The city unveiled the Esplanade Jean‑Doré on Tuesday, ten years after the death of the man who was Montreal Citizens’ Movement mayor from 1986 to 1994. It’s a sort of linear park on Robert‑Bourassa, between Ottawa and William.
(That location is not Griffintown, but what is it?)
Hydro-Quebec has bought the Miséricorde hospital situated between René‑Lévesque, St‑Hubert, St‑André and La Gauchetière, where it hopes to have a new substation operational by 2034.
The location was sold by Santé Québec to a real estate developer for $8.5 million earlier this year, but there’s no mention of how much Hydro has paid to get it back into public hands.
There was already a big housing project development approved there very recently, probably what caused that sale. Maybe that can be partially saved? Anyway, glad we saved that tiny green space next to a busy road, major metro station and university!
I’m honestly surprised. I thought this was a negotiating tactic to make the original site seem more attractive.
So now we lose hundreds of units of future housing, plus the community and creative space that was conditional on the site’s rezoning. At least that empty patch of grass will be saved!
Projet is floating an idea we’ve seen mentioned but not formally proposed till now: lower transit fares for people earning less than $30,000 per year.
Andrew Lutfy, owner of Royalmount, tries to put a good face on how the mall is doing, one year after its opening, in a Gazette article not far off an advertorial in tone.
I went to Royalmount on Sunday for the first time. What I found was not what I had expected. There were plenty of shoppers around; it wasn’t jammed, but it was somewhat busy. Also, there were plenty of normal stores like H&M, Sports Experts, UniQlo, etc., so the now-boring joke about people taking the Metro to buy their Gucci bag just falls flat.
The food area is nice, like a better-lit TimeOut market with a few nice sit-down restaurants as well as the market section. The outdoor spaces are really nice too, and they were quite busy with people sitting and sipping coffees and cocktails and whatnot. Most notably, the food area and the food places outside are NOT the usual food court chain operations. I saw Sammi & Soupe dumplings, Tommy Café, Ca Lem ice cream, Ganadara (Korean), and others.
As malls go, it’s a really nice mall. I’d rather shop there than at the Dix30 if shopping were needing to be done (it was needed on Sunday). Dix30 is too spread out and like a weird fake city owned by a shopping mall, whereas Royalmount is just a mall with a nice outdoor space. Once you’re there, you’re there, no lugging your stuff outside in the rain or snow for hundreds of metres to get to the store that’s way TF over there; it’s a mall that runs in a loop, so it’s compact and convenient.
Also: the indoor parking area literally has a bike path running through it. https://blork.org/pix/RoyalMount-bike-lane.jpeg
I know they originally said that parking was paid. I saw that they had an Asian market this weekend, but it appeared to be the same one that they had at T&T but with a door charge. The one at T&T sucked. The vendors were expensive and there way no way to tell if what they were trying to sell was good or not.
Anyway, it’s way on the other side of town and a royal pain to get to. And no where for reasonable groceries. So, I’ll skip it.
The first three or four hours is free in the underground parking. There’s plenty of open-air parking, which I assume is free.
Getting there by car is weird because you have to go through the spaghetti of the Decarie circle and negotiate some unexpected side lanes and whatnot. Even using Waze I took a wrong lane and had to do a go-around. Getting there by Metro, on the other hand is easy; just go to Station de-la-Savanne and pop across the passerelle and you’re there.
I expect this will mainly serve people in TMR, NDG, CdN, and VSL, and in particular people who don’t hate malls. It’s not for everyone.
I think outdoor parking is paid as well. Accessing it from the east or the south isn’t too bad by car, you just take de la Savane/Royalmount. I’ve been a couple of times for back to school stuff, and would agree with Blork. It’s a perfectly nice mall. Should kill off Rockland quickly enough.
I went there once, it’s fine. A mall that’s easily accessible by metro. Obviously downtown is more convenient, as is Alexis Nihon, but it’s a shorter walk than to Angrignon and similar to Place Versailles. For people in that area it’s reasonable, but locally it’ll have to compete with Décarie Square, Plaza CdN, Marché Central and Place Vertu, plus Fairview down the road. So it really needs to be a destination.
I haven’t been yet but their choice of food and beverage tenants is pretty savvy. As Blork mentioned, the emphasis is on local places, fairly trendy ones at that, as opposed to national or international chains. Most of the people I know who go to Royalmount go there to eat.
I’m sure the Uniqlo is a big draw too. It’s hugely popular wherever it is so it must drive a lot of traffic.
Outdoor parking is paid, and they have attendants to handle the influx/ problems with machines.
@DeWolf the Uniqlo is pretty small compared to the stores in Laval and downtown, though I agree it’s likely a draw. H&M too. The Sports Experts is huge, replacing the big one at Rockland, I think.
The education system in Quebec is sued a lot, so has run up a bill of $100 million in lawyers’ fees over ten years.
This is a serious problem in many places. The Los Angeles school system, for example, is on the verge of bankruptcy because of lawsuit payouts, because where’s the money going to come from? People don’t like their taxes raised. Legal liabilities, actual or potential, are raising the cost of other public services as well. And yet, you can’t make these agencies immune to lawsuits. I don’t have a solution, but if one isn’t found I fear for the future of (what’s left of) the social democratic state.
The federal government offered Quebec $6.64 million to address racism in court judgements, but Quebec has turned it down because there is, of course, no systemic racism in Quebec.
Joey 13:54 on 2025-09-02 Permalink
Used to be called the cite de la multimedia, no?
MarcG 13:56 on 2025-09-02 Permalink
According to the official city borough map it’s half Ville-Marie and half Sud-Ouest.
MarcG 14:04 on 2025-09-02 Permalink
Are ‘neighbourhoods’ like Griffintown in any way political or are they cultural denominations?
CE 15:11 on 2025-09-02 Permalink
Only arrondissements have fixed political borders. The neighbourhoods within are cultural, in-flux, and change depending on who you ask. There will be maps that will break up the arrondissements into different neighbourhoods but aren’t in any way official (and often please nobody because they might be designed to evenly break up a borough into equal parts rather than show the location of a neighbourhood).
Some neighbourhoods have stronger borders than others. Parc-Ex is a good example with all four sides being bordered by major roads or railroad tracks (that doesn’t stop real estate developers from trying to call the section south of Jean-Talon Mile-Ex though). Others are so well established that most of their borders are pretty fixed (the various neighbourhoods of the Sud-Ouest borough are good examples). Some neighbourhoods really depend on who you ask (does Mile End include the area east of St-Laurent? Where is its southern border?).
Some neighbourhoods are fading away. I believe that parts of the Plateau borough used to have very distinctive neighbourhoods, likely based on Catholic parishes, which are now merging and transforming. Most people in the Plateau outside of Mile End and the McGill Ghetto/Milton-Parc will tell you they simply live in the Plateau despite it being a huge and diverse area. Nobody in the Sud-Ouest would do that, it’s always Saint-Henri or Ville-Émard, etc.
All that to say, when I lived in Griffintown many years ago before the condos started popping up, we never would have considered anything east of the Bonaventure to be Griffintown. Now that it’s a fashionable area, what used to be called the “Cité du Multimédia” (a name doomed from the start) is often being called “Griffintown,” especially now that people actually live in that area.
Nicholas 15:16 on 2025-09-02 Permalink
It looks like historically that was part of Griffintown. This paper puts the original border of Griffintown at McGill Street, and the border of St Ann’s (sometimes Anne’s) Ward, which comprised Griffintown and easter Point St Charles, also ran down McGill St according to this map. I’d guess the train line and highway made it reasonable to reassign those few blocks to the east out of Griffintown, especially with the borough border now on University. Google Maps suggests Cité Multimédia, which sounds right. I also discovered a neighbourhood called Little Dublin, but can’t find a map or more than general description than what’s linked from Wikipedia; it would make sense it overlapped with the very Irish Griffintown, but clearly that wasn’t the only Irish neighbourhood in central Montreal!
Nicholas 15:24 on 2025-09-02 Permalink
CE, I’ve read the same about the Plateau: it was based on the parishes, and people used that to describe where they lived. There were then villages, of Coteau-Saint-Louis, Saint-Jean-Baptiste Saint-Louis-du-Mile-End and DeLorimier, but even after annexation the old names stuck. The recently refurbished fire station on eastern Mount Royal Avenue was the DeLorimier town hall, and there’s a nice display on it out front.
And as for the Sud-Ouest, one area no longer used is Sainte-Cunégonde, a parish then a town, but very small. The church is still there, and down the block is the old city hall, now the library, with departments chiseled on the stone outside facing the park.
Kate 15:31 on 2025-09-02 Permalink
That’s true about the Plateau. In the 1940s and 50s, my father lived at several addresses from Hochelaga to the eastern Plateau to Mile End but he did not think about the areas as having those names. He would’ve described it as “when we went to St Aloysius” or St Dominic’s or St Mike’s.
Whereas, my mom, who grew up in Point St Charles, was categorical about being from the Point, and she could explain precisely where the boundaries lay between the Point, St Henri, Griffintown and Goose Village.
St Aloysius does not exist any more, but there’s a small park in Hochelaga named after it. St Dominic’s was never completed, but the church hall that was all they were able to build has also been taken down – there’s a big community garden there now, at Gilford and de Lorimier. But St Mike’s still looms over St‑Viateur at St‑Urbain.
As I recall, nobody seems to know where the boundary is between Côte St‑Paul and Ville‑Émard, and not having lived in either, I’m not able to guess.
DeWolf 17:04 on 2025-09-02 Permalink
Historically that area was called the Faubourg des Récollets.
Neighbourhood names come and go, it really depends on the era. Mile End basically died out as a name for most of the 20th century and was only revived by the first-wave gentrifiers in the 80s.
Toronto has a lot of very specific micro-neighbourhoods compared to Montreal and I wonder if that reflects the influence of the property market.Montreal has always been more of a renters’ city which means there is less of an impulse to brand every little corner for increased marketability.
CE 17:23 on 2025-09-02 Permalink
I thought there was a “Faubourg de” name for that area but couldn’t remember it!
I always assumed that Monk was the border between Ville Émard and Côte-Saint-Paul but anyone would be excused for thinking it’s where the grid changes direction. Maybe that area between Monk and Hadley is a bit of a grey zone.
I wish the Plateau had more mini-neighbourhoods like other areas. It would be fun to have that social cohesion that comes from having a name to rally around. People in Mile End are often very proud of their hood. Some cities have extremely tiny neighbourhoods with very distinct identities. Baltimore for example has nearly 300.
The NYT made a map of New York where they asked residents to give the borders of their neighbourhoods. The result was a very interesting map where some borders were very defined and others bled into each other meaning some areas could be considered to be 2 or 3 neighbourhoods depending on who you ask!
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/10/29/upshot/new-york-neighborhood-guide.html
Bert 17:24 on 2025-09-02 Permalink
Wiki has what seems to be a reasonable border for each. Click on the map in the right side-bar. You can then jump to other neighbourhoods. I was quite surprised to see Angrignon park included. Of course this is Wiki, so get your salt-shakers out.
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ville-%C3%89mard
Orr 17:25 on 2025-09-02 Permalink
We could rename it Bourassaville?
DeWolf 18:37 on 2025-09-02 Permalink
Around me, there’s a group of local residents that banded together to form something called la Petite Plaza. They receive some public funding to do various gardening activities and to build street furniture, that sort of thing. I really like the name because it helps define the kind of in-between area around the Plaza St-Hubert — basically Bellechasse to Jean-Talon, Drolet to Christophe-Colombe. It’s definitely not Little Italy, but it also doesn’t feel like the rest of the Petite-Patrie, because it’s so much busier and more commercial.
A lot of people resent the name Mile-Ex because it feels like gentrification, but I like it. It makes sense. It’s certainly more expressive than Marconi-Alexandra. It’s also worth pointing out that it wasn’t coined by property brokers, it was taken from the name of a (now defunct) restaurant on Jeanne-Mance.
Another historic neighbourhood name that is making a comeback because of local activism (and gentrification) is Youville. It was historically part of Villeray but it was cut off by the construction of the 40. It’s a quirky little area that definitely has a distinct feel compared to both Villeray and Ahuntsic.
DeWolf 18:44 on 2025-09-02 Permalink
Oh and another neighbourhood name being revived: the Bronx. This is the older part of LaSalle immediately west of Verdun, on the other side of the Douglas. It was a somewhat anglo area historically and it’s not clear why people called it the Bronx, but it stuck and it’s still reflected in the names of a lot of the local businesses. Another name for the area emerged at some point, the Village des Rapides, which is cute. Now they both have quasi-official status:
https://montreal.ca/actualites/une-nouvelle-image-de-marque-pour-le-village-des-rapides-le-bronx-lasalle-90085
Kate 19:49 on 2025-09-02 Permalink
We’ve discussed Bronx here before.
There was also a part of Lachine called Dixie. There’s still a park by that name. I have a very old photo somewhere of some relatives and written on it are their names and “at Dixie”. But I don’t know the history of that name either.
DeWolf 19:58 on 2025-09-02 Permalink
That’s very interesting. I wonder if people still call it Dixie. It’s certainly a distinct neighbourhood. Everything west of 32nd Avenue feels more like Dorval than Lachine.
Nicholas 23:51 on 2025-09-02 Permalink
A story about a milestone that Kate linked to just a few posts ago had a comment mentioning one milestone on Lakeshore in Dorval that was 11 miles from downtown, and there was previously one at 10 miles, where QAA was then and Collège Sainte-Anne is now, that led to the name Dixie (10 for dix). There is the park Kate mentions and there was also a Dixie train station, and if you look out at the river you can see Dixie Island. Turns out it was actually a village. There are a bunch of insurance maps including one of the island, one of Dixie and one of the Longue Pointe Lunatic Asylum. Plus lots of towns you know and don’t. Fagstein also had a trivia about it, with lots of interesting comments.
Ian 13:48 on 2025-09-04 Permalink
Sainte Cunegonde got absorbed into Little Burgundy but was a town long enough to have its own post office/jail/library/city hall. Just a library by the time i lived up the street circa 2001
Kate 17:18 on 2025-09-27 Permalink
Nicholas, I never thanked you for the data on Dixie and am doing so now.