Montréal, QC is famous for lots of things: Expo 67, smoked meat sandwiches, the 1976 Olympics, the John Lennon-Yoko Ono bed-in for peace…. but Leonard Cohen’s hometown? 

Canada’s musical giant is media shy—you wouldn’t catch him staging a protest in bed—which explains why his private life stays so private. And perhaps why Montréal doesn’t boast about its singing, songwriting superstar son.

But after hearing Cohen perform live on his ’09 world tour, I’m on a Hallelujah high.

I want to have “tea and oranges that come all the way from China” in old Montréal by the St. Lawrence River.

I want to visit the 17th century church—the Chapel of Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours, the oldest in Montréal—where “the sun pours down like honey, on our lady of the harbour,” and where carved replicas of sailing ships inspired Cohen to see Jesus as a sailor.

I want to see the big, red-brick house Cohen grew up in at 599 Belmont Ave. in Westmount, and visit Shaar Hashomayim synagogue, where he celebrated his bar mitzvah.

I want to stroll through the campus of McGill University where Cohen studied, dazzling his professors in the English Department.

And I want to find his home near Parc du Portugal, where Cohen still lives part of the year, and where—it’s hard to believe, but I heard him say it on CBC Radio just the other day—his neighbours still come to do their laundry.

You can take Manhattan or Berlin, but I’ll take Montréal.

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