Visiting Montreal

Montreal’s airport (codenamed YUL) is the third-busiest airport in Canada. Direct flights are provided from a lot of major European and South American cities. The airport is located within the city on the mid-western section of the island of Montreal.

There is a dedicated bus line from the airport to the city centre. Fares are 10 CAD$. Alternatively, there are taxis and Uber.

Visas

Requirements for all visitors to Canada

• A valid and acceptable passport or travel document for your intended stay.
• At least one blank page (two to be safe) in your passport for endorsements important
• A valid visa or Electronic Travel Authorisation (eTA), if required
• Sufficient funds to pay for your day-to-day expenses during your stay
• A return or onward ticket

Countries requiring visas

Since November 10th 2016, people who don’t require visas to enter Canada still need to fill in an Electronic Travel Authorisation (eTA). Exceptions include U.S. citizens and travellers with a valid Canadian visa.

Many nationalities are exempt from requiring a visa to enter Canada. Citizens of these countries may visit Canada for up to 6 months without a visa. This includes most of Western Europe and USA.

You can find if you need a visa by visiting this website.

Visa Application process

Other attendees need to apply for a visa. Visa applications don’t need to be made in-person — there is no visa interview — they can be done by courier or online. Some countries citizens are charged fees for a visa, for others the visa is free of charge.

Sadly, the only way to open the visa form provided by the Canadian government is to use Adobe Reader. Since Adobe Reader is a proprietary tool that does not work on Linux, we recommend you use a computer running either Mac OS or Windows to fill out the form. Once the form has been filled, you can send it on your Linux machine and continue the visa application process online.

Conference attendees should apply for an ordinary tourist visitor visa. If you need an invitation letter, please send your request to [email protected] and make sure to include your full name, passport number and expiration date as well as your physical address.

If you need to state the name and the address of the institution inviting you, please use theses:

• Name: Conférence DebConf17 Montréal
• Address: 33-6640 av. Fielding Montréal (Québec) H4V1N3 Canada

Please note that this is not the address of the venue, but the registered address of the non-profit we created for DC17.

You can start the online visa application process here.