Montrealers call it, simply, "the mountain" — and they are proud of it. Mount Royal Park is the largest and loveliest green space in the city, a hundred hectares of wooded slopes and grassy meadows rising to 232 metres, planted with some 60,000 trees and populated by an inexhaustible supply of squirrels. It was designed in 1874 by Frederick Law Olmsted, the landscape architect behind Central Park in New York, and inaugurated in 1876; a century and a half later it still does exactly what he intended, which is to make a person walking its paths feel they have left the city altogether. Its survival was not a foregone conclusion. In the 1960s a plan for an observation tower of nearly 300 metres in the heart of the mountain came close to transforming the landscape entirely, and it was vigorous citizen opposition that killed it — a fight that gave rise, forty years ago, to Les Amis de la montagne, on the principle that loving the mountain also means knowing when to say no. The history runs back further still: in the eighteenth century the summit's first occupant was Marie Carrière, who worked a farm of at least twenty-five arpents there, ploughing, sowing and tending livestock, followed by Suzanne Courault — a reminder of how much of this ground was worked by women.
The park is made for wandering. Trails thread the whole mountain, opening onto a series of belvederes concentrated on the eastern flank; the finest is the Kondiaronk lookout, just in front of the Mount Royal Chalet and above McGill, which gives the best view in Montreal of the downtown towers and the St. Lawrence beyond. The chalet itself is hung with paintings tracing the city's history, many by well-known artists. Beaver Lake — Lac aux Castors, an artificial pond two hundred metres by a hundred and fifty — anchors the western side, its pavilion a fine example of Quebec modernist architecture and its lawns the place to stretch out and do nothing at all. Higher up stands the cross: thirty metres tall, erected in 1924 in honour of Maisonneuve, who had promised to carry a wooden cross to the summit if the young colony survived the floods of 6 January 1643, and lit at night as one of the city's defining symbols. More than half the mountain, meanwhile, is given over to cemeteries where a great many notable Quebecers are buried — the Catholic Notre-Dame-des-Neiges alone covers close to 140 hectares with 55 kilometres of paths, alongside the Protestant Mount Royal cemetery and two small Jewish burial grounds.
There is always something to do. In the warmer months the mountain fills with joggers, cyclists, picnickers, riders and frisbee players, and it is not unusual to see the horses of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police trotting through; birdwatching is excellent, particularly along the walking trails where feeders have been installed. At the foot of the mountain along avenue du Parc, around the monument to Sir George-Étienne Cartier, the Sunday tam-tams gather drummers and dancers all summer in a cheerfully hippyish weekly ritual. In winter the park turns to tubing runs and a sledding hill, a refrigerated skating rink, snowshoe and cross-country ski trails, and sleigh rides through the snow. Les Amis de la montagne run activities and services year-round, including a permanent exhibition at Smith House.
Storms have taken their toll — the ice storm of 1998 destroyed thousands of trees — but the mountain endures, and so does the attachment. Mount Royal Park is where Montreal goes to breathe: a wilderness five minutes from downtown, defended by the people who use it, and the best place in the city to stand and look at itself.