I have enough brain this morning to post this list of ice cream places in Montreal:

(As requested by cmeckhardt.)

http://www.montrealmirror.com/ARCHIVES/2003/061203/hsg7.html

My quick comments (addresses in the Mirror article, above):

Bilboquet is excellent--best of the lot, I think--and conveniently located two long blocks from Outremont Metro (Blue line). Open until midnight.

(A small selection of their flavors can be obtained from Le Glacier de la Gare, which operates out of a converted Citroen van at Mount Royal commuter rail station, but unless you're touring Montreal commuter rail I can't imagine why you'd find yourself in Anglophone suburbia. Photo to follow later.)

Meu-Meu has both fine hard ice cream in some imaginative flavors and some good dippable soft-serve. A block from Mont-Royal Metro (Orange line; not to be confused with the above commuter rail station, which is in an entirely different municipality on the outskirts, while Mont-Royal metro is in the thick of things near the St-Denis strip). Easy to get to, and also open until midnight, at least on nice days during the summer.

Roberto is an Italian cafe/restaurant as well as a gelato place. The gelato is fine Italian gelato which deserves the line that forms outside on weekend evenings. Three short and one long block from D'Iberville Metro (Blue line), up in what I guess is Villeray. Kind of out of the way but worth stopping by if you're up there.

Haven't eaten at Ripples yet, but it looked busy when we went past.

One thing that both Bilboquet and Meu-Meu do is that they offer miniature cones which are teeny-tiny, for under $2. This is excellent if you want to maximize the number of flavors you eat while minimizing the number of calories. I pretty much did this exclusively. My travel companions got real sized cones, which were priced like gourmet ice cream normally is, and which were as generously-sized as gourmet ice cream usually is.

Splitting restaurant checks.

In Montreal most restaurants are exceptionally used to splitting checks. If you enter with a party of twelve, you can specify a single check, twelve separate checks, or anything in between. They just do it. Often, they ask before they take the order.

Sometimes, if you don't think to split the check until the end, they can get a little confused, getting person A's entree on the bill with person B's appetizer, or vice versa, but they are otherwise generally very good about splitting checks in contexts where around here they get all pissy about it.

They are so good at it that it's a bit of a shock coming back after being there. I guess it's a cultural difference. In any case, if you go out eating with a large group--and at a convention I imagine you will--you should find this particular bit of restaurant culture handy.