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

September 5, 2025- Read time: 3 min

A timeless street corner scene from Montreal's Little Italy on January 19, 1969. | Photograph: Antoine Desilets / La Presse

Places featured in this article

Our Lady of La Difesa Jean Talon Market

The 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.

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