Mile End

Mile End is Montreal's creative nucleus — a neighbourhood of converted factories, independent studios, and the two bagel shops that anchor the most passionately contested food debate in the city. The neighbourhood sits north of the Plateau on the slope of Mount Royal, and its mix of Hasidic Jewish, Greek, Italian, and Francophone communities — all sharing the same few blocks — makes it one of the most genuinely multicultural urban districts in North America.

St-Viateur Bagel and Fairmount Bagel are the neighbourhood's twin institutions — wood-fired bagel shops that have been operating since 1957 and 1919 respectively, producing the hand-rolled, honey-sweetened, wood-oven-baked bagels that are Montreal's most distinctive contribution to world cuisine. The bagels are smaller and denser than New York's, with a slightly sweet, chewy crust from the honey water and the wood-fired oven, and the debate over which shop is better is a social identity marker in Montreal comparable to choosing a football team.

Beyond the bagels, Mile End is where Montreal's independent music scene (Arcade Fire, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Leonard Cohen all have deep connections to the neighbourhood), its literary culture (Drawn & Quarterly, one of North America's most important comic publishers, is headquartered here), and its studio art community overlap in the converted garment factories along Saint-Laurent and Clark streets. Café culture thrives on Fairmount and Saint-Viateur avenues, and the neighbourhood's refusal to gentrify completely — despite obvious real estate pressure — is a point of civic pride.