Villeray is the Montreal that doesn't get walked by visitors and is the better for it — a quiet residential quarter just north of Little Italy, with a low-key café street and a great green park to fall into at the end. The walk is deliberately undramatic: everyday streets, then open parkland, the ordinary city at its most likeable.
Start on Rue de Castelnau where the Blue Line lets you out, the unhurried café strip that knows its regulars. Place de Castelnau, the small market square it opens onto, is Jean-Talon's quieter cousin and all the better for being used rather than visited. Then cut north through the duplex blocks — the outside staircases, the brick triplexes, the front gardens — the Montreal most of the city actually is.
Parc Jarry is the reward: long lawns and mature trees after the tight grid, and the ornamental pond at the centre where half the neighbourhood spends a warm afternoon. At the park's edge stands the IGA Stadium, where the Canadian Open is played each summer; out of season you can walk right up to it. Jarry station is the short last step home.
