Le Village: Sainte-Catherine Est under the canopy
The pedestrian summer street, the public-art canopy overhead, the terrasses, and the lively eastern downtown. This is a Claude-drafted route awaiting the editor's walk.

1. Beaudry station and the rainbow pillars
Start where the metro entrance wears the rainbow flag on its glass columns — the only station in the city dressed this way. Step out onto Rue Sainte-Catherine Est and you're already in it. Walk west; the whole street is the walk.

2. The public-art canopy
Look up. For years the summer installation strung hundreds of thousands of resin balls in a coloured canopy over the street, the city's most copied image; the design changes between seasons but the overhead idea holds. Walk down the middle of the road — it's yours in summer — and keep looking up.

3. The car-free stretch of Sainte-Catherine Est
From late spring the street closes to traffic and becomes a long pedestrian promenade — terrasses pushed out across the asphalt, music, the slow drift of a summer afternoon. This is the reason to come between the warm months; in winter it's an ordinary downtown street.

4. Place Émilie-Gamelin
The big open square at the western end, terraced and planted, with a summer beer garden and weekend markets some years. The pivot point where the Village meets the rest of downtown. Sit on the steps and watch the city change character around you.

5. Rue Sainte-Catherine, the eastern downtown
West past the square, the street carries on into the busier eastern edge of the centre — shops, the UQAM blocks, the everyday city. The contrast with the canopy you just walked under is the point; this is where the Village hands you back.

6. Berri-UQAM station
The city's biggest interchange, three lines crossing under one roof, at the square's corner. End here — you can get anywhere from this platform. A pastry from the square's edge first, if the day's been long enough to earn one.

Le Village: Sainte-Catherine Est under the canopy