A regular commenter on my Montreal news blog this week:

I work with tourists every day and it’s interesting to see what different people from different places notice about Montreal. Today I had three women from Vancouver who couldn’t believe how little homelessness there is in Montreal, whereas an older couple from a small city in Germany were aghast by the amount of homelessness we have. New Yorkers find the Metro to be pristine. The British can’t believe how many trees are on our residential streets. The Swiss find our streets to be extremely dirty, the Americans wonder how we keep them so clean. People from Melbourne love all the benches. One thing that most people seem to agree on is that Montreal is very vibrant, yet at the same time quiet and laid-back.