Some of the many stairs leading to Parc du Mont-Royal..Credit: Alamy
When the burghers of 19th century Montreal decreed that the mountain-cum-hill above their Francophone city would be a suitable site for a public park their collective regard for the wellbeing of their citizenry must surely have been laced with a sadistic streak.
What else could possibly be concluded as one passes a procession of panting and perspiring lunch-hour joggers, powering up the steep, almost 260-step timber staircase from the more mercifully flat terrain of downtown to the summit of Parc du Mont-Royal.
Mont Royal cross in Montreal city at dusk.Credit: Alamy
Of course, not everyone is up to the cardiovascular challenge required to visit the park. Take one of Montreal's most famous inhabitants, Margaret Trudeau, the former, controversial wife of the late former Canadian Prime Minister, Pierre, and mother of Justin, the nation's incumbent leader.
In recent years the First Mother, as it were, has surrendered to the vertiginous Mont-Royal, or at least her knees have done so. She recently confessed that on her daily constitutional to the park she takes a short-cut through a high-rise hospital that abuts Mont-Royal. There she rides an elevator to the facility's sixth floor and exits into the upper levels of the park. It's kinder to her knees, you see.
Me? I've been an even worse cheat and, pressed for time, made it up here by taxi from downtown Montreal, the second largest French-speaking city in the western world with fewer than 15 per cent of its 3.6 million population claiming English as their first language.
Inside the European-style Mount Royal Chalet that sits at the high point in Parc du Mont-Royal.Credit: Alamy
Although harbourside Stanley Park in Vancouver is more commonly regarded as Canada's best urban park, and one of the finest in the world, the 200-hectare Parc du Mont-Royal really is straight from Central Park casting. It was, after all, designed in 1874 by Frederick Law Olmsted, the American landscape architect responsible for New York's most famous Central Park. Truly, his two parks couldn't be more different.
Those 260 steep steps, which begin at avenue des Pins near rue Peel – all thoroughfares in Montreal must, by law, be written in French – lead to an improbable large European chalet-style building. It serves as a snug refuge in Montreal's bitter winter when joggers are replaced by skiers, snow-shoers and skaters undeterred by the snow and cold.
Here there's a lookout that delivers panoramic views of the city – even though Mont-Royal is only 233 metres high. The sights before me include the controversial 1976 Olympic Stadium, the first of the Olympiad white elephants. It's set to be refurbished, at enormous expense, for soccer's 2026 World Cup to be held in Canada, Mexico and the United States.
Parc du Mont-Royal was designed by the same architect as New York's Central Park.Credit: Alamy
Panning around I see an imposing mural, covering the blank side of an office building. It's an arresting, life-like portrait of Leonard Cohen, one of Montreal's most beloved sons, who died in 2016. The gravestone of the cerebral singer, songwriter and poet is located in a cemetery elsewhere in Parc du Mont-Royal.
Despite being not much more than a hill, Montrealers refer to Mont-Royal as "la montange" or the mountain. It was named by Jacques Cartier, the French explorer who claimed Canada for France, in 1535 and led to the city below being named Montreal.
Although most visitors to the park tend to visit the lookout at the top of the stairs and the more formal open parklands and lake, some favour the heavily-forested sections with its network of rustic trails that can fool you into thinking that a city doesn't loom below you.
It's this section that Olmsted intentionally left in more or less its natural state even though the rest of his design for the park was ultimately modified by those sadistic burghers.
One of those trails leads to Le Croix, the 31-metre-high steel cross that when illuminated at night can be seen from most parts of the city. The modern-day structure marks the spot where in 1643 a wooden cross was hauled up Mont-Royal and planted in gratitude after the settlement below had been saved from flooding from the St Lawrence River.
It was this section of Parc du Mont-Royal that was subject to an extraordinary act of officially sanctioned urban vandalism. After the most wooded parts of the park were perceived in the 1950s to have become the domicile of "perverts and alcoholics", Jean Drapeau, the then mayor of Montreal, ordered the brutal deforestation of all trees and brushes.
Undesirables no longer had anywhere to hide in the then devoutly Catholic Montreal, or at least not in its premier urban playground. No wonder that the denuded park not only laboured under the resultant environmental degradation but also the unfortunate epithet, "bald mountain".
The park received another blow in 1998 when 86,000 trees were damaged and a further 5000 felled by a destructive ice-storm. Fortunately the trees, and for that matter, the brushes, have regenerated and bird and wildlife, including squads of squirrels, have returned. As I wander the trails I even come across a small pocket of wetlands deep in a densely-vegetated, pervert-free corner of the park.
It's been a full and salubrious morning exploring Parc du Mont-Royal, the clear mid-summer air alive with French-Canadian accents. But it's time to head back down to the city from its green herbaceous crown where what goes up must surely go down, and vice versa.
FIVE MORE THINGS TO DO
TAKE A TOUR
Les amis de la montagne, the organisation that operates the park, offers a variety of guided tours between May and October that cover all aspects of Mount Royal.
VISIT SMITH HOUSE
Built in 1858, Smith House, the official gateway to Mount Royal Park, features details on the park's history, fauna and flora.
HIKE TO THE SUMMIT
At the Mount Royal Summit, the peak's highest point at 233 metres, is Olmsted Path, named after the park's architect, where a small lookout offers terrific views.
SAVOUR THE LAKE
The beautiful centrepiece of the more formal part of the park is the ornamental Beaver Lake. A modernist pavilion, built in 1958, affords spectacular glimpses of the lake and surrounds.
EXPLORE THE CHATEAU
Peek inside Chateau du Mont-Royal, near the main lookout, to admire its unusual French Beaux-Arts and Arts and Crafts architecture and historical paintings.
TRIP NOTES
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VISIT
Entry to Parc du Mont-Royal is free. The park is easily accessed at various points by foot, bicycle, vehicle or bus which departs from the Mont-Royal metro station. See lemontroyal.qc.ca/en
TOUR
Collette offers a large variety of escorted journeys from Australia to Canada, a number of which incorporate Montreal and other eastern Canada highlights including Quebec City, Ottawa, Toronto and Niagara Falls. gocollette.com
STAY
Hotel Omni Mont-Royal, a boutique-style lodging built to coincide with the 1976 Montreal Olympics, is located close to the entrance to the park and is convenient to the city's other myriad attractions. It can be booked as part of a Collette tour. See gocollette.com omnihotels.com
FLY
Air Canada operates regular direct flights from Sydney and Melbourne, as well as Brisbane, to Vancouver on Canada's west coast. From Vancouver connect domestically to Montreal. See aircanada.com
Anthony Dennis visited Montreal as a guest of Destination Canada, Collette and with the assistance of Air Canada.
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