There is no doubt that Boulevard Saint-Laurent is still the vibrant focus for both new and established ethnocultural communities in Montréal. Concerns were raised in the 1980s about commercial gentrification and rising real estate prices driving out long-standing businesses, and the arrival of American fast-food restaurants in the 1990s led reporter Ingrid Peritz to ponder whether The Main would eventually become just another "McStreet." xvi Real estate prices on a three-block stretch from Laurier to Saint-Viateur increased as much as ten-fold between 1981 and 1986, forcing out some low-income groups and prompting a newly-formed merchants' association to drape a "Let's Save the Main" banner over a local bar. xvii On the other hand, there has also been a revival of some long-depressed sites, notably in the vicinity of the venerable Monument National. Canada's National Theatre School, which has occupied it since 1971, has recently completed an impressive renovation and restoration of the building. The opening of the Musée Juste pour rire, located in the former Ekers Brewery, has been a cultural boost for the Lower Main.

There have been a number of efforts to safeguard The Main. In the mid-1980s an investigation of Boulevard Saint-Laurent as a municipal historic district was begun, xviii in part to prevent its rich cultural fabric from deteriorating, but the process was halted with the election of a new mayor and council. The boundaries of the historic district of Old Montréal, as proclaimed by Quebec's Department of Cultural Affairs in 1964, were expanded to include the north side of Saint-Antoine Street, thereby bringing a small part of Boulevard Saint-Laurent under the protection afforded by this legislation. The rest of Boulevard Saint-Laurent is classified by the city as a "significant sector." As a result, every architectural intervention must be approved by a commission. While not a historic district, this classification and approval system fosters better-than-average quality interventions. xix

A number of groups are working at the grass-roots level to maintain and enhance the traditional character and make-up of the corridor; organizations such as the Association des gens d'affaires du milieu (Upper Main), the Centre d'intervention pour la revitalisation des quartiers (CIRQ) and Tourisme Plateau Mont-Royal are committed to ensuring that the street's businesses thrive. There is also evidence that former residents who had given up on the neighbourhood are returning to their roots:

Many Canadian cities have vibrant multicultural neighbourhoods. Vancouver, for example, has one of the largest and liveliest Chinatowns in North America, and Victoria's venerable Chinatown was recently declared a national historic district. Toronto's many multicultural neighbourhoods, as the Greek Danforth, the Italian St. Clair West, the Chinese and South Asian Dundas and Gerrard, are the built expressions of the city's acclaimed cultural diversity. But historically, the individual cultural neighbourhoods in most major Canadian cities were scattered, rather than clustered. The two notable exceptions were Montréal's Boulevard Saint-Laurent and Winnipeg's North End, both of which, for reasons of urban geography, economy and culture, were inhabited by a number of communities. However, Winnipeg's North End today shows significantly less evidence of its historically rich ethnic mix than in previous decades, due primarily to intra-urban migration beginning in the 1950s and to the absorption of its ethnocultural communities into the mainstream. And while Montréal has likewise witnessed significant intra-urban migration since the 1950s, it has not been at the expense of Boulevard Saint-Laurent, which has retained its role as a strong focal point for ethnocultural communities, new and old. Its long, concentrated, multi-layered and continuing association with so many ethnocultural communities is unique in Canada.

Back of the fish import store

© Edward Hillel, 1987

Boulevard Saint-Laurent is not infrequently compared to New York. Part of the reason is that it has some physical resemblance, in terms of architectural scale and rhythm, to streets like Broadway and districts like Soho. The main reason, however, seems to be its dynamic urbanism. Author Hugh MacLennan, who arrived in Montréal in 1935, noted: "The Main astonished me, and it still does. I had walked the streets of many famous cities in England, Europe and the United States, but this was something new. It was probably the most creative Jewish area in North America, more so even than New York." xxi

In summary, Montréal's Boulevard Saint-Laurent is both a real street and a legendary place in the Canadian psyche, a street that is both magical and mysterious. In the words of poet Irving Layton, who grew up there, the Boulevard was "raw, vulgar, dynamic, and dramatic." To Andrée Maillet, Saint-Laurent Street was flashing neon, the smell of sausages, French fries and gefiltefish, affirming that one is never alone here. xxii For Mordecai Richler, it was at the heart of his city:

In its everyday reality, Boulevard Saint-Laurent is a Montréal street made up of commercial buildings, homes, institutions and cultural centres, that are at once both ordinary and extraordinary. As Aline Gubbay says, "It is not a spectacular thoroughfare:"

It is also a place where change is normal, and boundaries change as people move onto, along, and off the street. As long-time business owner Marvin Berson notes: "The Main changed in the 1950s, it changed in the sixties and seventies, and it's changing again and it will keep changing. Every street changes because any street which remains stagnant is strictly a business street. This is a street where you live" xxv . And while Boulevard Saint-Laurent has trod the national stage for its role in the garment trade xxvi and showbusiness, xxvii it is as "the most astonishing forcing house in Canada for culture and business," xxviii in author Hugh MacLennan's words, that this "strong sinewy backbone of a growing city" xxix has become one of Canada's most potently symbolic Main Streets.