The borough of Plateau-Mont-Royal (oftentimes referred to simply as 'the Plateau' unless you want to sound like a tourist) is easier to feel than to explain, which is maybe why the descriptions of it tend to pile up without ever quite landing.
Ask ten people who live there what it's like and you'll get ten versions that are all true simultaneously: it's a neighbourhood of families and students and artists and people who've been there for forty years and people who arrived last month. It's expensive now and it used to be cheap. It's changed enormously and somehow feels the same.
What grounds it physically is the mountain to the west—the Plateau sits on the elevated terrain that slopes away from its eastern face, hence the name—and a set of streets that each have a distinct character. Saint-Laurent Boulevard, the Main (and this magazine's namesake!), runs north through the neighbourhood's centre with a mix of restaurants, bars, and storefronts that leans eclectic and a little scruffy. This is a good thing. Saint-Denis, which has always had a more literary and French-language identity, has mellowed into bistros and boutiques over the decades. Mont-Royal, the main east-west artery, is where you run errands, get coffee, and somehow lose two hours (probably from walking and window browsing).
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