Saint-Laurent (borough)
Saint-Laurent, formerly the City of Saint-Laurent, is one of the largest
boroughs of the city of
Montreal. Population (
2001): 77,391.
The borough's mayor is Alan Desousa.
It is divided into two districts, Norman-McLaren and Côte-de-Liesse.
It's the hometown of
Raymond Bourque. the
National Hockey League Hall of Famer.
Saint-Laurent has three fire stations and two police stations, one municipal court building, one library, the former City Hall, and two indoor hockey arenas (the municipal Raymond Bourque Arena, and the commercial Bonaventure's Arena whose rinks can be hired out, among other things, for private league play.)
Saint-Laurent contains two
CÉGEPs, one English (
Vanier College) and one French (
Cégep de Saint-Laurent), showing the history of Saint-Laurent as a college town. A widely noted art museum, the Saint-Laurent Museum of Art, is located on the campus of Cégep de Saint-Laurent, along with a bowling alley and an indoor college hockey rink. With both French and English colleges, it also shows the ethnic diversity of the borough, with sizable French, Jewish, Romanian, South-Asian, East-Asian, Arab, Italian, Greek, and English communities.
Norgate shopping centre, the earliest
shopping centre in
Canada was built in Saint-Laurent in
1950, and is still operational.
Saint-Laurent has many transportation links, with two
Montreal Metro stations (
du Collège,
Côte-Vertu and the unbuilt projected
Poirier and
Val-Royal), three commuter train stations (
Bois-Franc,
du Ruisseau and
Montpellier), four autoroutes (
Autoroute 15 (Decarie Expressway and Laurentian Autoroute),
Autoroute 40 - Metropolitan Boulevard,
Autoroute 520, and
Autoroute 13), and a secondary highway (
Route 117), in addition to major urban boulevards (Marcel-Laurin Blvd., Henri-Bourassa Blvd., Cavendish Blvd., Côte-Vertu Road, Decarie Blvd., Thiemens Blvd.). The former
Cartierville Airport is no more, having been turned into a subdivision called
Bois Franc. Part of
Dorval/Trudeau Airport also lies within the territory of Saint-Laurent.
The City of Saint-Laurent or
Ville Saint-Laurent was one of the economic engines of metropolitan Montreal, which was forcibly merged into Montreal on
January 1,
2002 by the
Parti Québécois government. On
June 20,
2004, the demerger forces lost a referendum on the issue of recreating the Saint-Laurent as a city. While 75% of the turnout voted to demerge, only 28.5% of the total eligible voting population vote to demerge, falling short of the requisite 35% as set by the province.
*
Borough of Saint-Laurent*
Skyscrapers and historical buildings of Saint-Laurent on Image Montreal
