Thank you for your interest in attending the 2026 Queer Food Conference in Montréal. This page shares information about travel to Montreal and accessibility. It is divided between accessibility and transportation information you need to know specifically for the conference and then more generally about Montréal.
If you are looking for information about LGBTQ+ restaurants, bars, cafes, venues, and businesses in Montréal, check out this page: https://www.queerfoodconference.com/p/lgbtq-montreal-info.html
Montréal Transportation and Accessibility
The website run by the Montréal tourism board is quite impressive. https://www.mtl.org/en
They have pages recommending where to sleep, places to visit, the festival schedule, and so much more. There are often queer-specific calendars added:
Hotels/Housing:
There is no official conference hotel. When deciding where to stay, proximity to a metro station can be useful (especially green and orange line stations). McGill University is on the green line (metro stop: McGill).
Language:
Montréal/ Tiohtià:ke is in the francophone province of Québec. Many people are bilingual and/or multi-lingual, especially in the service industry.
French is the official language of the city and most signs will be in french. We have our own accents in Québec and regional-specific vocabulary and slang.
Making an effort in french is appreciated. People will likely change over to english almost immediately if they detect an accent, but it's great to make the effort to speak french (or franglais!).
BIKING (including bike sharing program)
There are many places to park your bike on campus. Here is a map of the https://www.mcgill.ca/sustainability/engage/biking-mcgill/bike-parking-campus.
Since 2014, Montréal also has had an amazing bike sharing program called Bixi: https://bixi.com/en/ Bixi has become the model for bike-sharing programs around the world. There are multiple Bixi stations near McGill's campus (you can even set your google maps to show you the bixi locations).
PUBLIC TRANSIT
Montreal also has a robust public transit system: https://stm.info/en
There are unlimited day passes, unlimited weekend passes, unlimited night passes, and single use passes available. You can buy single use tickets for any of these passes at the airport and at any metro station. You can also pay with exact change on the buses. Note: the bus pass from the airport (747) is a 24 hour pass.
If you are coming from the airport, there's a STM info desk that is visible on the ground floor both from the domestic and international arrivals area. If you see signs for 747, you are in the correct place (it is very clearly indicated).
McGill University is very centrally located and very easy to reach on public transit. The McGill Station on the Green Line is the closest metro station. The airport bus 747 and many other buses drop near campus.
Not every metro station is wheelchair accessible.
CAR:
While I don't recommend driving to campus, there is parking available: https://www.mcgill.ca/transport/parking/downtown/visitors. Parking downtown can be expensive.
Conference- Specific Accessibility
University Building access (including washrooms)
The physical components of the conference will be held in the LM Trottier Building of McGill University, located at 3630 Rue University.
The wheelchair accessible entrance is on the Rue University side of the building, on the ground floor. Here is a map of the building: https://www.mcgill.ca/access-achieve/files/access-achieve/trottierbuilding.pdf.
All floors of the building are accessible via elevator (and stairs).
Every floor is equipped with a wheelchair accessible bathroom.
There are 5 All-Gender Washrooms in the building. Their room numbers are: 1040, 2040, 3040, 4040, 5040. (We call bathrooms "washrooms" in Canada.)
Virtual/ hybrid
The virtual components of the conference will happen on the Zoom webinar platform.
Closed captions will be enabled.
All panels, roundtables, and workshops will be hybrid. Panels, roundtables, and workshops in which all of the presenters are participating virtually will be livestreamed into one of our conference rooms, see the schedule for more details.
WIFI available: McGill Guest is a network that is accessible for all attendees. Eduroam is available for people with university access. https://www.mcgill.ca/it/personnes/guest-wifi
Food: See the schedule for details about our breakfasts and lunches. We aim to provide vegan and vegetarian options. There will also be gluten free options.
Alcohol: The closing party will be at Club DDs, which is a bar where people may purchase alcohol.
Space for Chest Feeding and Breast Feeding: We have several offices we can offer. Please speak to the organizers if you need space.
Childcare: While McGill does not offer childcare for conferences, we can put people into contact with one another so you can pool resources. Please email the organizers at queerfoodconference@gmail.com.
COVID-19 Measures: We will follow McGill's policy that masking is optional, but supported. We will have masks available at the registration desk for anyone who wants one. Everyone who has registered for the in-person conference will also receive the zoom links to discourage people from attending the in-person conference while ill.
Costs:
Please note that we do not have any scholarships available. We have set the registration fee at $50 CAD to make the conference as financially accessible as possible while covering the costs of hosting the conference. As travel can also be expensive, we have created the virtual option to also increase the financial accessibility of the conference. We have also created the virtual option as needing to travel to Montreal might limit the participation of people with different disabilities, people with various caregiving responsibilities, people who cannot cross the border, and/or people with scheduling conflicts.
If you are looking for the archived page for the accessibility measures we took for the 2024 conference, see: https://www.queerfoodconference.com/p/accessibility.html