The 1990s version of downtown Montreal had a magic that’s hard to describe — but McGill Metro was our gateway to it all.

My friend Jean-François and I would get off there to spend hours just being downtown: watching movies, flipping through books at Chapters, digging through CDs at HMV, trying on clothes at The Bay, and exploring every new shopping mall that popped up.

We’d wrap it all up with laughs at Peel Pub or Carlos & Pepe’s. Most of those places are gone now — but the memories live on, carried in the echoes of footsteps on Sainte-Catherine and the rhythm of those carefree afternoons.