Did you know that all cars sold in the province of Quebec come off the assembly line with a thinner coat of paint than cars sold elsewhere in the country?
I can’t actually prove that assertion, but it is one of many observations from a road trip to La Belle Province last week. The impetus for the five-day trip was a Monday night MIKA concert at La Place Bell in Laval and, not unlike a similar trip to see the same artist back in 2019, it once again exposed us to the legendary aggressive habits of Montreal drivers.
It certainly doesn’t help that the provincial flower in Quebec appears to be the orange traffic cone, as the province’s roads seem to be under constant construction, especially in Montreal. Add to that the obvious language barrier, as well as the driving habits of local denizens, and a visitor cannot survive without GPS and nerves of steel.
I did far less driving in the city on our last visit in 2019, eschewing pleas from my fellow travelers to use GPS technology. But I eventually relented, allowing my then-teenaged daughter to provide backseat navigation assistance, prompting some anxious moments trying to select from the seemingly endless number of bridges that carry motorists over the St. Lawrence River and into the city.
On that occasion, we didn’t move the car from the hotel parking until our pre-dawn departure (“escape” might be a better term to describe it) the morning after the concert. This time around, I decided to put my faith in Google Maps GPS and, while there were a few tense moments, we somehow managed to come away dent free.
People will gladly offer you tips about driving in Montreal, paramount among them being “don’t drive in Montreal.” But they will often tell you that righthand turns on red lights are an absolute “non-non” in the city, but it seems they haven’t informed all drivers in the city of that rule, so it’s best not to assume this is the law of the land when navigating Montreal’s streets.
Despite the aggressive driving one encounters in Quebec’s most populous city, I did notice something that flew in the face of that reputation. When merging from a ramp onto a highway, I noticed that drivers in the next lane will often yield to you, which is quite a change from driving in Nova Scotia, where too many motorists believe that all other drivers are actually required to get out of their way when they’re merging off a ramp.
I also noticed that despite there being so many bridges into the city (including the Samuel de Champlain, Canada’s busiest bridge), there are far more bridges within the city itself that don’t cross any water. One may call these overpasses, but regardless of what you call them, it’s one more thing to be on the lookout for.
On my maiden GPS voyage, I actually managed to relax at times, especially once I realized that a wrong turn here or there was easily corrected by pulling into a parking lot while Google Maps recalibrated. But the technology’s penchant for proposing U-turns was a bit unsettling, I must admit. I ignored those prompts, of course. I haven’t pulled a single “Uie” in my four decades of driving, and I wasn’t about to execute my first one in Montreal.
Because our concert was in Laval, three of our four nights in the city were spent in Montreal’s largest suburb. That allowed us the opportunity to take advantage of the Metro system, and I would highly recommend opting for accommodation there rather than on the island of Montreal and taking advantage of the train. Montreal’s Metro is one of the simplest subway systems anywhere as just four lines connect the downtown core to major tourist sites, bus stops and train stations.
One of the more startling discoveries was Quebec’s gas pricing system. Having been used to no more than a few cents per-liter fluctuation in Nova Scotia for years, I couldn’t believe the wild swings in pricing in that province. I don’t think I saw the same price twice.
Apparently, Quebec virtually abandoned gas price regulation last year in order to encourage competition, requiring stations to report any gas price change within five minutes to the regulating authority. And just last month, the province rolled out a new online tool to help Quebec motorists find the best price. So, I would recommend checking that out.
But my most significant takeaway from this latest road trip, though, was to question whether I’d actually want to drive to Montreal again. I love road trips, especially if they’re on roads I’ve never travelled before. But this excursion was a mind-numbing exercise in survival. The trip through New Brunswick, though efficient, offers little in the way of diversions. There is so little to see that the bridge over the Saint John River in Jemseg has become a major highlight.
But as boring as the drive through New Brunswick may be, just when you’re dying for something to look at, the four-hour run from Riviere du Loup to Montreal offers nothing more than a seemingly endless rhythm of silo-silo-church, silo-silo-church, silo-silo-church. The only thing that distinguishes one small town from the next is that they’re all named for different saints.
So, my next trip to Montreal might be on a train. There probably won’t be much more to see, and you’ll still have to travel through those same cookie-cutter towns and villages in eastern Quebec, but at least the bar car will help pass the time.