBANIA

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      When Richard and Shuping Guo bought Hochelaga's Dépanneur Populaire in 2001, they got more than a corner store. Their daughter Angelina's new book tells the rest of the story.

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      Philippe Spurrell keeps rare prints out of dumpsters while Robert Miniaci reinvents the projectors that screen them. Together, they're proving the old ways still have life in Montreal.

      POCHA MTL Is Back With Four Days of K-Pop, Korean Street Food, and Culture By the Canal
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      The festival returns to the Peel Basin June 11 to 14, 2026.

      The Long, Strange History of Quebec’s Experimental Rock Underground
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      Before Angine de Poitrine, generations of Quebec musicians were building a world of costumes, performance art, invented languages, and gloriously unconventional music.

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      When Richard and Shuping Guo bought Hochelaga's Dépanneur Populaire in 2001, they got more than a corner store. Their daughter Angelina's new book tells the rest of the story.

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      Philippe Spurrell keeps rare prints out of dumpsters while Robert Miniaci reinvents the projectors that screen them. Together, they're proving the old ways still have life in Montreal.

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      A Local's Guide to Mile End

      The neighbourhood that keeps reinventing itself without losing the plot.

      ByJ.P. Karwacki

      May 9, 2026 · 10 min read

      A Local's Guide to Mile End
      Photograph: Eva Blue / @evablue

      The Main is reader-supported. Subscriptions are what keep us independent. Five dollars a month — the restaurants, the guides, the weekly bulletin, and what to do each weekend. Support us today.

      Discover the places mentioned in this story

      Café Alphabet

      There are versions of the Mile End story that get told a lot. Whether that version is about the bagels, the bands, or a bohemian golden era, none of them are entirely wrong. They just individually tend to flatten the place; together, they start to paint a place that's always been more layered than its reputation.

      The neighbourhood has absorbed wave after wave of new arrivals, new industries, and new ideas for over two centuries, and it's still doing it. What's kept it worth returning to isn't nostalgia for any one of those moments in time, but that each of them left something behind that's still tangible today—sometimes it's a powerful feeling, other times it's a faint whisper, but it's there either way.

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      Arts & Culture

      A Local's Guide to Mile End

      The neighbourhood that keeps reinventing itself without losing the plot.

      ByJ.P. Karwacki

      May 9, 2026 · 10 min read

      A Local's Guide to Mile End
      Photograph: Eva Blue / @evablue

      The Main is reader-supported. Subscriptions are what keep us independent. Five dollars a month — the restaurants, the guides, the weekly bulletin, and what to do each weekend. Support us today.

      Discover the places mentioned in this story

      Café Alphabet

      There are versions of the Mile End story that get told a lot. Whether that version is about the bagels, the bands, or a bohemian golden era, none of them are entirely wrong. They just individually tend to flatten the place; together, they start to paint a place that's always been more layered than its reputation.

      The neighbourhood has absorbed wave after wave of new arrivals, new industries, and new ideas for over two centuries, and it's still doing it. What's kept it worth returning to isn't nostalgia for any one of those moments in time, but that each of them left something behind that's still tangible today—sometimes it's a powerful feeling, other times it's a faint whisper, but it's there either way.

      Free account required

      For readers who care about Montreal

      Create a free account to read this story and access 3 articles per month, plus our weekly Bulletin.

      Independent. Local. Reader-supported.

      or

      Already a member? Sign in

      The Main

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      Welcome to The Main's comments section!

      Share your thoughts and join the conversation. Please be respectful and constructive.

      No comments yet. Be the first!

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