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As one of the metropolitan centres of Canada, Montreal is home to a vast population of passionate artists and businesses, striving to achieve their goals in this multicultural city. Having been heavily influenced during the French Colonial period in Canada as well as a major Canadian trading port after the opening of the lachine canal, the city is rich with history. This guide will point you to some of the best historical photographs, businesses, and artists of Montreal.

MONTRÉAL HISTORY

Montreal’s World Expo was erected in 1967, commemorating Canada’s centennial. At the centre of the attraction is a spherical structure entitled the Montreal Biosphere, which later was transformed into an interactive water museum in 1995, aiming to bring awareness to environmental issues and climate change. The attraction has been at the top of tourist locations for many years, with a variety of both traditional and newly added attractions, holding a special place in the hearts of Canadians. Click here to visit a collection of photos encapsulating the excitement and vibrancy of one of the highest attended world fairs in history.

Overlooking Montreal, Mont-Royal has remained one of the best vantage points for a view of the city since its inception. Mont Royal was first named by coloniser Jacques Cartier in 1535, and later gave rise to a variety of attractions within the city, such as the Mont Royal Park in 1876 and the Beaux Arts Mont Royal Chalet in 1932. The site also acted as a venue for a cycling event during the 1976 Summer Olympic games, and remains a popular site where locals enjoy sledding, tobogganing, snowshoeing, and cross-country skiing in the winter time. Click here to visit a gallery of historic photos of Montreal’s beloved Mont Royal dating back to the 1800s.

The Montreal Biodome was originally fashioned from a velodrome, a cycle racing track arena constructed for the 1976 summer Olympic games hosted in Montreal, defying the common delemina of building growing obsolete after the games. Only 4 years after its conception, the Biodome opened its doors in the Spring of 1992, aiming to create an engaging experience for visitors and infuse wildlife and flora into the city. Today the Biodome is home to natural history galleries such as Space for Life and Montreal Botanical Gardens, as well as animal habitats and the flora and fauna that emulate the ecosystems of North, Central, and South America. Click here to visit a collection of photographs of the Biodome, both during and after its construction.

Discover more Montréal history.

MONTRÉAL BUSINESSES

Alvéole is a team of urban beekeepers in cities across Canada who work to install beehives in workplaces and schools in order to infuse a passion for beekeeping into the city and better connect people to nature. The team promotes ecological awareness, and in the long term, sustainable cities and food systems. To achieve this they host hundreds of workshops every year where they create an educational experience and foster a love of beekeeping in cities such as Montreal, Toronto, Quebec City, Ottawa, Calgary, and Vancouver.

LOOP Mission, founded by Julie Poitras-Saulnier and David Côté, is a circular economy company working to reduce food waste by repurposing unused materials in the food industry and creating new products, including juices, smoothies, juice shots, beers, soaps and gin, all sold in stores across Canada and online. Ultimately, LOOP Mission strives to create actual change within our environment, fighting food waste by educating our government, the food industry, and the consumers.

MTL STRW is a Montreal-based small business, producing environmentally friendly and stylish metal straws in a variety of sizes, colours, and bundles. The founder, Erin O’Reilly, originally gained inspiration on a trip to Bali, Indonesia where she noticed an abundance of reusable straw and linen pouch usage. Since then, the main goal of MTL STRW has been to facilitate an easy and desirable switch from plastic to reusable straws by offering customizable options, ultimately exciting customers about making the switch and increasing self-awareness with regards to the implications of single-use plastics.

MONTRÉAL ARTISTS

Kaia Portner is a Montreal based dancer and choreographer, whose dance career began at the age of 3 years old. Since then Kaia has studied styles ranging from ballet, tap, jazz, contemporary, hip hop, and has begun to create and choreograph her own pieces as she took to learning new styles. Currently she is in her third year at Concordia University studying ‘Contemporary Dance and Choreography’, while also training outside of school in commercial hip hop/jazz funk styles.

Sandra Dumais is a childrens’ book writer and illustrator, best known for her early readers comic book series called Farm Crimes!, featuring the world’s best Goat Detective, Inspector Billiam Van Hoof, as well as her whimsical map illustrations. In addition, Dumais makes an effort to interact with children by doing school/library visits and drawing workshops, fostering their love of reading. For her extensive work on a comic entitled Staying in during the beginning of the global pandemic she was featured in a piece by the CBC.

Elodie, commonly known as MissLouve, is a Montreal based 2D and 3D animation artist, working as a 3D animator for big VFX studios in Montreal while she experiments with a variety of other creative outlets. In 2018 she began to experiment with video games, which is where she reignited her passion for drawing digital art, leading her to her recent following on Instagram and TikTok. She aims to one day own a small online shop, selling her digital creations depicting her female characters and mythological animals.