Saint Laurent Boulevard

Saint Laurent Boulevard, also known as Saint Lawrence Boulevard (officially in French: boulevard Saint-Laurent), is a major street in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. A commercial artery and cultural heritage site, the street runs north west–south east through the near-centre of city and is nicknamed The Main (French: La Main), which is the abbreviation for "Main Street".

The Main

Beginning at De la Commune Street at the edge of the Saint Lawrence River, it transects the Island of Montreal, passing through the boroughs of Ville-Marie, Le Plateau-Mont-Royal, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, Villeray–Saint-Michel–Parc-Extension, and Ahuntsic-Cartierville to Rue Somerville at the edge of the Rivière des Prairies – a total length of about 11.25 km (6.99 mi).

Saint Laurent Boulevard's cardinal direction, on a pseudo north–south axis strongly shifted to the west and aligned with the summer solstice's setting sun, was outlined by the Sulpicians towards the end of the 17th century. The first post-colonial landowners of the island, then preoccupied to develop a genuine urban cadastre on the Coteau Saint-Louis, built a small street, which they named Saint-Lambert, perpendicularly to Notre-Dame Street. Saint-Lambert Street is clearly identified on a plan drawn by François Dollier de Casson in 1672. In the early 18th century, when the lords of Montreal decided to develop agricultural land further north on the island, they prolonged this little street to build a King's Way exactly along the same axis and named it Chemin Saint-Laurent.

Chemin Saint-Laurent became a boulevard in 1905 and is often referred to as The Main. It serves as the city's physical division of east and west (in Montreal parlance; in reality east is more like north-northeast and west is south-southwest). Street numbers begin at Saint Lawrence and continue outward, with street names being suffixed by Ouest (West) or Est (East), depending on their orientation.