Arcade Fire Best of MTL Montreal may 2022 cult mtl issue magazine print

The 2022 Best of MTL issue is here, featuring Arcade Fire!

Our May letter from the editor.

Arcade Fire Best of MTL Montreal may 2022 cult mtl issue magazine print
The 2022 Best of MTL is here!

And the city has spoken.

Over the past four months, Cult MTL readers invested in civic pride voted for their favourite Montreal things in the 10th annual Best of MTL poll.

With the upside down pandemic world that we’ve been living in these past years, this poll has served as a cheering section, a reminder, a connection to what we’ve been missing and what we’ve been gradually experiencing again after a lot of time away — so many of the things that make this city great have been absent, and have been coming back for real in recent months.

This hasn’t been an easy past year, and some have had it worse than others — something that’s important to remember as we interact with people again, and see familiar faces once again.

Here at Cult MTL, we’re grateful for our extended family, for our readers, and for the voters in this poll who took the time during the dark winter of 2021 and spring of 2022 to think about everything they love in this city. As always, and maybe more than ever, we felt it was imperative to salute the artists, promoters, organizers, reporters, restaurateurs and retailers who have kept Montreal’s heart beating, even in partial stasis.

As always, the Best of MTL poll is open and democratic, with no editorial influence or interference. We are always glad to see so many people make an event of voting via social media campaigns, and while we can’t resist sharing third-party get-out-the-vote tweets, we otherwise remain neutral during the polling period.

Ballot-stuffing is automatically weeded out by our survey software. This year there were loads of votes for comedian/radio host Julian Bernatchez, musician, comedian and social media personality Eve Parker Finley, columnist and social media personality Murphy Cooper and local label On a Roll Records (and friends) in way too many categories. Joke votes were relatively minimal but there was at least one person who took the time to vote for “healthcare workers” in nearly every category and others who chastised us for legacy categories like Best Place to Have Public Sex as irresponsible during a pandemic. Conversely, a handful of conspiracy theorists and anti-mandate types shared comments like “Montreal is a dump,” “this is a socialist gulag,” “not allowed to have fun in this prison” and “they outlawed art” across dozens of categories.

Cult MTL has been running the Best of MTL readers poll for a decade, but it bears mentioning that the survey follows in the tradition established by the city’s defunct but fondly remembered alt-weekly newspaper the Mirror. Respect.

Along with the expanded Top 10 lists in every category, our website will feature a number of Best of MTL articles through the month of May and beyond.

We thank everyone who voted and promoted the poll. Participation continues to grow every year, making the 2022 results more representative of the city than ever.

(Anglos, if you’re wondering why you don’t recognize some names in these lists, it’s because the other 70% of the population is now voting in a bilingual poll. Francos, désolé, les résultats sont unilingues.)

To all the winners: congratulations. 

More than ever, we’re proud to bring you the Best of MTL.

To view the readers poll results, please click here.