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Travel
How to spend a hot summer weekend in Canada’s coolest city
Even in the height of summer, Montreal offers the perfect mix of festivals, neighbourhood discoveries and refreshing river adventures
- Jul 16, 2026
- 1,587 words
- 7 minutes
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A young woman plays an accordion on the small front balcony of her Mile End triplex, releasing harmonic notes into the blue-sky afternoon. It’s a scene you won’t find in any other major North American city — Montreal, however, is unlike any other major North American city to begin with.
Today, on a sticky summer weekend, the city is humming. I’m solo parenting and visiting Montreal with my two kids, wondering whether their first foray into the City of Saints will leave a mark on their childhood memories. I won’t have to wonder or wander too long.
The Montreal International Jazz Festival is in full swing in the Quartier des Spectacles. This huge public event space is free to the public, allowing up to 200,000 people to gather downtown and cheer world-headlining acts on multiple stages. Where else can you stumble upon a performance with Stevie Wonder, Paul Simon, or Angine de Poitrine — Quebec’s latest global viral sensation — without spending a dime?
We spontaneously catch a hilarious Canadian duo called Choir! Choir! Choir! as they conduct the masses to sing Culture Club’s Karma Chameleon in beautiful harmony, playing the crowd like maestros. The positive atmosphere is fantastic, the performance is fun, and the mango-on-a-stick treat afterwards is well-deserved.
Montreal has no shortage of culinary treats. The world’s finest bagels, hand-rolled and baked in a wood-fired oven at St-Viateur Bagel. The world’s finest smoked meat sandwiches, served on rye with mustard and a pickle on the side. Squeaky cheese poutine, available everywhere and single-handedly keeping my kids alive (I convince myself it contains all the major food groups).
Walking around Mile End, Montreal’s trendiest neighbourhood, we pop into a tiny store called Dalmata Gelataria and chance upon rockstar soft-serve gelato. Discovering Dalmata is a happy accident, much like the ice cream itself, which is the result of two acclaimed chefs experimenting with an ice cream machine inherited as part of a restaurant lease. We head to Jean-Talon Market to find vendors selling fresh produce from across the province, along with charcuterie, spices, soaps, and fromageries that would make a Parisian proud. We order dinner at an elevated food court called Le Central, with nearly two dozen restaurants offering something for everyone. I go with Portuguese chicken; my kids order poutine, again, of course.
Staying downtown at the Sheraton on René-Lévesque Boulevard, it’s fast and easy to get around the city on the metro, avoiding Montreal’s notorious traffic and confusing parking regulations. We have a day planned at the Old Port, the former site of one of the continent’s busiest ports. Today, the area is bustling with restaurants, galleries, pubs, souvenir shops, and along the waterfront, food trucks and major attractions like the La Grande Roue de Montréal, towering 60 metres above the waterfront as the tallest observation wheel in the country.
There’s also a pirate ship-themed high ropes course called Voiles en Voiles, where kids and adults are safely harnessed to navigate a series of obstacles overlooking the St Lawrence River. The most difficult ‘black’ course convinces me I need to get in better shape, or at least watch my poutine and craft beer intake.
Some 18th-century regiment reenactors are doing drills off the promenade for no reason I can establish, and the elated screams of bungee jumpers hover over the Mini Putt Montreal course built on a quay. Along with the random festivals we seem to stumble across while exploring the city, there’s just so much going on. To orient ourselves, we pop into MEM (a.k.a. Centre des mémoires montréalaises), a museum that tells Montreal’s history through exhibits on waves of immigration, industries, and pop culture artifacts. We learn that Montreal is an island, so perhaps it’s best to take it all in from the water, on board the wildest, urban water ride on the planet.
When flowing water descends quickly over shallow rocks, it creates boiling rapids that can be fun to navigate (in a white-water raft) and incredibly dangerous (in a cargo ship). Raging not far off the riverbank of Montreal, the Lachine Rapids are 4.8 kilometres long and choppy enough to be categorized as Class 5 rapids, one below the most dangerous navigable rating. Transport Canada classifies the Lachine Rapids as unnavigable for standard commercial and recreational marine traffic. That didn’t stop an enterprising American white-water rafter named Jack Kowalski from pioneering jetboat rides into the turbulent soup.
Departing from the Old Port, his Saute-Moutons Jetboating has been operating for decades, soaking passengers in the wild waters of the cool St. Lawrence. With no propellers, jetboats can take a lot of punishment, and the company makes no bones about the fact that guests will get wet. They do provide waterproof ponchos and fleece sweaters, along with firm instructions to leave everything behind unless you want to donate it to the river.
Dozens of tourists from around the world are split into two large jetboats, with a guide pointing out sites as we make the 15-minute ride to the action. We learn about the Old Port’s Clock Tower, with its replica of the mechanism inside Big Ben. We see Habitat 67, the instantly recognizable cube building designed by famed architect Moshe Safdie and unveiled as a pavilion during the city’s Expo ’67. We pass beneath the busy Jacques Cartier Bridge and see the summit of Mont Royal itself, towering over the buildings downtown that are restricted from approaching its height.
When we do enter the rapids, which our guide names Hawaii and the Rollercoaster, we’re advised to hold on, keep our mouths shut, and enjoy the ride. We drop in and out of massive waves that flood the boat up to our knees before quickly draining out. I’d be terrified if I didn’t know that millions of people have taken this ride over the years, that jetboats are remarkably robust machines, and that Saute-Moutons has an excellent safety record.
It’s a lot of excitement for one day, but summer nights in Montreal come into their own. Outdoor patios are bustling, bars are buzzing, and music hums in the humid air. We get tickets for AURA, a dazzling nightly laser and light show inside the Notre Dame Basilica, produced by the internationally renowned Moment Factory (founded and based in Montreal). The studio also produced a ground-breaking interactive LED lighting system on the Jacques Cartier Bridge that tracks various data points and changes colours in response to the pulse of the city. AURA is a stunning, twenty-minute show, and despite the imposing church setting, the range of ethnicities and religions in the audience speaks to its global appeal.
On our final night, we visit Place Pasteur in the Latin Quarter for a free nightly circus performance event called Cirqu’Easy. An excellent live band soundtracks the performance of acrobats, jugglers, contortionists, clowns, and other performers who casually pop up in various parts of the square, delighting all ages. My kids are glued to the square, running about, excited by the randomness of it all. Much like that accordion player in Mile End, we seem to find many special and unexpected moments in the city: people roaming about in anime and video game costumes for a weekend convention; hunky firefighters playing guitar outside their station; a giant keyboard and trumpet inviting curiosity. For my kids, and for families and visitors of all ages, a hot summer weekend in Canada’s coolest city easily proved unforgettable.
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