Pointe-Saint-Charles

The portrait

History of Pointe-Saint-Charles

On the edge of the Lachine Canal, a bell used to ring at the top of a brick tower. It marked the shift change at the Belding-Corticelli mill, where silk was spun. A little further along, the Redpath refinery, the first sugar refinery in Canada, lined its warehouses along the water. The 1903 tower still rises over rue Saint-Patrick.

To the south, the Grand Trunk shops built and repaired locomotives and railcars for almost 150 years. To house the workers, many of them recruited in England, the row houses of rue de Sébastopol went up. They still line the street.

What the factories left behind

The canal closes to shipping in 1970 and the factories empty out. The walls stay: brick, often beams and concrete, and those tall windows designed for working light. The Belding-Corticelli becomes housing, then the Redpath refinery is turned into lofts, one phase at a time.

That is the material people live in today. Around the mills, the neighbourhood keeps its brick workers' houses and, on rue du Centre, two churches side by side: Saint-Gabriel for the Irish, Saint-Charles for French Canadians.

Living in Pointe-Saint-Charles

On Saturday morning, everything happens on rue du Centre. A croissant at Boulangerie Louise, set in a former credit union. Dinner at Sabayon, which holds one MICHELIN star. On rue Le Ber, Bâtiment 7, a former rail shop building taken over by residents, holds a grocery, a brewing co-op and wood and bike workshops.

Charlevoix metro station is right on rue du Centre. The Lachine Canal bike path runs along the north edge of the neighbourhood, and the Atwater Market is just across the water, over the footbridge. The Point is for people who want to live in a real factory, in a neighbourhood where you still know the baker.

Every loft has a story. In Pointe-Saint-Charles, it often begins in a silk mill, a sugar refinery or a railway shop. Our job is to help you find the one that becomes yours. Olivier Mailloux, real estate broker, and Amélie Flanagan, real estate broker, follow the lofts of Pointe-Saint-Charles closely and work with buyers and sellers across Montreal.