Montreal’s summer pop-up events: from food festivals and live music to urban beaches, see a city transformed by the heat
Free of its winter shackles, Montreal becomes an almost tropical city where life is lived outdoors and empty spaces turn into pop-up cafes, bars, cabarets and even beaches. We take a look at some of the most popular
Montreal’s winters are as cold as Siberia. The poet and songwriter Leonard Cohen – a prodigal son honoured by two giant murals in the city’s streets – once wrote about the season’s passing: “In Montreal, spring is like an autopsy. Everyone wants to see the inside of the frozen mammoth.”
When the days grow long and the weather warm, Montreal transforms itself into something unrecognisable to its winter self: an almost tropical city where life is lived outdoors, where the streets fill with bicycles, and vacant lots are turned into ephemeral cafes, bars, cabarets and even beaches that are designed to last only as long as the summer heat.
On a recent Saturday evening along the St. Lawrence River, a DJ spun remixed Brazilian music over a patch of land that is fenced off and abandoned during the colder months. Three years ago, a group of designers got together to transform that land into the now annual Village au Pied-du-Courant, a quirky, colourful amusement park with an urban beach, live music, street food, cocktails and space for people to hang out and relax. Here, children from the surrounding neighbourhood play basketball while groups of friends play pétanque, the less uptight French version of bowls. Access is free all summer.
“Every year has been better than the last,” says event co-founder Maxim Bragoli. Montreal is famous for its summer festivals, from the Montreal International Jazz Festival to the Just for Laughs comedy bonanza, but Bragoli and his friends felt there weren’t enough places for informal urban play. From the onset, they wanted the village to look fun. “We love kitsch, wood, colour, greenery, neon and recycled material,” Bragoli says. “We want to create something convivial and human.”
That ethos has spread across the city. Between the festivals, street fairs and new pop-up spaces inspired by the Village au Pied-du-Courant, the summertime energy in Montreal is irrepressible. “When these things happen, the city life becomes much more human,” says Thien Vu Dang, a filmmaker who was born in Vietnam and grew up in Montreal.