Faubourg à m'lasse

Le Faubourg à m'lasse was a neighborhood in Montreal until 1963. The neighborhood was bordered by Dorchester (now René-Lévesque) Boulevard to the North, Wolfe Street to the West, Viger Avenue to the South, and Papineau Avenue to the East.

The neighbourhood was originally named "Faubourg Québec" (English: "Quebec suburb") because it is located along the route to Quebec City. In the neighbourhood's later life, it received the nickname it is most commonly associated with today, Le Faubourg à m'lasse. The neighbourhood most likely received its nickname from the sweet smell that came from massive metal barrels containing molasses located near the Molson Brewery and Canadian Rubber plant.

There are many myths and legends attributed to the neighbourhood's nickname and people such as Jason Cundy acknowledge that some of them are quite implausible but are re-told because those were the tales they grew up believing. One of the legends states that in the warmer months, when the port saw shipments from far and exotic places, women would anticipate the shipments of molasses. When they knew of an upcoming shipment, they would go to the docks and bring a small container with them. Apparently, there was this unspoken understanding between a particular crane operator at the time and the women. The crane operator would "accidentally" drop the last barrel of molasses and the women would quickly fill their containers with the fallen substance.

In 1963, the neighbourhood was one of the oldest in the city when it was razed in order to construct Maison Radio-Canada. The destruction of whole neighbourhoods was not a rare occurrence in Montreal during the 1950s and 1960s. Montreal, during this time period, was on the mend. It was facing a serious decline in its economy after the Second World War and due to various phases of de-industrialization. In the nineteenth century, Montreal was the "uncontested metropolis of Canada" as it was one of North America's main industrial cities and financial centres. Montreal's reputation started to decline as early as the 1890s and this affected the city's urban makeup. Over the next six decades, Montreal's downtown would move further and further away from the water and whole parts of the old city were deemed "obsolete and unrecoverable."

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Wikipedia