How Montreal got its Little Italy
A century-long story of how a neighbourhood grew from railroad workers to family legacies everywhere you look today.
Daniel Bromberg
A timeless street corner scene from Montreal's Little Italy on January 19, 1969. | Photograph: Antoine Desilets / La PresseThe story of how the Italian community settled in Montreal doesn’t start with a corner café with a gleaming La Marzocco machine in the window.
Rather, it begins generations ago, in the 18th century, when a handful of northern Italians showed up as soldiers, traders, and artisans. By the late 1800s, Southern Italian men—mostly young, mostly poor, and mostly on their own—started arriving in waves, chasing hard labour and harder pay: railroad tracks to lay, mines to dig, and forests to fell.
The work was meant to be temporary, but few made the choice to return home, opting instead to stay and start a new life in Montreal. Wives and children followed. Families put down roots.
In the early 20th century, major rail companies like Canadian Pacific and Grand Trunk provided steady employment, and a community began to form. Places of worship and gathering were built, most notably the grand, red-brick Notre-Dame-de-la-Défense Church (Madonna della Difesa) that still towers over the eastern end of Dante Street. The opening of such institutions is among the first signs of the community truly settling in.
The real surge in immigration came after the Second World War. Between 1946 and 1960, thousands of Italians arrived through family reunification programs. They flocked to the area around Marché du Nord—known today as Jean-Talon Market—and found comfort in the familiar rhythms of food, faith, and kin.
That’s when the neighbourhood started being referred to as Piccola Italia, and the name stuck.
Scenes from Little Italy in 1976. | Photograph: Henri Rémillard
By the 1960s, things shifted again. The manufacturing sector needed more labour, and the Italians responded in droves as ambitious, adaptable, and endlessly resourceful.
What these first- and second-generation Italians built was a legacy: Today, Little Italy remains rooted in those beginnings, with multigenerational, family-owned businesses like espresso bars, grocery stores, and timeless restaurants still carrying the imprint of the people who built them over centuries.
👣 Take part in The Main's guided walking tour of Montréal's Little Italy. For 120 minutes, visit the neighbourhood's emblematic locations on foot: More info here.
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