Montreal has excellent shopping facilities, from large department stores to small street markets, specialist fashion boutiques and discount retail outlets. Specialties include furs, Native American crafts, haute couture and antiques. The
Canadian Guild of Crafts – Québec, 1460 rue Sherbrooke West (tel: (514) 849 6091; website:
www.canadianguild.com) is a non-profit organization that has a gallery of Inuit and Amerindian art and also sells works by member artisans. Other fine-art galleries can be found
along the same street, in the vicinity of the Museum of Fine Arts.
One of the best concentrations of shops in Old Montreal is at the
Marché Bonsecours, 350 rue St-Paul East (tel: (514) 872 7730; website:
www.marchebonsecours.qc.ca), but there are all sorts of small shops on rue St-Paul and tucked away in the side streets. Downtown shopping is along the stretch of rue Ste-Catherine, between rue Guy and rue St-Urbain, and is a good place for cheap music and electronics, as well as fashions at all price ranges. Upmarket department stores include
Ogilvy, 1307 rue Ste-Catherine West, and
Holt Renfrew, 1300 rue Sherbrooke West, while
The Bay, 585 rue Ste-Catherine West, is aimed at the average consumer.
Les Ailes de la Mode, adjacent to the Eaton Center, fits somewhere in between. Other shopping malls lining rue Ste-Catherine West and connected to the Underground City are
Complexe Desjardins, Promenades Cathédrale, Place Montréal Trust, Place Ville Marie and
Cours Mont-Royal. Beyond Downtown, boulevard St-Laurent (the ‘Main’) is a good place for ethnic and alternative shopping, while rue St-Denis and avenue Laurier are filled with chic boutiques and Québécois designers. The city’s better-off anglophones shop along avenue Greene in Westmount, to the west of Downtown.
The city’s two largest public markets (website:
www.marchespublics-mtl.com) are a bit further from Downtown.
Marché Atwater is near the Lachine Canal, at 138 avenue Atwater, while
Marché Jean-Talon is to the north, in the heart of Little Italy at 7075 avenue Casgrain. Both have wonderful produce (including the ubiquitous maple syrup), as well as butchers, bakers and specialty foods. They open at 0800 and close at 1800 Monday to Wednesday, 2100 Thursday and Friday and 1700 Saturday and Sunday.
Shops are generally open Monday to Wednesday 1000-1800, Thursday and Friday 1000-2100, Saturday 1000-1700 and Sunday 1200-1700. The 6% federal Goods and Services Tax (GST) and 7.5% provincial Quebec Sales Tax (QST) are levied on most products and services and as from April 2007, non-residents can no longer apply for a rebate of the GST portion on goods for use outside of Canada.
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Word Travels is a comprehensive travel guide covering hundreds of cities and holiday resorts in more than 125 countries.
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