Boulevard Saint-Laurent is the line that splits Montreal — every address east or west is measured from it — and walking it north is walking through every wave that arrived here. The Jewish and Portuguese and Chinese and everyone-after came up this boulevard, and the Main still carries all of it at once. Just under four kilometres, uphill, following one street.
Start at the lower end near Rue Sainte-Catherine, where the boulevard met the old downtown and the nightlife. North through the garment district — the schmatte trade of fur and fabric, the loft buildings with their freight elevators and carved cornices still in place above shops that sell something else now.
Then Schwartz's, curing brisket since 1928: medium, on rye, with a pickle, at the counter if there's room. North of Rue Rachel the MURAL festival walls turn the boulevard into a gallery, repainted each summer, several storeys high. Pass the bars around Prince-Arthur — quiet by day, worth a night return — then cut east into the Plateau, where the Main goes leafy in two blocks, for the Orange line home from Mont-Royal.
