Part of Montreal's charm is that all of our walls are touching someone else's walls so you can hear their bullshit noise and screaming and feel part of that community of suffering.
Toronto, meanwhile, built all of their houses about 9 inches apart, so people can boast that they've got some room to stretch their arms in the sideyard, although not enough to get their lawnmower through.
But somewhere along the line a brilliant architect concocted these horse and buggy entrances which gave Montreal a spooky element, as residents could suddenly imagine ghostly and ghoulish figures such as on the right staring through at them.
Backyards, usually accessible by alleyway behind were now also reachable by these holes in the facade.
I lived in a draft apartment at 4129 de Bullion for a couple of years next to one of these and never fully grasped the point of it.
As for the photo on the left, the same sort of opening gives way to an entire neighbourhood of Montreal, at a place nobody seems able to pinpoint.
I'd imagine if those bullies stood under that passageway rather than in the alley, the trek to that area would be considerably more intimidating.