February 15-28, 1976: A Triangle Trip: Seattle, Anchorage, and Honolulu
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In late January, I was in Montreal to do an IDMS Culprit installation at Canadian National Railway with Tom Meurer and Tony Hirsch. Since I was going to someplace out of the ordinary, I decided to take my camera with me to see if there would be some photo opportunities.

This would be an all-week assignment, so I left Chicago on Sunday afternoon on Air Canada, flying first to Toronto and then onward to Montreal, arriving in the early evening. We were all staying at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel, so I took the airport bus into the city and checked in there.

It was late when I arrived, but I called Tony's room and he was still up, so I went and talked with him for just a while about what we would be doing this week and the class that I would teach.

Montreal is a very interesting place. Montreal is the most populous municipality in the Canadian province of Quebec and the second-most populous municipality in Canada. Originally called Ville-Marie, or "City of Mary", it is named after Mount Royal, the triple-peaked hill in the heart of the city. The city is centred on the Island of Montreal, which took its name from the same source as the city, and a few much smaller peripheral islands. It has a distinct four-season continental climate with warm to hot summers and cold, snowy winters- and, as you can see in my pictures, we are in the middle of one of those.

While I only took two pictures, I thought I would juxtapose them with current aerial views of the same locations. Not only is this interesting, but it'll allow you to see how things have changed in downtown Montreal since 1976.

The Canadian National Railway, our client, was located in Complex Desjardins, a few blocks from the Queen Elizabeth Hotel. At right is an aerial view of the complex as it appears today (2019), and my picture of the same complex, taken from the top floor of the hotel, is below:

I think it's pretty easy to pick out all the buildings from the current view in the picture I took on this visit. One of the interesting things about Montreal is that what you see aboveground hides the maze of public spaces below ground. In the downtown area, some twenty city blocks are connected underground- and not just by tunnels, but by huge open spaces, stores, shops, and restaurants, and, of course, the subway system. Most large buildings have connections to the underground, and so in inclement weather there is no need to go outside at all. From the Queen Elizabeth, for example, we just took a particular elevator down to this underground area and then followed one of the maps of the underground to travel six blocks to Complexe Desjardins (which happens to be one of the larger open areas connected to the underground system.

There we found what I could describe as a multi-level shopping mall, with its lowest level maybe four floors down underground, connected to a series of office towers. We just had to navigate through the mall to the elevators for the building in which our client was located. I thought the whole thing incredible- that I could walk out of my hotel room ten floors up and navigate my way six blocks away to the fifteenth floor of another skyscraper without ever going outside (or even seeing the outside for most of the way.

Looking East from the Queen Elizabeth Hotel

In the other picture I took this week (at right), I am looking eastward past downtown and across the St. Lawrence River to St. Helen's Island at the left and Ile Notre Dame to its right. In this picture, the spherical structure on St. Helen's Island is the Biosphere Environmental Museum. The Biosphere is situated in the former pavilion of the United States for the 1967 World Fair (Expo 67) that was held here in Montreal. The museum's geodesic dome was designed by Buckminster Fuller.

You can see the bridge that connects downtown with these islands as it crosses the river, and on that near finger of land, at the right in the picture, you can see a small part of Habitat 67, known simply as "Habitat"- a model community and housing complex designed by Israeli-Canadian architect Moshe Safdie. It was originally conceived as his master's thesis in architecture at McGill University and then built as a pavilion for Expo 67. Habitat 67 is widely considered an architectural landmark and one of the most recognizable and spectacular buildings in both Montreal and Canada.

I had no opportunity this week to see either of these iconic landmarks of Montreal (nor was the weather conducive to doing so). Perhaps on a future trip I'll be able to see them up close:

Biosphere Environmental Museum

Habitat 67

To complete this page, I want to also include an aerial view of the area of Montreal that's visible in the second picture that I took. That aerial view is below. I have marked the location of the hotel, our client site, and two reference buildings that appear in my picture:

This was an interesting week. I got to work with IDMS a bit, even though the class I taught was CULPRIT, it was the version that has the IDMS Schema Compiler built in. Tom Meurer and Tony were a pleasure to work with, and we ate at a number of excellent restaurants in the evening.

Also during the week, we had a meeting with a potential client that one of our Canadian National Railway executives knew about- Caisse Populaires (kind of like a credit union). They were located right here in Place des Jardins, in a different office tower. I always hope that clients are satisfied with our performance, and having the CNR folks help us with an introduction to another client is, I think, the best indication of how satisfied they were. Maybe I'll get a return trip here sometime soon.

I like Montreal a lot, not only because I get to practice my French, but because the people are nice and the food is tremendous. Tony and I liked to walk to this one restaurant that serves the best steaks I think I've ever had.

This was a quick visit across the border, with all the week taken up by business. One of these days I need to come back to Montreal on some kind of vacation, as there is a lot to see and do.

You can use the links below to continue to another photo album page.

	February 15-28, 1976: A Triangle Trip: Seattle, Anchorage, and Honolulu
	Return to Index for 1976