Hochelaga-Maisonneuve

The portrait

Two towns by the river

Along rue Notre-Dame, the old chemin du Roy, Hochelaga was first a row of farms running down to the St. Lawrence. The village was incorporated in 1870, and the factories came almost at once: between 1871 and 1881, the V. Hudon cotton mill set up by the water, followed by other manufacturers. According to the neighbourhood's Atelier d'histoire, it was mostly women who kept the mill's looms running. Unable to pay for its sewers, water and streets, the village asked to be annexed by Montreal in 1883. It was the first in Montreal's long series of annexations.

East of avenue Bourbonnière, the big landowners refused to follow. In December 1883 they founded Maisonneuve, a town built from scratch by land developers, most of them French-speaking. Cheap land, tax exemptions, subsidies: industry poured in, and the workers came with it. From barely 350 residents at its founding, Maisonneuve grew to some 18,000 by 1911, living in three-storey brick and stone plexes along tree-lined streets.

The Pittsburgh of Canada

In the early 20th century, Maisonneuve became the second-largest industrial town in Quebec and the fifth in Canada, proud enough to call itself "the Pittsburgh of Canada." It made shoes, textiles, biscuits, candy, cast iron and ships. On the river, St. Lawrence Sugar opened what was then the largest sugar refinery in the country in 1887; it still runs today under the Lantic name. On rue Ontario at rue Viau, the Viau biscuit company built its factory in 1906 and launched the Whippet in 1927. At the eastern end of Maisonneuve, Charles-Théodore Viau had bought a large estate back in 1886, Viauville, where he required cut-stone façades and two-storey houses. In 1911, Canadian Vickers founded a shipyard in Maisonneuve that made it one of Canada's major shipbuilding centres.

In 1909, a council led by Mayor Alexandre Michaud decided to think big. With alderman Oscar Dufresne and his brother Marius, the town engineer, it drew on the City Beautiful movement and gave Maisonneuve the largest concentration of Beaux-Arts public buildings in Montreal: a city hall inaugurated in 1912, the Maisonneuve market in 1914 with Alfred Laliberté's La Fermière fountain, the Letourneux fire station, and the public bath on avenue Morgan, opened in 1916. The town even bought a huge tract of land to the north for a park and dreamed of hosting a world's fair in 1917. The dream stayed on paper. Ruined by its grand projects and weakened by the war, Maisonneuve was annexed by Montreal on February 9, 1918. Its buildings stayed: the Ancienne-Cité-de-Maisonneuve heritage site was classified on March 3, 2022.

The neighbourhood people call Hochelag

Over the 20th century, the big factories closed one after another; the Viau biscuit plant left rue Ontario in 2004. In 1976, the Olympic Park changed the skyline: Roger Taillibert's Stadium and its tower, the tallest inclined tower in the world, now rise over rue Sherbrooke. For a long time, Hochelaga-Maisonneuve carried a reputation as a poor, French-speaking, working-class district. Then people gave it a trendy nickname, "Hochelag," a way of turning the page without forgetting where it came from. The working-class pride and the community networks are still here; on place des Tisserandes, in front of the Nativité church, the neighbourhood honours the women who worked in its textile mills. What has changed is the street: new cafés, workshops, and families settling in among the brick plexes and the old industrial buildings.

Everyday life on rue Ontario

Life here happens on rue Ontario, the Promenade Ontario, from rue Darling to boulevard Pie-IX, and on rue Sainte-Catherine Est. You buy your bread at Arhoma on place Simon-Valois, your vegetables at the Maisonneuve market, your chocolate at Chocolaga. On rue Ontario, Hélicoptère, selected by the MICHELIN Guide in 2026, cooks with seasonal vegetables, and its neighbour Copilote pours Quebec-made cocktails. In the evening, Théâtre Denise-Pelletier stages plays across from Parc Morgan, the Maison de la culture Maisonneuve offers free shows and exhibitions, and the Fondation Guido Molinari shows contemporary art in the old bank that was the painter's studio. In the summer of 2026, rue Ontario went car-free for nearly a kilometre.

The Olympic Park is the backyard: the Biodôme, the Planetarium, the CF Montréal's Stade Saputo, the skatepark at the foot of the Tower, and the Morgan trail leading to Parc Maisonneuve and, just to the north, the Botanical Garden. The green line serves the neighbourhood at Préfontaine, Joliette, Pie-IX and Viau stations, and the Pie-IX rapid bus line heads north from Pie-IX metro. Hochelaga-Maisonneuve suits people who want a loft in a former industrial building, with a public market, a theatre and an Olympic stadium within walking distance.

Every loft has a story. In Hochelaga-Maisonneuve, it often begins in the old Pittsburgh of Canada, between a brick factory and rue Ontario. Our job is to help you find the one that becomes yours.