Westmount & Outremont

Westmount & Outremont

On the Island of Montréal the names "Westmount" and "Outremont" are synonymous with wealth and power. If -- as some people say -- the neighborhoods are two sides of the same coin, that coin has to be a gold one.

The similarities between the two places are obvious. Both have grand homes, tree-shaded streets, and perfectly groomed parks. Both are built on the slopes of Mont-Royal -- Westmount on the southwest and Outremont on the northeast -- and both are close to the city center. Each has its own trendy -- or, in Outremont, branché -- area for shopping, dining, and sipping lattes. Westmount's is concentrated along avenue Greene and Outremont's is centered on the western ends of rues Laurier and Bernard. Less well known, perhaps, is that both places are not uniformly wealthy. The southern stretch of Westmount is full of immigrant, working-class families, and the eastern fringes of Outremont are home to Montréal's thriving Hasidic community.

The two neighborhoods may appear mirror images of each other, but they have one essential difference. Although the barriers between Francophones and Anglophones in the city might be eroding, Westmount remains stubbornly English -- right down to its neo-Gothic churches and lawn-bowling club -- and Outremont is stubbornly French, with a distinct preference for Second Empire homes.

If you want to get a feel for what novelist Hugh MacLennan called Montréal's "two solitudes," there's no more pleasant way to do it than to take a stroll down avenue Green on one afternoon and then go shopping on rue Laurier the next. Vive la difference.