Monkland Village


Monkland Village is a neighbourhood of the Notre-Dame-de-Grâce district in the Montreal borough of Côte-des-Neiges–Notre-Dame-de-Grâce. It is located between Grand Boulevard and the Décarie Expressway/Décarie Boulevard, and between de Somerled Street and Côte-St-Antoine Road. The neighbourhood derives its name from Monkland Avenue, the commercial street at the heart of it. The Villa Maria metro station is located at the eastern end of Monkland Avenue.

Origins

Both the neighbourhood and the avenue are named after James Monk, who was the attorney general of Lower Canada, and chief justice to the court of the Queen's Bench from 1804 to 1824. This area in particular became associated with Monk due to the estate he built in 1804 known as Monklands. This estate would later become the Governor General's residence, and was later sold to the Congregation de Notre-Dame who would use the building for the Villa Maria private Catholic girls school.

Monkland Avenue

Monkland Avenue has been a commercial street since the 1930s and has gone through various highs and lows. Today the strip is transforming into a more upper-scale commercial street and is generally doing very well. It is home to many small businesses including restaurants, cafés, bars, food stores, unique boutiques and a dance school.
In the summer of 2013 the Monkland Merchants Association organized a very successful street Festival that attracted more than 90,000 people over a three-day period.
Between 2014 and 2017, Monkland Avenue boasted one of the city's largest street festivals lasting 3 days and attracts more than 250,000 attendees, over 20 food trucks and 50 independent merchants.
2015 marked the arrival of new merchants such as Café Di Mercanti, LE cheese, casa de Mateo, food detoi, bistro amerigo, and Bacaro pizza.