Mile End

Mile End was the reception quarter for successive waves of immigration — Eastern European Jewish, Greek, Portuguese — and it keeps their shops. The two wood-fired bagel bakeries, St-Viateur and Fairmount, face each other a few streets apart and never close: the Montreal bagel is boiled in honeyed water before baking, thinner and sweeter than the New York one.

The outdoor spiral staircases that give the district its profile come from a city by-law: the law required a setback from the street, and putting the stairs outside freed up living space inside.