A midwinter night's dreams (Part 1)

Staying out from dusk to dawn in Montreal…for one hell of a party

Unless it’s a celestial event like last April’s total eclipse, or a historic event like Daft Punk and Rage Against The Machine co-headlining a music festival, I usually don’t plan travel more than a few months in advance. Even the best travel insurance isn’t going to cover all the disruptions of our dystopian age, and I don’t have a big budget for hitting the road. But there are exceptions, and two weeks ago, I drove to Montreal to take part in something that’s been on my calendar for practically a year. It’s unlike anything I’ve experienced before, it was probably the reason why I tested positive for COVID last week, and I have no regrets. In fact, I’m hoping to attend again in 2026, if we’ve managed to stop Trump from making deranged threats toward Canada by then.

Montreal is famous for having the kind of nightlife that inspires stories with sentences like, “As I followed instructions and removed my shirt, this girl with a glass eye handed me a Vodka Red Bull.” And as some of you may know, Montreal leans into its nightlife during late February and early March with the Montréal en Lumière festival—in which the city’s dedicated festival plaza is transformed into a winter wonderland with an ice skating trail, gourmet food tastings, a dizzying amount of neon lights, and a DJ stage that amasses an impressive crowd. But baked into the festival, there’s a hard core—a “white night” on which Montreal residents and visitors attempt to stay out and about from dusk till dawn. Over 100 cultural events (mostly free or low-cost) are offered at clubs, galleries, museums, and lofts across eight neighborhoods. The subway runs all night, with an illustrated “mystery car” roaming the tunnels along with all the regular metro trains. And if the idea of being on foot from sundown to sunrise in Montreal in the middle of the winter sounds like an act of survival, well….that’s kind of the point.

Montreal’s midwinter all-nighter, Nuit Blanche, was inspired by similar nocturnal fests that began in cities like Paris, Winnipeg, and Toronto during the early 2000s. The idea linking all of these white night events was inviting people to experience the beauty of night in the city—with the aid of artists commissioned to bring dreams to life on that special night, using the cityscape as their canvas. You might find yourself walking down an alley festooned with glow-in-the-dark jungle plants, squeezing into an old garage where someone is playing a thermain, or watching a print of Guy Maddin’s Heart Of The World projected onto the side of a building. But here’s the thing. Most white night festivals happen in the summer, which gives Montreal’s decision to hold Nuit Blanche during the coldest, darkest time of the year an extra twist of meaning. It’s not just about walking around the nighttime cityscape; it’s about exploring it together. It’s a reprieve from the lonesome nights millions spend at home during the winter—a reminder that to make it through the winter, in the fullest sense, we need each other.

Now bear in mind, I was smitten with the idea of Nuit Blanche last winter, when I first heard about the event. It sounded like good gonzo fun in a city I love, with a pinch of Shackelton seasoning. But when I pulled into Montreal on the weekend of March 1st and checked into the Hotel Zero near the festival plaza—my Nuit Blanche basecamp—I realized that I needed this event in a more spiritual way than I had anticipated. This winter has been really dark, for reasons most of you are way too familiar with by now, and I felt a powerful urge to be close to others celebrating the kinder, more colorful impulses of the human spirit, in a city that’s been positively shaped by these impulses in recent years; as evidenced by its parks and streets, its foods and elixirs, and its art.

What you’re about to read is my full account of surviving Nuit Blanche 2025. Enjoy the ride, and consider it a potential planning aide if you’d like to attend the fest next year…

5:45pm: The sun has just retired and I’m in my hotel room trying to decide how many layers is too many layers for Nuit Blanche. I’ll be alternating between 0-degree outdoor temperatures and heated venues where the presence of other humans will yield even more latent heat. I’m also not bringing a backpack because I don’t want to risk being turned away at any clubs that don’t allow such baggage. In the end, I settle for a knit sweater, a fleece vest with big pockets (for my portable phone charger—an essential for a long night in the cold), and the puffiest down jacket that I own. Oh, and a hat.

6:10pm: When you’re going to spend the entire night sauntering around a winter city, “pre-gaming” takes on a different form. You have to loosen up and fuel up for a long journey into the dark. And that means eating a hearty dinner (it won’t be your last of the night) and pairing it with the usual libations. To that end, I decided to join some fellow visiting journalists for a special event at O’Thym, a cozy BYOB bistro with a focus on Quebec ingredients like Arctic char and birch syrup. Montréal en Lumière features a gastronomie program which includes visiting chefs collaborating with Montreal chefs. Tonight, O’Thym’s Noé Lainesse has joined forces with Moonhyung Lee of Silo, which is located in London and holds the distinction of being the world’s first “zero waste” restaurant. Meaning, everything is either recycled or composted.

8:30pm: The bottle of Malbec that I brought to O’Thym is drained. We’ve just started tucking into venison paired with “winter carrots” (which are covered in snow and hay, to create a sweeter flavor) and it’s occurred to all of us that we’ve been sitting here eating, drinking, and talking for over two hours. On any other night, this might feel like letting the night pass you by. But for Nuit Blanche, it feels like a sound way of pacing ourselves. Still, I’m checking the time on my phone more frequently, because the first Nuit Blanche event that I’ve added to my schedule has begun, and it wraps at 11pm.

9:45pm: The Montréal en Lumière festival has its own app, which allows you to look at all of the events happening on Nuit Blanche and pencil them into an intinerary. Some of them end before midnight while others conclude in the small hours or at dawn. Per the advice of a local friend, I’ve avoided creating too tight and rigid a schedule. Part of Nuit Blanche is spontaneous discovery—wandering into places and happenings that weren’t on your radar before sundown. I’ve tried to split the difference by frontloading my “must see” events into the 9pm-1am window, while leaving the rest of the night more open-ended. Now we’re off to the first of those events, crowding into the metro at Beaudry station with a horde of fellow revelers that seems to swell by the minute.

10:30pm: When we approach the stairs of the Redpath Museum—McGill University’s on-campus natural history museum—the building is shrouded in shadows and looks closed. But then an LED twinkle from one of the windows gives the game away. For Nuit Blanche, the museum has turned off the lights and allowed people to come and explore the place with their own flashlights and headlamps. In the main exhibit hall, people are wandering past dinosaur skeletons and stuffed polar bears, murmuring as the beams of their lights collide with these creatures and create strange shadows on the walls of the museum; shadows that would be right at home in our dreams of what happens in a museum after dark, when the guests have gone home. If a local museum hosted something like this in Boston, where I live, I would probably become a member.

11:25pm: Some of Montreal’s best museums are helpfully clustered along Sherbrooke Street and from the Redpath, it’s only a five minute walk to the great McCord Stewart Museum of social history. And I don’t even have to venture beyond the lobby to see what the crowds have gathered for. Every Nuit Blanche has a theme and the 2025 theme is POP!—which is why the string quartert playing in the main hall are finishing up a cover of Taylor Swift’s “Love Story.” As they kick off their next pop song, “I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing” by Aerosmith, I trade glances with a couple of strangers in the crowd and we exchange knowing grins. It’s as if we’re wordlessly saying, “Yeah, I also watched Armageddon in junior high. I remember when you couldn’t escape this song. Those were the fuckin’ days, dude.” We leave it at that and wait for the next chorus.

12:15am: Walking 12 minutes from the McCord to the epicenter of Nuit Blanche at the Quartier des Spectacles (what a great name for a festival plaza space!) is my first real endurance test of the night. The wind is howling and snow is flurrying, but none of this is stopping the masses from dancing to the techno that’s thumping from the DJ stage. Lasers and spotlights are cutting through the sky, lighting up the falling snow. The ice skating loop trail near the DJ stage is packed with people gliding along the track, and the food vendors are slinging treats like fresh maple taffy (the result of pouring maple syrup onto a bed of snow and harpooning it with a popsicle stick as it hardens) and melty raclette sandwiches. And of course, to borrow a phrase from Dumb and Dumber, the beer is flowing like wine. But what’s most exhilarating about the scene at the plaza are the looks of incredulousness on people’s faces. They can’t believe they’re out here doing this. And they’re loving it. There’s laughter, there’s hollering, and there are smiles.

12:30am: I could happily stay at Quartier des Spectacles for the next few hours, but I’m approaching a crucial turning point in my night—the moment when I’ll get on the train and venture beyond the familiar hub of downtown Montreal, into less familiar haunts in quieter parts of the city that are nonetheless busting out the festivities for Nuit Blanche. In other words, the true exploratory chapter of my Nuit Blanche is about to begin. I strategically head for the Village Gourmand food tent, where visiting chefs and mixologists offer free cooking demos and tastings for festgoers throughout the week, and I pony up for my second dinner; a modest but nourishing chicken chasseur, which will be essential for sustaining my energy levels between now and sunrise. Now that we’re past midnight, a lot of Nuit Blanche events have already wrapped up. What’s still out there is going to be more intense. For the first time, I wonder if I’m up for this.

12:50am: Only one way to find out. With bellyful of roast chicken and root vegetables, I make my way toward the Place des Arts subway station to begin my three-train ride to the northside neighborhood of Villeray, where I’ve never ventured before. But before I reach the station entrance, I’m distracted by bouncy music echoing from the Goethe-Institut for German language and culture. People are spilling into the doors and I go with them, finding myself in a Eurovision karaoke night hosted by the Verdun, France based drag queen Misty Waterfalls. Library stacks have been pushed aside to make room for the crowd, the place is awash in rainbow lights, and disco balls are throwing sparkles on everyone and everything. And all of it seems to scream, the night is ours.

Or maybe it’s the other way around?

TO BE CONTINUED IN PART 2