It’s winter in Montreal. But despite the cold and dark, people bundle up and get outside. Our city is full of festivals and light. The greenhouses at Montreal Botanical Garden bustle with visitors longing for lush surroundings. Throughout the city people enjoy ice skating, sleighrides and sledding. Soupe aux pois and tart au sucre (pea soup and maple sugar pie) keep us warm and connected to nature. Also, poutine.

If you stand in Old Montreal, and you are very still and very open, you will feel the ghosts. The energy of hundreds of generations of people—First Nations, Europeans, Canadians—passing their lives where you stand. The spirits live in artifact and art, in buildings and rituals, in the food and water. And if you’re very still, very open—you’ll understand you are a ghost of the same place, but a different time.