Gay Guide to Montreal
On 22 October 1977, fifty officers raided the Truxx bar and Le Mystique with guns drawn and arrested 146 men. The next night roughly 2,000 people took Sainte-Catherine and fought the police over it. Eight weeks later, on 15 December, Quebec's National Assembly added sexual orientation to its Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms, the first jurisdiction larger than a city or county anywhere in the world to do so. Canada had decriminalized in 1969 and would open marriage nationally in 2005, but Quebec's protection came directly out of that street fight, which is why locals call Truxx their Stonewall.
Le Village runs along Sainte-Catherine Est, and for a long stretch of each summer the street closes to cars completely and becomes a pedestrian promenade under an overhead art installation. The bars line it end to end: Complexe Sky with its rooftop, Unity, Campus, Stock Bar, Le Stud, the leather-leaning Aigle Noir, Bar Renard, Bar Le Cocktail and Le Date for karaoke. Three saunas, Centre-Ville, G.I. Joe and Oasis, sit on the same few blocks.
Cabaret Mado is the one to plan around. Mado Lamotte has been running drag out of it for decades and it is a genuine institution rather than a tourist stop, though it welcomes both. When the bars close, Stereo takes over as the after-hours and runs long past sunrise, which is a Montreal tradition more than a nightlife option.
Fierté Montréal fills August with a festival that bills itself as the largest Pride celebration in the French-speaking world. Outside festival season the community end of things lives on Rue Plessis at the Centre communautaire LGBTQ+, and Librairie L'Euguélionne on Rue Beaudry is the feminist and queer bookstore.
Montreal runs in French first, though the Village is thoroughly bilingual and nobody will make it difficult. The neighborhood has its own metro stop at Beaudry, done up in rainbow colors, which makes it about as easy to find as a gay village gets.