If you are looking for an airport backdrop for a movie set in the 1970s, film your actors walking to Gate 46 in Dorval (Montréal-Pierre Elliott Trudeau International) airport. It’s like taking a time machine 30 years into the past.

The ancient tiles, the poor signage, the shoddy Departures monitors. There are no up-to-date food vendors. Go hungry or get a chocolate bar from the machine. It’s crowded. It’s depressing. It’s 1975.

Why don’t the taxpayers of Canada all chip in to build a modern airport for Montreal, Quebec?

… Oh, right. We already bought Mirabel airport in 1975 one of the great White Elephants of all time.

Surprisingly, Montreal is one of the few airports in the world that is prepared to handle the new doubledecker, 853-passenger Superjumbo Airbus A380.

» next travelogue post on this trip – better safe than sorry