A Guide to Montreal's Natural Escapes 🌿

Montreal is an island, and the city has never entirely forgotten it. A small mountain rises in the middle of it — designed as a park by the same man who laid out Central Park — the St. Lawrence runs past in rapids strong enough to have stopped the first European boats, and a chain of nature parks rings the island's edges where the built-up grid runs out. Most of it is reachable by métro, and most of it is free.

🍁 Parc du Mont-Royal – The Mountain in the Middle

Frederick Law Olmsted, fresh from Central Park, laid out Mont-Royal in 1876 with the instruction that the mountain should feel like a mountain rather than a garden. It still does: about 200 hectares of mature hardwood forest over three summits, with carriage paths curling up through the trees. The Kondiaronk lookout gives the definitive view over downtown to the river, Beaver Lake fills with skaters in winter, and the tam-tams drum on the eastern slope every Sunday in summer.

• ~200 Hectares
• Designed by Olmsted
• Kondiaronk Lookout
• Beaver Lake

Source: Ville de Montréal

🌺 Jardin botanique – One of the Great Botanical Gardens

Seventy-five hectares in the east end hold roughly twenty thematic gardens and ten exhibition greenhouses, widely rated among the most important botanical gardens in the world. The Japanese and Chinese gardens are the showpieces — the Chinese garden is among the largest outside Asia — and the First Nations Garden works through the plant knowledge of Quebec's Indigenous peoples. Autumn brings the Gardens of Light, when the Chinese garden fills with silk lanterns after dark.

• 75 Hectares
• 20 Thematic Gardens
• Japanese & Chinese Gardens
• Gardens of Light

Source: Espace pour la vie Montréal

🌉 Parc Jean-Drapeau – Two Islands in the River

Île Sainte-Hélène and the entirely man-made Île Notre-Dame sit in the St. Lawrence a few métro minutes from downtown, built up for Expo 67 and since gone half-wild at the edges. There are riverside paths with the current running hard beside them, the Floralies gardens, beaches, beavers working the channels, and the Biosphère's geodesic dome overhead. The skyline view back across the water is the one most people never think to look for.

• Two River Islands
• Expo 67 Legacy
• Riverside Paths
• Skyline Views

Source: Parc Jean-Drapeau

🏝️ Parc national des Îles-de-Boucherville – Islands Ten Minutes Away

Five islands sit in the St. Lawrence just downstream of the city, close enough that the downtown towers stand on the skyline behind the herons. The park covers roughly eight square kilometres of meadow, marsh and channel, crossed on foot, by bike or by kayak, with a small cable ferry between two of the islands. Deer, foxes, muskrat and nesting ospreys live here, and the flat paths make it one of the easiest genuine escapes anywhere near a Canadian downtown.

• 5 River Islands
• ~8 km²
• Kayak and Cycle
• 10 Minutes from Downtown

Source: Sépaq