Mile-End

The portrait

A village at the end of the mile

Long before the streets, this slope lived off its stone. A tannery set up shop in 1714 at what is now the corner of avenue du Mont-Royal and rue Henri-Julien. By the early 1800s, its grey limestone quarries were supplying most of Montreal's public buildings. The name Mile End is on record as early as 1810, in the lease of an inn where chemin Saint-Laurent met today's avenue du Mont-Royal, about a mile beyond the edge of Montreal's built-up suburbs; according to the City of Montréal's MEM encyclopedia, it echoes the London district of the same name.

In 1878, the village of Saint-Louis-du-Mile-End broke away from Côte-Saint-Louis with some 2,000 residents. It became the town of Saint-Louis in 1895 and, in 1905, treated itself to a city hall modelled on the châteaux of the Loire, at the corner of Saint-Laurent and Laurier. The bill came due. Deep in debt, the town was annexed by Montreal on January 1, 1910. Its city hall still stands at 5 avenue Laurier Ouest.

Rails and sewing machines

On October 16, 1876, the QMO&O railway linked Mile End to Saint-Jérôme, and a first station opened on rue Bernard in the spring of 1877. Canadian Pacific took over the line; in 1887 a second CP track joined it near rue Clark, and the factories followed the rails. On boulevard Saint-Laurent at Saint-Viateur, the Peck Building went up in 1903-1904 for the clothing maker John W. Peck & Co., lured by a 20-year tax exemption from the town of Saint-Louis. According to the plaque placed by the Amis du boulevard Saint-Laurent, it was a model factory for its day: load-bearing brick walls, high ceilings, big windows. Peck closed in 1930, but garments were made there for decades more. Further east, according to Mémoire du Mile End, large concrete buildings rose between 1964 and 1974 between the tracks, rue Maguire and avenue Casgrain, put there because the workforce walked to work. 5445 and 5455 avenue de Gaspé date from 1973-1974.

Families, then artists

In 1915, the Irish parish completed the Church of St. Michael the Archangel at Saint-Urbain and Saint-Viateur, inspired by Hagia Sophia and decorated by Guido Nincheri. Then, for some thirty years, Mile End was the heart of Jewish Montreal. On avenue Fairmount, the B'nai Jacob synagogue opened in 1921; the Collège Français bought it in 1964 and kept the Hebrew lettering on its façade. The bagels date from those years: Fairmount Bagel traces its beginnings to 1919, St-Viateur Bagel to 1957. According to the Société d'histoire du Plateau-Mont-Royal, Hasidic communities settled here after the Second World War. When many Jewish families left for the new suburbs in the 1950s, Montrealers of Portuguese, Italian and Greek origin took their place. On rue Saint-Viateur, Café Olimpico has been pulling espresso since 1970.

As the garment trade declined, the big factory floors emptied out. From the 1980s, the Peck Building rented space to artists and young professionals. According to Tourisme Montréal, the collective Godspeed You! Black Emperor and the label Constellation were born here, and Arcade Fire recorded Funeral in the neighbourhood. In 1997, Ubisoft moved into the Peck Building. Today the old factories on the east side hold studios, lofts and video game and tech offices; on avenue de Gaspé, Centre CLARK shows contemporary art in one of those big buildings.

Everyday life on Saint-Viateur

This is a neighbourhood you live on foot, between rue Saint-Viateur, avenue Fairmount, avenue Laurier Ouest and rue Bernard. Sushi Nishinokaze, on Saint-Laurent, earned a MICHELIN star in 2026, Dieu du Ciel! brews its beer on avenue Laurier Ouest, and the Drawn & Quarterly bookstore is open every day on rue Bernard. At night, La Sala Rossa and Casa del Popolo book emerging bands on Saint-Laurent, steps from Théâtre ESPACE GO, and on rue Saint-Denis the Théâtre du Rideau Vert runs its season. Families meet in Parc Lhasa-De Sela, named in 2014 for the singer who made Mile End her adopted home, while the wild meadow of the Champ des Possibles grows along the tracks.

Laurier and Mont-Royal metro stations sit just east of rue Saint-Denis, the 55 and 80 buses run up Saint-Laurent and avenue du Parc, and the Saint-Denis REV bike path follows the neighbourhood's eastern edge. Mile End suits people who want to live in a former garment factory, in a neighbourhood where Saturday morning means walking over for bagels.

Every loft has a story. In Mile End, it often begins in a garment factory, between the railway and boulevard Saint-Laurent. Our job is to help you find the one that becomes yours.