Montréal has many, many churches. So many that one of the city’s nicknames is “ville aux cent clochers” (city of a hundred bell towers). Images Montréal, a website dedicated to documenting architecture in the city, lists 437 buildings in the “Churches” category.
Walk almost any street in the city, and you will see church towers peeking out between bigger buildings, looming over row houses, or partially hidden between the trees.
Go to any point that’s slightly elevated, and all around the horizon there will be church towers.
It’s not unusual for multiple churches to be visible on an average street.
There are a dizzying variety of styles, from gothic revival to art deco, from baroque to neoclassical: Montréal’s got ’em all.
Of course, if you look closely, you might discover that some of them aren’t exactly churches. For example, this library (Bibliothèque du Plateau-Mont-Royal) could easily be mistaken for a church. You might think that the building was once a church, but it was only church-adjacent: the building once housed the Saint-Basile boarding school.
Given the historic relationships between institutions of higher learning and the church in Québec, it’s not surprising that many schools have buildings that look awfully church-like. And of course, you might expect religious schools to emphasize those ties in their architecture as well.
For a city with so many churches, one could extrapolate a very religious population. However, subsequent to the Quiet Revolution that separated church and state in Québec in the 70s, the population of the province has very rapidly secularized.
According to a 2012 Pew Research Study, regular attendance at religious services in Canada declined from 43% in 1986 to 27% in 2011 in Canada. The change is even more dramatic in la belle province, from 48% in 1986 down to 17% in 2011, and may be as low as 4% in 2022. Needless to say, the drop in church attendance leaves the city with a lot of empty churches.
Going back to that same Images Montréal site mentioned above, you can search for pictures of churches that have been demolished. At least 44 of the 437 buildings listed are gone. Walking around the city, you see that many of the remaining churches are in poor repair or even completely boarded up (we included a few pictures last year, without much comment.)
Of course, in any city as old as Montréal, there will be buildings abandoned and demolished, or converted into new things. Churches get reinvented in variety of ways. Many churches have been converted into concert halls, art galleries, meeting places, and antenna masts.
There are some remarkable stories about historical preservation, too. St. Paul’s Presbyterian Church was slated for destruction in 1930, but was physically moved across town, stone by stone (today, it has been converted into a museum of Québec’s artisans and crafts).
Wrapping this up before you get utterly sick of church and steeple pictures, I’ll note that I’ve left out many of Montréal’s most famous churches: the Notre-Dame Basilica, Saint Joseph’s Oratory, St Nicholas Russian Orthodox Cathedral, Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours Chapel, and more!