I’m back from a whirlwind trip to Montreal where I attended a three day Canadian Neuroendocrine Tumour Society (CNETS) conference. More about that in Friday’s post, but today I want to share a bit of that beautiful city with you. 

After my plane was delayed for four hours by a major snowstorm, I finally arrived late in the evening and checked into the downtown Fairmont Queen Elizabeth Hotel where the conference was being held. Entering my hotel room, I was awestruck by the view from my window overlooking the ornate Basilique Marie-Reine-du-Monde (Mary Queen of the World Basilica), a smaller replica of St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City. 

The following pictures of the basilica were taken on one of my walks after the weather cleared. 

While the statues on the facade of St. Peter’s depict the twelve apostles, at Mary Queen of the World thirteen statues represent the patron saints of the parishes that form the diocese of Montreal.  Carved of wood and clad with copper, each statue is 9 feet tall. They were completed between October 1892 and October 1900 by Quebec native, Joseph Olindo-Gratton.

I was thankful to able to slip inside the basilica for a quick photo of the interior. 

Downtown Montreal is home to many old stone churches. This one is Christ Church Cathedral and has been designated a National Historic Site of Canada.

As always, I love the juxtaposition of old architecture and new. Here are a few other structures that caught my eye as I walked. The first is Windsor Station. Formerly the city’s Canadian Pacific Railway station and headquarters of the CPR from 1889 to 1996, it has been redeveloped into an office complex that also houses some restaurants and cafés. I can’t tell you anything about the others. 

Though there is no end of old architecture to enjoy in Montreal’s downtown area, there’s also something new to see. Suspended between two buildings, 30 metres in diameter and weighing some 23,000 kilograms, The Ring hovers over the staircase of Place Ville Marie’s Esplanade directly across Rene Levesque Boulevard from the Queen Elizabeth Hotel. Installed in June 2022, The Ring serves as a window to more than 200 years of history, establishing a direct line of view from the hotel and Place Ville Marie to McGill University, the former Royal Victoria Hospital, and the illuminated cross on Mount Royal.