With the 1st World Outgames scheduled to coincide with Montreal’s Pride this summer, there’s sure to be more than the usual assortment of extracurricular activities in a city already bursting at the seams. Don Bapst reports on Montreal, the gay sex – and marriage – capital of North America.

Sitting on the rooftop terrace of one of the many multileveled bars in Montreal’s “village,” the city doesn’t look like much. If you let your eyes roam the length of rue Sainte-Catherine, the gay district’s long, central thoroughfare, you’ll find the architecture harsh and gray. There are few landmark-level highlights to speak of and precious few sights per se. And yet you’re in Montreal, cheri, the largest French-speaking city on the planet after Paris, so you’re not only having a fabulous time but are already calculating the logistics of an extended stay.

Was his name Pierre or Jean-François? Perhaps after a week of back-to-back parties, it’s all a bit of a blur, but you’re sure that he proposed to you and seemed to mean it. And with the sun on your forehead, the Canadian icewine in your glass and the French language spoken all around you, you can’t think of a good reason to say no. Besides, though the city may look a bit like a gruff industrial suburb of Paris with a disproportionately large number of queens, you’re actually in Canada, where it’s legally possible to say yes. And, just for the record, the province of Quebec already offered its citizens the right to form same-sex domestic partnerships (with most of the same rights afforded to hetero couples) since well before Canada passed the same-sex marriage law, while a whopping 70-percent majority of Quebec’s population has been in favor of legalizing same-sex unions for at least as long.

But before you accept any proposals, you’ve got another T-dance to get to. Sigh. For a city that’s only a fraction the size of New York or Paris – there are only 3.5 million people in the entire metro area and less than 2 million in the city proper – Montreal has a hell of a lot of gay stuff going on even in the deadest seasons. Consider the annual Black and Blue circuit party in October, the largest all-night multimedia show and dance event in one single indoor venue in the world. It’s just one of the almost bimonthly parties organized by the Bad Boys Club of Montreal, one of the most successful AIDS fund-raising foundations in the world. These garçons may be mauvais, but they know how to throw a party or two, raising well over $1 million in donations and bringing an estimated $400 million in tourism revenue to the city. Consider the foundation’s Bal des Boys New Year’s Eve celebration, their Red Weekend in February, the Hot & Dry Weekend in May and Twist in July, which is a series of parties that cap off the city’s annual Divers/Cité Pride week, an event that already attracts more annual spectators than the parade Quebec throws on its own national holiday. Part of the credit goes to the Quebec government itself. Back in the early 1990s, its tourism board was the first in the world to implement a comprehensive advertising campaign to reach the gay travel market.

Anyway, this summer there are sure to be more than the usual number of glow-stick wielding dreamboys on the dance floor, and many of them will be jocks with accents. From July 29 to Aug. 5, an estimated 16,000 queer athletes from around the planet and many tens of thousands of spectators will invade the city for Outgames, a week of athletic competition, cultural events, parties and even an international conference on GLBT issues. All that in synch with the regular week of Pride parties, some organized by BBCM, others planned by the Divers/Cité Pride committee, and still others thrown by various organizations at different venues. If you stay really focused and manage to keep track of all the flyers and schedules that will be papering the entire village, you may manage to get to about a third of what’s going on that week.

So maybe it’s best to start with the old standbys. You know, pretend that this whole athletic gay invasion isn’t about to descend upon the city like a well-behaved and impeccably accessorized Katrina. Well, frankly, cheri, you’re still going to have your date card full, so wear your flats.

The obvious place to start an exploration of gay Montreal is on the rue Sainte-Catherine, just a comfortable walk directly east from the city center (where, incidentally, the central train station and the bulk of the city’s accommodation options are clustered). Between the rues Berri and Papineau, the street is simply chock full of queer haunts. In fact, there are precious few in town that lie off this well-beaten path, so it’s foolproof. And yet, despite such an obvious clustering of gay culture, with the rainbow-clad Beaudry metro stop at its epicenter, there’s an absence of that ghetto feeling you might experience in other cities with such a self-contained gay district.

For starters, there’s a laissez-faire esprit left behind by the French, combined with an earnest North American politically correct sensibility. It’s a best-of-both-worlds situation in which you may be asked but don’t have to tell – unless you want to, and then you can shout it to the sky. It’s a society of acceptance rather than tolerance, a place where… well, better to see for yourself.

Pop into one of the many full-frontal strip clubs the city is revered for: Adonis, Campus, Stock Bar, Taboo. Or check out one of the city’s 15 – count ’em, 15 – saunas. These venues aren’t tucked away in dark alleys or hidden behind nondescript façades, they’re right out there in plain daylight for all the world to see. If you’re seen ducking into one of them, traffic won’t screech to a halt and passersby won’t shoot you a knowing look. In fact, the allure of these venues (in both their straight and gay manifestations) is touted openly in official tourist guides. And, unlike in New York and San Francisco (North America’s former leading gay holiday capitals) where shoving public sex into near obscurity seems to have diminished the supply of free condoms that once cluttered bars in those cities, safe-sex messages and materials are as omnipresent in Montreal as openly gay men worth employing them on.

But no sense rushing things. Start with the cafés and restaurants. The Second Cup near the Beaudry metro station is not only the most obvious place to see and be seen any afternoon in summer before the daily cinq-à-sept (5:00 to 7:00 p.m. happy hour), the popular café is at the epicenter of the village. Curiously, it has managed to defy strict laws governing signage in the province, which dictate that the French language must occupy at least twice as much space on storefronts as other language(s), making it a good reference point for the linguistically challenged.

Oh, but don’t worry if you don’t speak French. Though Francophone Canadians have taken some serious steps to defend their language in the province of Quebec and may come to blows with Anglophone Canadians who’ve never bothered to learn the nation’s other official language, foreigners are generally exempt from the whole debate, and most Quebecois, particularly Montrealers, speak fluent English. Take Celine. Just don’t say you like her English songs better. In fact, don’t even ask if they have her English songs at the outrageously popular karaoke nights at the deliciously divey Club Date. The diva’s removal to Las Vegas where she plays near her Cirque du Soleil compatriots, you see, is still a bit of a sore spot.

Dion aside, music in the gay village is the standard mix of international pop and dance with the odd French tube thrown in for local color. Nearly every bar has at least one dance floor and most have several levels, whether it’s the hugely popular Sky bar with its swank, modern décor, the patchwork Bourbon restaurant/hotel/dance complex with its multiple terraces, or the dark and cruisey Le Stud at the eastern end of the strip. Though there’s a leather bar (Aigle Noir, or Black Eagle), a drag bar (Mado) and a bar catering to nearly every sub-sector of the gay world, you’ll find the difference between the clientele from one to the next to be far more subtle than anything you’ll see in, say, London or New York.

Take Le Parking, for example, where the top level features house, trance and techno in a sparse modern space with über-acoustics in mind, and the basement serves up old ’80s faves in a construction/garage worker setting evocative of leather daddies on the prowl. In another city, these two spaces would attract two totally different crowds. But here the clubs are joined at the hip and the crowds are free-flowing. The same, by the way, goes for the saunas, though the ones clustered along the strip (GI Joe, Oasis, Centre-Ville) are smaller and more competitive, while the ones a bit further out (le 456, le 5108, Sauna du Plateau) tend to be roomier and less congested.

Known by the French as a ville bum (or bum city), Montreal is easy that way – like a grungey kid who gets along with everyone. He’d be cuter with a nice haircut and a new wardrobe. But then he starts making out with you and you realize you don’t care about the do and the shirt. In fact, he’s just great like that.

Besides, he’s a cheap date. Consider the plethora of reasonable gourmet restaurants of an international variety every bit as eclectic as that found in much larger cities. Those bearing the sign “apportez votre vin” allow you to bring your own wine, which you can pick up at a nearby dépanneur (convenience store) or a SAQ (the government-regulated liquor stores that have made their monopoly into law). Even cheaper are the Montreal delicacies of smoked deli meats, bagels (in a thin model that differs sharply from the dense New York variety) and poutine (greasy fries covered in brown gravy and cheese curds – the ultimate post-club hangover cure).

Even the city’s attractions are marvelously understated. Besides Vieux Montreal, the city’s historic district on the edge of the Saint-Lawrence River with its 18th and 19th century buildings and churches and its Parisian-style cafés, there is a smattering of decent museums around town, as well as a massive botanical garden and biodome at the base of the Olympic Stadium, which has become the most immediately recognizable landmark for both the city and the Outgames. (Be sure to ride to the top of the angled tower between sporting events for spectacular views of the city.)

But the real sights are best discovered by roaming around on foot, along the backstreets that no tourist map seems to capture completely. Check out the residential district of the Plateau to the north of the village, where the homes wear their colorful spiraling staircases on their façades, a testament to a time when heating stairs was a luxury poorer Franco-Catholic families (who tended to have more than 10 kids to a household) could hardly afford. More imposing (if somewhat sterile) is the predominantly Scottish-influenced architecture of the rich Anglo-Protestant district of Westmount, just west of Mont Royal, that “mountain” that rises up ever so slightly in the midst of the otherwise pancake-flat city.

Meanwhile, the shops and restaurants in the Quartier Latin, along rues Laurent and Saint Denis, range from granola-chic to haute-mode the further north you go, until you suddenly step back in time to Petite Italie, where you can sample Canadian-Italian fare in an intimate setting after touring the Marché Jean-Talon, one of the largest traditional outdoor markets in North America. To the southwest, the extensive bakery at the Marché Atwater is one of the best places in town to enjoy a café-au-lait. You can also lounge around Parc La Fontaine near the village or on the little beach that sprawls along the base of the futuristic casino on one of the little islands in the center of the St. Lawrence River that share their own metro station. Or you can be dunked into the raging waters of the same river on one of the adventure excursions that embark regularly from the quays of Old Montreal. But that, like any activity in Montreal, is purely optional. This is, after all, a place where it’s best to lose the agenda in favor of the moment.

However, it would be nice if you made the time for at least a day trip to the fortified city of Quebec, a three-hour train ride to the north, as it’s the first North American city to make UNESCO’s World Heritage list and is simply breathtaking with its Canadian railroad Gothic buildings dotting the cobblestone streets of its historic heart. Plus, you’re a lot more likely to meet a real Quebecois lumberjack far from the bustle of the gay center of the province, but then that’s the subject of another article.

And, anyway, you are engaged to be married to Jean… Jean-Claude? Jean-Philippe? Well, maybe you’ll have to come back again and get to know him a little better first. During Black and Blue, perhaps?