Montreal is well known for its cultural diversity. The city holds a major place in the worldwide tech industry. It is the host of the Just For Laughs festival and the Jazz festival. It is known as the city where the internationally popular BIXI originated. It has been appointed a UNESCO City of Design. It is the home of the Cirque du Soleil and birthplace of Celine Dion. Okay… She wasn’t born in Montreal, not even on the island, but Charlemagne is only about 25 kilometers away.
What Montreal isn’t known for is the friendly weird things that can happen in public places. For example, in 2008, there was a flashmob at Complexe Desjardins where everybody froze for a few minutes, enough time for some guy to explore closely what everybody was doing.
Not so long ago, the international pillow fight day took place. There weren’t as many people as in New York, but it was certainly more fun and more entertaining. In New York, all there was, was people waving white pillows. In Montreal, it wasn’t a pillow fight (or pillow wave), it was war as you can see below.
The latest was a demonstration of an upcoming urban dance event called Bust A Move where dancers from all around the world come to compete against each other in dance categories such as breakdance, popping, locking, wacking, hip hop and krump. The promotion/preview of the event took place in a metro station located in downtown Montreal on a Friday afternoon when people were getting out of work. What better way to insure maximum exposure?
As you can see, public places in Montreal are targets of free public events that can take place at any moment. Many of these events are advertised through Facebook. Occasionally, you can find very unusual musicians in the streets.
There’s a lot of fun to be had in Montreal, on every level.