Arrival and directions to McGill and the Delta Montreal Hotel
The 2014 Annual Meeting of the Association of Ancient Historians will be hosted at McGill University, held in conjunction with the 2014 Annual General Meeting of the Classical Association of Canada. Both conferences will be held in the Arts Building, which is centrally located on Campus. All academinc panesl for the AAH conference will be held in Arts W 120. For a complete list of events, times and locations, consult the program.
McGill is located in downtown Montreal, on Rue Sherbrooke, the main street in the center of the city. The university is a short walking distance from the conference hotel, the Delta Montreal. It is also close to the McGill and Peel metro stations, the autobus 24 stops right in front of the campus, and many historic and cultural sites can be reached by foot, so it will be easy to explore the city's downtown.
Here is a printable map of the McGill University Campus [pdf], and here is an online map of the university and downtown Montreal.
For those arriving from out of town by rail the university and Delta Montreal Hotel are both about one kilometer by foot from the central train station (Gare Centrale). From the airport, one can take a taxi (approximately 30 minutes, about $40) or autobus 747, the public airport express bus. The bus costs only $9 (one way), runs 24 hours a day and leaves the airport every half an hour or so depending on the time of day, and takes 40-60 minutes to reach downtown. Stop number six is the closest to the Delta Montreal. Here is a map of the bus route and schedule.
Conference Check-in
When you arrive, if you are staying at the Delta Montreal Hotel and you registered early for the group rate, you can pick up your conference packet (nametag, program, etc) in the upper lobby of the Hotel on Thursday afternoon, 1:00 pm to 5:00 pm. After 5:00 pm you will be able to pick up your registration packet in the lobby of the Arts Building. If you are staying in other accommodations, you will be able to check-in and pick up your conference packets in the lobby of the Arts Building any time on Thursday. If your are registered for both the AAH and CAC meetings, you will be able to pick up your AAH conference packet when you check in for the CAC meeting in the lobby of the Arts Building. If you arrive after the start of the AAH conference, the check-in area will remain open all day on Friday and Saturday in the lobby of the Arts Buildng.
Dining in Montreal
Montreal is a culinary paradise, with many excellent restaurants for every budget. Naturally, the best restaurants tend to serve French food. The "hot spots" often feature less traditional and/or fusion French cuisine, and you can find some surprisingly good value at the many French bistros in town. Of course French is not the only thing on the menu, as nearly every style of world cuisine is represented in the city. A few advisory remarks. Many restos have only one or two services, and tables fill up on Friday and Saturday, so it's best to make reservations---many restaurants accept reservations online. Beware of a curious Montreal tradition, "apportez votre vin" ("bring your own wine"): several excellent restaurants still, for local historical reasons, do not carry liquor licenses, so you will have to bring your own bottles to dinner. Be sure to check before you go! Many of the best and most well-known restaurants are centered in Le Plateau neighborhood, roughly between rue St. Laurent and rue St. Denis, and interesting places can be found in the Old Port (though that area can be touristy and more expensive). There is also a vibrant resto-scene on rue Notre-Dame in the St. Henri neighborhood. The downtown surrounding campus and the hotel is not as noted for its culinary reputation, but some good restaurants can be found. Lastly, Montreal is not always very vegetarian friendly: do not expect smaller bistros with limited menus to have a non-meat option.
It would be impossible to provide a comprehensive dining guide, but listed below are a couple of the more notable restaurants plus several of the local organizer's personal favorites:
L'Express. 3927 Rus St. Denis, (514) 845-5333. French bistro, casual atmosphere, late hours, a sort of Montreal instirurion.
Leméac. 1045 Avenue Laurier Ouest, (514) 270-0999. Consistently highly rated bistro.
La Colombe. 554 Avenue Duluth Est, (514) 849-8844. French bistro, bring-your-own-wine.
Au Cinquième Peché. 4475 Rue Saint-Denis. (514) 286-0123. Superb, expensive, French nouvelle cuisine.
Le Taj. 2077 Stanley St, (514) 845-9015. Excellent Indian food, walking distance from McGill.
L'Entrecote St. Jean. 2022 Rue Peel. (514) 281-6492. They do one thing--steak-frites--and they do it well. Right near campus.
La Mer a Boire. 2049 Rue Saint-Denis. (514) 282-7448. Affordable, artisinal brewpub with great beer and upscale pub food. There are several other brewpubs in the same neighborhood, including Dieu du Ciel, Le St. Bock, and Le Cheval Blanc, though not all carry food. Closer to campus and the Delta Hotel is Les Trois Brasseurs, a chain brewpub with pretty good beer and food.
Schwartz Deli. 3895 Boulevard Saint-Laurent. (514) 842-4813. One of *the* Montreal institutions, arguably the best smoked meat sandwich in the city. Open for lunch, expect long lines.
Joe Beef. 2491 Rue Notre-Dame Ouest (514) 935-6504. Not a steak house, but one of the dining hot spots in the city, located in a funky part of town.
ChuChai. 4088 Rue Saint-Denis (514) 843-4194. A populr vegetarian restaurant. For vegetarian, consider also Crudessence, the Lola rosa Cafe (with a location near campus) and Aux Vivres (casual, vegan).
M:brgr. 2025 Drummond St. (514) 906-0408. Gourmet hamburgers, not far from McGill.
For lunch near campus, there are a few places on Sherbrooke St. and the surrounding side streets. There is a good sandwich shop and other student-oriented eateries in the University Centre (a.k.a. the Shatner Centre), on McTavish Street, and there is a decent underground food court accross from campus in the Scotia Bank building (go into the bank, walk stright to the escalators, go down, turn left). A Subway is located in the basement of the Arts Building, and there is a Tim Horton's and other fast food in the basement of the Humanities Library. For more upscale (and expensive) dining, the McCord Museum Cafe, right accross the street from McGill, is open for lunch Tuesday through Friday.
Some Classics-Related Events
The local organizers would like to call your attention to several classics-related events that are taking place during the same week as the CAC/SCÉC and AAH meetings, open to registrants of both conferences.
May 2-5: Conference on “Katábasis in the Greek Literary Tradition Tradition and Religious Thought,” hosted by the Université de Montréal (Montréal), Musée de la civilisation (Québec), and Institut d’études anciennes (Québec). For the complete program: http://katabasis.ca.
May 6-9: CAC Annual General Meeting. For information: https://www.mcgill.ca/classics/cac-aah2014/cac2014. Note: AAH registrants may attend any session of the CAC meeting on Friday, May 9 (the “overlap day” of the two conferences). Please refer to the schedule at the end of the program for the list of CAC panels on May 9.
May 6: Performance of Iliad 21-22 (in English), presented by Oimoi Productions, Thomson House, McGill University. For information on this and addiotnal performances, contact lynn.kozak [at] mcgill.ca (Lynn Kozak).
May 7: Lecture and Photo Exhibition “Imperium Romanum,” by Austrian photographer Alfred Seiland, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (open to the public).
May 8: CAC/SCÉC and AAH Joint Keynote Address and Reception. Address given by Prof. Martin Jehne.
May 8-11: AAH annual meeting.
May 8-11: Conference on ‘Coming Back to Life: Performance, Memory and Cognition in the Ancient Mediterranean,” organized by the McGill Faculty of Religious Studies and Concordia University. For information: http://coming-back-to-life.conference.mcgill.ca.
May 9: McGill Neo-Hellenic Studies Lunchtime Event: Alexandre Farnoux (Directeur de l'école française d’Athènes), Despina Lalaki (NYU), and Susan Heuck Allen (Brown), ”Saving heritage. Archeologists at the forefront of crisis in the Eastern Mediterranean, then and now,” at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 1380, rue Sherbrooke Ouest.
May 9: Public Lecture: Sarah Iles Johnston (Ohio State University), “Many (un)Happy Returns: Ancient Greek Revenants and their Modern Counterparts”
May 10: Performance “The Odyssey,” by Geordie Productions at the Centaur Theatre in Montreal. There area additional performances on May 11, 17 and 18. Click here for more information.
May 10: AAH Banquet with closing address
Points of Interest in Montreal
There is a lot to do in Montreal (when you are not at the conference, of course!), and again a comprehensive list of activities and cultural attractions would be impossible to list here. However, here are a few suggestions for those who want hit one or two of the highlights.
For those interested in local history, the McCord Museum (across the street from the McGill Univeristy downtown campus) has an interesting collection of Canadiana. The Pointe-à-Callière Montreal Museum of Archaeology and History in the Old Port offers a nice introduction to the history and prehistory of the settlement of Montreal. The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts is located a few blocks west of campus on Sherbrooke Street. Located right on campus, next to the Arts Building, is the Redpath Museum, which has a quirky collection (including some classical antiquities) in the tradition of the natural history museums. For great views of the city and to get some excercise after the reception or banquet, take a walk up the "mountain": Mount Royal, which has a lovely park, walking trails, and scenic overlooks. Farther afield but with equally spectacular views of Montreal and the entire region, check out the Olympic Tower, the tallest inclined tower in the world, about a 15 minute metro ride from the Peel Station near campus. To get something of a feel for old Montreal, walk around the Old Port neighborhood, especially around rue St. Paul and Place-Jacques-Cartier. For those interested in ecclesial architecture, Montreal boasts four minor basilicas: Basilique-Notre-Dame-Montreal (near the Old Port) and Oratoire-St.-Joseph-de-Mont-Royal (a reputed healing shrine once home to local saint and folk hero Brother André), Cathedrale-Marie-Rheine-du-Monde (within walking distance of campus, a scale replica of St. Peter's in Rome), and nearby St. Patrick's Basilica. For a completely different perspective, rue St. Catherine downtown is noted (notorious?) for its liveley and...colorful...nightlife.
Lastly, the Montreal Canadiens will be playing at home on May 6, 8, and (possibly) 12 against the Boston Bruins in the NHL playoffs, though tickets will be hard to come by.