The 7th Annual POP Montreal festival wrapped up on Sunday, and, as has been the habit over the past few years, the biggest star of the festival ended up being the city. POP Montreal is known for juxtaposing pop shows with unconventional urban spaces, and as a result it's a great way of discovering new parts of the city. As part of the effort to limit the ground festivalgoers need to cover to go from show to show, each year festival organizers dig deeper into unexpected locations to maximize venue use. In the past, places like the Ukrainian Federation and l'Eglise St. Jean Baptiste have been introduced to a whole new audience through POP. Here are my top spaces discovered this year at POP Montreal: 1) Cinema L'Amour This gorgeous former Yiddish theater on St. Laurent and Duluth is now a Porn cinema, and two separate shows in this year's POP utilized the space, although only one used the...ahem...functionality of the space as it currently exists (I'll give you a hint: it was called PornPop). If you're not squeamish, this theatre is definitely worth a look.

Montreal mayor Gerald Tremblay and Toronto mayor David Miller held a press conference at Montreal City Hall this morning to repeat their demands for greater federal support in the managing of Montreal, Toronto, and cities across Canada. In a federal election campaign with no dominant issue, the mayors hope to draw attention to the national parties' lack of engagement with issues facing Canadian cities. Unlike past demands from the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) that have focused on specific proposals, such as devoting a portion of GST revenues to cities, Tremblay and Miller stressed that what is needed now is a willingness to engage in a real partnership rather than just more piecemeal action. In fact, the rhetoric of both mayors painted the lack of funding for cities as an urgent, non-partisan issue of national importance. The municipal model, they say, is broken.