Rue Sherbrooke
IN THE LATTER HALF of the 19th century, Montreal was one of the most important cities in the British Empire. Its traders and industrialists controlled about 70 percent of Canada’s wealth, and many built themselves fine homes on the slopes of Mont Royal in an area that became known as the Golden, or Square, Mile.
Rue Sherbrooke between Guy and University was their Main Street, and its shops, hotels, and churches were the most elegant in the country. Some of that elegance survived the modernizing bulldozers of the 1960s. Holt Renfrew, Montreal’s upscale department store, and the stately Ritz-Carlton Hotel still stand. So do two exquisite churches, the Presbyterian St. Andrew and St. Paul, and the Erskine American United at the corner of avenue du Musée, which boasts stained-glass windows by Tiffany.
Boutiques, bookstores, and galleries fill many of the rows of graystone townhouses. Millionaires not quite wealthy enough to make it into the Square Mile built graceful row homes on rues de la Montagne, Crescent, and Bishop nearby. Many of these now house trendy shops and bistros.
Farther west is the Grande Seminaire, where Montreal’s Roman Catholic archdiocese still trains its priests.
