What are the most worthwhile things to do in Montreal on a first visit?

The canal is the spine of a first visit because it connects two very different parts of the city at either end. Lock No. 1 sits in the Old Port, among the warehouses and quays of the historic waterfront; Lock No. 5 is out in the borough of Lachine, where the corridor opens into Lac Saint-Louis. Traveling the length of it on foot or by bike takes you past the industrial archaeology of nineteenth-century Montreal without a single ticket gate.

For anyone going by water rather than beside it, the operating details are specific. A full transit takes about three hours. Boaters should arrive at the locks at least 30 minutes before the last lockage, the floating docks are on the starboard side, and VHF channel 68 is the preferred way to reach lock staff during operating hours. Admission to the national historic site has been free for youth aged 17 and under since January 1, 2018, although lockage and mooring are charged separately from admission.

The second thread of a first visit is design. Montreal's standing as a City of Design sits within UNESCO's Creative Cities Network, which was launched in 2004 — a network that ties member cities to each other through a declared creative discipline rather than through heritage monuments. In practice that means the city's contemporary architecture, public installations and design festivals are part of the official cultural offer, not a sideline to the old town.

A million visitors a year use a 14.5-kilometer corridor, and they are not spread evenly along it — the Old Port end absorbs most of them. Starting at Lock No. 5 in Lachine and working inward reverses the usual direction of travel, which is the simplest way to have the first half of the route largely to yourself.

• Start at the far end — Lock No. 5 in Lachine is the quiet terminus; Lock No. 1 in the Old Port is the busy one.
• Allow three hours on the water — That is how long a full transit takes, and the docks are on starboard.
• Add the design layer — The city's creative-city status runs through a UNESCO network established in 2004, visible in the contemporary buildings as much as the old ones.

Admission to the site is free for under-18s but lockage and mooring are not included, so arriving by boat carries costs that arriving on foot does not. US citizens entering Canada can present a valid US passport, a passport card or a NEXUS card, but flying back into the United States from Canada requires a US passport book or another approved identification — the land and air rules differ, and a passport card that got you in will not get you home by air.

The when-to-visit answer in this group sets out the lock season and operating schedule, and the food answer covers Quebec's protected products.