Before we begin, I’d like to make one thing clear.
I’m not writing this as a Montrealer, or even as someone who truly knows this city. I’m simply a traveler. A foreigner passing through. At the time of writing these words, I’ve only been living here for a week. My perspective is therefore incomplete, sometimes naïve, perhaps even idealized. People who have called Montreal home for years will undoubtedly see realities I haven’t experienced yet, challenges I haven’t encountered, and nuances I still don’t understand.
This article doesn’t pretend to explain what Montreal is.
It simply tells the story of what Montreal has made me feel. And sometimes, the fresh eyes of a traveler notice things that familiarity has made invisible.
I thought I understood what diversity meant.
After all, I’ve spent the last eleven years traveling. Eleven years crossing borders, discovering new languages, religions, cuisines, and ways of thinking. I’ve lived in Latin America, Asia, and Oceania. I’ve shared meals with Quechua families in Peru, learned a few words of Vietnamese in the markets of Hoi An, celebrated Lunar New Year, slept in remote villages, and taken hundreds of buses, trains, boats, and planes.
I genuinely believed I had seen the world. Then I came back to Montreal.
Last year, I spent three weeks here. This year, I decided to stay for four months. Only one week has passed, and one thing already feels certain:
I have never seen a place like this. Because Montreal isn’t just a multicultural city.
It’s a city where the entire world seems to have decided to live together.
Every morning, after walking only a few blocks, I encounter dozens of different realities.
I see elderly women chatting with teenagers sporting bright pink hair. Businesspeople in tailored suits crossing the street while a musician plays on the sidewalk. Students from every corner of the world. Families who have been here for generations. Refugees rebuilding their lives. Newly arrived immigrants. Descendants of Vietnamese boat people. Indigenous communities. Tourists. Homeless people. Wealthy residents. Others who have almost nothing.
I see people who are tall, short, slim, plus-sized, covered in tattoos from head to toe, or dressed in the most classic way imaginable.
I see same-sex couples holding hands without anyone seeming to care. Trans people. Non-binary people. Some who proudly embrace who they are, others who are still searching for themselves.
And somehow, it all seems to coexist. And I love that.
Of course, nothing is perfect. There are inequalities, social issues, tensions. Montreal isn’t a utopia. But there’s something I feel here more than anywhere else.
A sense that being different is… normal. No one seems genuinely surprised by anyone else.
As if people have collectively accepted that there isn’t just one way to be human. And this diversity doesn’t stop with the people. It’s everywhere.
Festivals celebrate jazz, the Caribbean, Vietnam, First Nations cultures, Latin America, Francophone culture, African communities, electronic music, classical music…
You can have lunch in an Ethiopian restaurant, grab an Italian coffee, eat a Vietnamese bánh mì, spend the afternoon browsing a Québécois bookstore, then finish the evening at a Colombian concert.
The whole world fits within a few subway stops.
After eleven years of traveling, I’ve realized something rather paradoxical. I’ve spent years crossing continents to discover the world’s cultures.
Yet today, it’s Montreal that makes me feel like I’ve found them all gathered in one place.
This isn’t a city that erases differences. It seems to make room for them, imperfectly perhaps, but genuinely.
It doesn’t ask people to become the same. It allows them to exist side by side. Maybe that’s what moves me so deeply.
Travel has always taught me that the world is infinitely more complex than the clichés we build around it.
Montreal reminds me every single day that this complexity can also become a strength. And I think it’s the first city that has given me this much hope in our ability to live together.
After eleven years spent searching for the world across the globe, I never expected to find almost all of it in a single city. And maybe that’s what has challenged me the most.
People often say that traveling opens your mind. That discovering new countries changes you. That it teaches you to see the world differently. They’re absolutely right.
But until now, every country had introduced me to one culture at a time. I would learn the customs of one people, one history, one way of living… and then move on to another.
In Montreal, everything blends together. It is no longer about understanding one culture. It’s about accepting that hundreds of cultures can cross paths, interact, sometimes clash, and still end up sharing the same space.
This city forces me to question my own instincts.
Sometimes I catch myself wondering where someone comes from. Then I realize that the question hardly matters. What matters isn’t where they’re from. It’s that they’re now part of this enormous puzzle called Montreal.
I believe this city is teaching me something I had never truly understood before.
We spend so much of our lives focusing on what makes us different : our nationality, our skin color, our religion, our sexual orientation, our gender, the way we dress, the language we speak, our traditions.
But when all those differences exist in the same place, they slowly lose their power to divide us.
They simply become… normal. And there is something incredibly peaceful about that. Here, nobody seems to feel the need to fit into a single box. Everyone brings a piece of their story, their culture, their identity.
And instead of creating chaos, all those differences come together to create a city that feels profoundly alive.
I’m not naïve… well, maybe a little sometimes, I know everything isn’t perfect, I know racism exists, discrimination exists, integration isn’t always easy, political and social tensions are real, some communities still suffer far more than others.
But I also see the effort, I see a city trying, a city making space, a city that celebrates differences instead of hiding them. And I find that incredibly inspiring.
For eleven years, I’ve traveled to better understand the world.
Montreal makes me want to better understand people, because beneath all our differences, we’re all trying to do the exact same thing.
We’re simply looking for a place where we can feel at home.
So thank you, Montreal.
Thank you for reminding me that after eleven years spent traveling the world, I still had so much left to learn.
Thank you for showing me that diversity isn’t measured by the number of countries you’ve visited, but by the ability to welcome countless differences into the same space without trying to erase them.
Thank you for offering me this lesson in humanity through a street corner, a festival, a café, a conversation overheard on the subway, or a brief exchange of smiles with a stranger.
You make me believe that it’s possible to live side by side without having to become the same.
That a city can speak hundreds of languages while telling one shared story.
That a world where everyone has a place may not be a utopia after all, but something built one gesture, one encounter, one act of kindness at a time.
I don’t know what the next few months will teach me.
I don’t know whether this feeling will fade or grow even stronger. But one thing is certain : In just one week, you’ve already changed the way I look at other people, and perhaps, just a little, the way I look at the world.
So thank you, Montreal.
For reminding me that the greatest journeys aren’t always the ones that take us farther away. Sometimes, they’re simply the ones that bring us a little closer to one another.
Et c’est peut-être là que Montréal m’a le plus bousculée.
En voyage, on parle souvent d’ouverture d’esprit. On dit que découvrir d’autres pays nous change, qu’on apprend à voir le monde autrement. C’est totalement vrai. Mais jusqu’ici, chaque pays m’a fait surtout découvrir une culture à la fois. J’apprends les codes d’un peuple, d’une histoire, d’une façon de vivre. Puis je repars vers une autre.
À Montréal, tout se mélange.
Il ne s’agit plus de comprendre une culture, mais d’accepter qu’il en existe des centaines qui se croisent, se répondent, parfois se confrontent, mais finissent malgré tout par partager le même espace.
Cette ville m’oblige à remettre en question mes propres réflexes.
Je me surprends parfois à me demander d’où vient une personne. Puis je réalise que cette question n’a finalement que peu d’importance. Ce qui compte, ce n’est pas son origine, mais le fait qu’elle fasse désormais partie de ce grand puzzle qu’est Montréal.
Je crois que cette ville m’apprend quelque chose que je n’avais encore jamais vraiment compris.
Nous passons énormément de temps à chercher ce qui nous différencie. Notre nationalité. Notre couleur de peau. Notre religion. Notre orientation sexuelle. Notre genre. Notre manière de nous habiller. Notre langue. Nos traditions.
Mais lorsque toutes ces différences se retrouvent réunies au même endroit, elles perdent peu à peu leur pouvoir de nous séparer, elles deviennent simplement… normales, et c’est incroyablement reposant.
Ici, personne ne semble avoir besoin d’entrer dans une seule case. Chacun apporte un morceau de son histoire, de sa culture, de son identité. Et au lieu de créer le chaos, cette accumulation de différences donne naissance à une ville profondément vivante.
Je ne suis pas naïve (un peu parfois). Je sais que tout n’est pas parfait. Je sais qu’il existe du racisme, des discriminations, des difficultés d’intégration, des tensions politiques et sociales. Je sais que certaines communautés souffrent davantage que d’autres.
Mais je vois aussi les efforts, je vois une ville qui essaie. Une ville qui fait de la place. Une ville qui célèbre les différences au lieu de les cacher, et je trouve cela incroyablement inspirant.
En onze ans de voyage, j’ai souvent cherché à comprendre le monde. Montréal me donne plutôt envie de comprendre les humains… parce qu’au fond, derrière toutes nos différences, nous faisons exactement la même chose. Nous essayons simplement de trouver un endroit où nous sentir chez nous.
Alors merci, Montréal.
Merci de me rappeler qu’après onze années passées à parcourir le monde, je n’avais encore rien fini d’apprendre.
Merci de m’avoir montré que la diversité ne se mesure pas au nombre de pays visités, mais à la capacité d’accueillir toutes les différences dans un même espace, sans chercher à les faire disparaître.
Merci de m’avoir offert cette leçon d’humanité au détour d’une rue, d’un festival, d’un café, d’une conversation entendue dans le métro ou d’un simple regard échangé avec un inconnu.
Tu me laisse croire qu’il est possible de vivre côte à côte sans se ressembler.
Qu’une ville peut parler des centaines de langues et raconter pourtant une seule histoire.
Qu’un monde où chacun a sa place n’est peut-être pas une utopie, mais quelque chose qui se construit, un geste après l’autre, une rencontre après l’autre.
J’ignore ce que les prochains mois me feront découvrir. J’ignore si cette sensation s’effacera avec le temps ou si elle grandira encore.
Mais une chose est certaine. En une seule semaine, tu as déjà changé ma façon de regarder les autres.
Et peut-être, un peu aussi, ma façon de regarder le monde.
Alors merci, Montréal.
Merci de me rappeler que le plus beau voyage n’est pas toujours celui qui nous emmène plus loin. Parfois, c’est simplement celui qui nous rapproche un peu plus des êtres humains.
