montreal potholes

Aside from blooming flowers and playoff hockey, spring in Quebec is largely defined by one thing: potholes. And Montreal tends to dominate the conversation.

In fact, the city has become so synonymous with crumbling pavement that it has spawned its own folk hero, a landscaper named Marquize who went viral last month for filling potholes out of pocket and has since raised over $33,000 on GoFundMe to keep going.

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When Saâd Tekiout posted a viral video of himself filling a Montreal pothole on April 26, he probably didn't expect it to end with the mayor personally reaching out to him. But here we are.

Mayor Soraya Martinez Ferrada announced Wednesday that the city is expanding its pothole repair budget, and in the same breath invited Tekiout, the landscaper who became something of a folk hero after going viral for patching city streets on his own dime, to apply for one of the new manual patching contracts the city is opening up.

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Saâd Tekiout's two-man pothole filling operation is turning into something much bigger.

The Montreal landscaper who went viral last week for patching city streets on his own dime has launched a GoFundMe campaign called "On répare Montréal, rejoins le mouvement!" and the response has been swift. As of Monday morning, the campaign has raised $28,781 from 674 donors, closing in fast on its $35,000 goal.

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How bad is Montreal's pothole problem? Bad enough that one fed-up resident decided to stop waiting for the city to fix it and just do it himself.

Saâd Tekiout, a landscaping company owner who goes by "Marquize" on social media, posted a video on April 26 showing him and a friend patching a pothole on a Montreal street. Set to Cowboys Fringants music, the clip shows him opening a bag of asphalt mix, filling the hole, levelling it off, torching it and compacting the surface with a vibrating plate.

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Winter seems to finally be done with Montreal. But its departure brings the return of another season: construction.

This weekend, multiple major road closures are coming to key routes in the city, and some will last straight through until Monday morning.

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Between the endless construction zones, rising gas prices, and a sea of potholes that seem to multiply every spring, Montreal isn't exactly the most enjoyable place to own a car. And apparently, a lot of people are starting to act on that feeling.

New data from Turo's 2026 State of Car Ownership in Canada report shows that Montrealers average just 4.6 days of driving per week. That's below the national average of 5 days and well behind Vancouver's median of 5.2 days. Quebec also saw one of the steepest drops in car ownership in the country over the past year, falling eight percentage points between 2025 and 2026, settling at 79% — below the national average of 85%.

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Ask any Montreal driver what their biggest gripe with the roads is, and you'll get one answer. Not construction. Not traffic. Potholes.

Every local knows that sudden, stomach-dropping feeling that comes when your tire disappears into a crater you didn't see coming. Even Mayor Martinez Ferrada isn't immune, recently sharing a social media post about getting two flat tires on Notre-Dame Street.

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No matter who you are or what kind of car you drive, just about everybody in Montreal has to deal with the city's notoriously brutal pothole problem — and that includes the person in charge of fixing it.

Newly elected Montreal Mayor Soraya Martinez Ferrada experienced a quintessentially Montreal moment on Monday evening, February 2, when she hit two potholes on Notre-Dame Street and got two flat tires at once.

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It's no secret that Montreal is notorious for a few things. Sure, we've got bagels, poutine and Montreal-style smoked meat, but the Island is also known for its non-stop construction and poor road conditions.

For anyone who lives here, avoiding potholes is essentially an Olympic sport many of us have mastered. For those visiting, chances are your car has dipped into a deep hole at some point while driving, which was likely followed by a few not-so-nice words. But that's simply the Montreal experience. Non?

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Montreal is emerging from a successful battle with perhaps its greatest scourge: the pothole. The city is trumpeting a pothole-filling season that saw workers plug a whopping 111,000 cracks, gaps and pits on major thoroughfares — not counting work to fill holes on smaller local streets.

The operation cost $2.5 million this year. That's on top of the $880.6 million the city has earmarked for special road resurfacing efforts meant to better prevent potholes from emerging in the first place.

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Montrealers are all too familiar with poor driving conditions. I mean…it's pothole central over here, right? So when Jeff Goldvine, a Montreal-based comedian and musician, created a video showcasing the difference between driving in Montreal versus Toronto — it's safe to say he was spot on.

The 12-second video, posted across Goldvine's socials, depicts him driving in the car and talking on the phone, or in this case a bottle of Gaviscon (A+ for prop use).

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That loud clunk when you roll over a ginormous pothole is one of the most recognizable and dreaded noises for a Quebec driver. With Montreal tire change season approaching and temperatures rising, potholes are set to proliferate on city streets. CAA-Québec, which ranks the worst roads in the province, has tips on how to avoid vehicle damage when you do encounter a dip in the road during your drive.

"Driving over a pothole can cause a lot of damage to your car, starting with the tires… [It] can break the interior structure, tear the sidewall, or both," CAA-Québec spokesperson David Marcille told MTL Blog.

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