39 Façons Dont Montréal Vit Gratuitement dans Votre Tête

This story originally appeared in a special edition The Main x URBANIA Micromag. Read the full collection here.

Montreal moved into your brain years ago and never signed the lease, but you’re stuck with it. It rearranged the furniture, made some questionable renovations, and it's there for good now—all the grudges, the guilty habits, and the opinions you'd defend with your life.

Below, 39 pieces of evidence. Count how many apply, but keep the number to yourself. Bisous.

1. You get a visit from the Office québécois de la langue française for writing "Nosh" on your banner, but your neighbours Burger King and Starbucks can sleep easy.

2. You've genuinely considered climbing Saint Joseph's Oratory on your knees to atone for your sins.

3. You remember when, in the 1990s, a visit to Jarry Park was synonymous with a tetanus infection.

4. Every time you pass the giant Orange Julep ball, you wonder... is it cake?

5. You measure distances in metro stations rather than kilometres...

6. ...and you've given up on friendships because they lived "too far" (on the green line, past Viau to the east and past Lionel-Groulx to the west).

7. You've written off the Biodôme for good because the lynx is never there.

8. You think "I could live here" every single time you cross through Westmount.

9. You deny the existence of Pointe-aux-Trembles.

10. You pretend to be a tourist who doesn't speak the language when someone tries to get you to sign a petition outside the metro.

11 .You went to Parc-Ex less for the butter chicken than for that christie of a giant Joe Fresh in the old train station.

12. You maintain an ambivalent relationship with the film Mile-End Kicks (how dare that Torontonian think she knows better than the natives what the vibe of 2010s Montreal was?! The film is good, though).

13. You can tell the difference between a Frenchman from the Plateau and a Frenchman from Côte-des-Neiges.

14. You've said "it's not far" before subjecting someone to a 50-minute walk on the day after a bender.

15. You kind of miss Vice, toxicity and all.

16. You can follow an entire conversation in Haitian Creole.