If you aren’t familiar with Melissa Auf der Maur, her story fits almost perfectly into the archetypal Hero’s Journey.

Auf der Maur is a photography student and bassist in Montreal when she’s asked to join Hole. She refuses the call but meets Courtney Love who becomes a sort of mentor. From there, Auf der Maur embarks upon her 1990s rock adventure of glamour, grime, addiction, grief, and Dave Grohl love. She is transformed and eventually “retires” from the music industry and public life to start a family. She reemerges with her memoir, entitled Even the Good Girls Will Cry, and on her book tour, makes a glorious return to her hometown, with her family seated in the front row.

I love these kinds of stories. They feel so epic and mythical. At her launch, held 30 March at the SAT as part of the Blue Metropolis Festival, Auf der Maur acknowledges this: “I call myself ‘Grunge Cinderella,’” she says, “because it doesn’t make sense that I was at Bifteck and a week later I was on stage at Reading Festival in front of 65,000 people.”

There’s an exciting contradiction that surrounds Montreal’s successful international cultural exports — Céline, Leonard Cohen, Arcade Fire, Grimes, Denis Villeneuve, Cirque du Soleil — which lends to their reverence and ubiquity. Montreal might be a big city, especially by Canadian standards, but it’s actually quite cozy. My friend’s new boyfriend was taught by my mother in elementary school; another friend grew up playing hockey with Sophie Nélisse; a past interview subject is currently dating someone I went on a date with; I recognize Instagram mutuals doing background work in Montreal productions; and almost everyone in Montreal has a Xavier Dolan story. (I’m waiting for mine, Xavier.)

This is reflected in our tight-knit creative industries and communities, which display remarkable resourcefulness and talent. There is gossip, rivalry, and drama, but also consistent efforts for collaboration, mutualisation, and solidarity. Discussing her parents’ adoption of Montreal and their life-long devotion to its culture, Auf der Maur tells the crowd, “I saw that life is about what you do with everyone. It’s not just your family or just your plan.”

Like in many other places, opportunities here are limited, especially for the monolingual anglophones who have long been drawn to Montreal’s cheap rent and cultural cachet, following their mass exodus in the late 20th century, along with the city’s economic dominance. There is a ceiling to what can be achieved in Quebec — lower than the Canadian ceiling which is of course lower than the seemingly non-existent ceiling of American cultural hegemony.

Canada is a small country in a big body, and Quebec is its limb that survives amputation, developing its own star system and maintaining its French. Auf der Maur fittingly writes in her memoir, “In many ways, Montreal has stayed fixed somewhere between 1942 and 1982.” At her book launch, she seems to elaborate on this thought. “There’s something that is happening here where you protect who you are,” she says, “which is obviously deeply Quebecois.” Maybe that’s why Montreal has served as a place of transition for so many.

This transition space is depicted in Chandler Levack’s new movie Mile-End Kicks, which follows Barbie Ferreira as an aspiring music critic from Toronto who spends a summer in Montreal circa 2011. Soon, Ferreira’s Grace finds herself wondering, “Why do French people hate me?” as Devon Bostick’s Archie explains that Montreal is a place for young people to be poor artists and students before leaving to get serious, grow up, and contribute to society. They don’t make efforts to learn French so they can’t work. They depend on money from their parents. They take, and take, and take, leaving as soon as the city has nothing left to offer them. They will then paint the city as quaint or exotic — from elsewhere.

I’m a native Montrealer. I grew up in Anjou and then Ahuntsic. I went to school in Rosemont, St-Leonard, and NDG. Now I live in Ville-Marie. I used to bike to work at SSENSE’s office in the historic garment district and I used to take the entire orange line to get to my job in the industrial sector near the Orange Julep, where I once chaperoned a bride at the end of the night.

My dating history was born in the Old Port and has featured dangerous post-picnic driving down Mont-Royal, trespassing into stadiums and abandoned buildings, and even a tour of the West Island. I hiked up to the Oratoire St-Joseph and visited the cloistered nuns for my confirmation. Now I visit my great-grandparents in the Mont Royal cemetery and I only go to church for drag brunch.

I grew up next to the oldest church on the island. The sounds of Friday prayer from the mosque next door have replaced the comfort of its bells. When I turned 18, I went to the Village, taking the same bus at the end of the night as I’d take in the morning to get to my internship at Maison de Radio-Canada. Time marches on.

I love Montreal deeply. I’m trying to build a life, a career, and relationships here. This has meant looking abroad for paid freelance writing opportunities, sacrificing travel to pay my rising Montreal rent, and trying not to get too attached to the Canadian, American, and French expats that surround me.

Coming-of-age narratives are largely capitalistic — they dictate constant growth: I’m already in a relatively big city so I should move to a bigger one with more opportunities to work in media or publishing.

Sometimes I resent these successful Canadian exports, bemoaning that their abandonment hinders the progression of our own cultural sectors. I wonder what would have happened if our country’s comedians didn’t leave to form the foundation of American comedy. There’s a sense of inferiority that infects Canadian culture. It creates stars who grind their way into American, European, and now Asian markets, and it nurtures a stubbornness for those determined to be successful in Canada.

In Montreal, however, there is a self-assurance that prospers thanks to our increased cultural distance. We’re outsiders and we rejoice in it. As Auf der Maur tells the crowd, “I was in Chicago when I explained Montreal to people who don’t know it. I explain that these are people in love with life. They are not working for the man. They were freelancers, and there’s a world where in Montreal, you can have a better life.”

To love Montreal is to love all its flaws and shortcomings as a big city that isn’t too big, with cultures that taunt and flirt with their divide and a transience that’s as tragic as it is thrilling.  Within its confines and embrace, you can be an artist, but you couldn’t sell your soul even if you wanted to.◼︎

The Blue Metropolis Festival runs 23-26 April 2026.