Zach Rosen is a writer and law student born and raised in Montreal, currently living in Ottawa. He grew up in Notre-Dame-des-Graces, and spent most of his teenage years in and around the Monkland Village. Zach and I first met in school in 2011, and he is one of the most compassionate persons I've come across.

"Sam asked me to give him a brief tour of my part of Montreal for his “My City” series. As a brief disclaimer, I want to acknowledge that it would have been impossible to show Sam all of the landmarks and staples of NDG in the brief time that we had, so I elected instead to show him the places that I love, whether they are new additions to a changing neighbourhood, or old staples that will always have a place in my heart.

Sam and I had the good fortune of meeting at Villa Maria on a warm winter day, with only a slight snowfall to keep us on our toes. As we walked west through the Monkland Village, we discussed how the neighbourhood had changed since I’d grown up, with new boutiques and upper-end restaurants popping up every day. We stopped at MELK Bar a Café for a coffee, and so I could show Sam the sort of atmosphere that local restaurants and establishments have cultivated in NDG in recent years. A relatively recent addition to Monkland’s collection of cafés, it and the nearby (and much more storied) Café Shaika stand out in contrast to the neighbourhood’s chain coffeeshops.

I hadn’t seen Sam since 2012, so we brought each other up to speed on our respective lives as we walked down the alleyway between Royal and Melrose Avenues. We passed by Lower Canada College, my old high school, as well as some of the work of NDG’s bilingual taggers and graffiti artists. Sam commented that NDG’s streets and alleys were much quieter than their counterparts downtown and in the Plateau. That serenity shows in his photos, with the snow resting still on the ground, disturbed only by the occasional residents walking their dogs, or groups of kids lugging their skates and sticks to Girouard Park for some shinny.

At Encore Books & Records, I showed Sam one of the places that most contributed to my passion for writing, where I used to leaf through old novels and poetry collections, and where I had purchased my first copy of my favourite book, Mordecai Richler’s “Solomon Gursky Was Here”. To be honest, I hadn’t paid the slightest attention to their expansive collection of records until recently, when my friend Dan began to share his love for vinyl with me. I decided to pick up a surprisingly cheap copy of Joni Mitchell’s Hejira, whose opening track “Coyote” is a longtime favourite of mine, and we headed back towards the metro (with an obligatory stop at Café Orange, the resident brunch establishment of the Westmount-adjacent part of NDG). When Sam and I parted ways, I got the impression that he had enjoyed his brief time in NDG, and would be coming back for another visit soon."

"My City" aims to portray different people's view of what makes their city special to them. Each city has its secrets. Therefore, it is this project's purpose to reveal them so that other people can take interest and seek out these locations themselves.

Côte-des-Neiges/Downtown Montreal - My City ft. James Wu & Jason Kim

Mile End (Montreal) - My City ft. Kai Park

N.D.G (Montreal) - My City ft. Zachary Rosen