Rosemont is the east-end neighbourhood that kept its main street, and Rue Masson — the Promenade Masson — is the proof. When the big-box stores pulled commerce out of streets like this all over North America, the locals here held on, and the result is one of the best everyday commercial strips in Montreal: independent, useful, lived-in. The walk is the street and the calm blocks behind it.
Start at Rosemont station on the Blue Line and walk east into the borough. The boulevard is the way in; Rue Masson is the point. Onto the promenade — cafés, bakeries, a butcher, a bookshop, terrasses out in summer — and walk it slowly, the way the regulars do. Take a coffee at a counter where the customers live upstairs.
Right on the street the Église Saint-Esprit-de-Rosemont gives you the spire to navigate by, the kind of landmark these neighbourhoods grew around. Drop south into the leafy duplex blocks where the café-goers actually live, then loop back to Fabre on the Blue Line. You'll leave later than you meant to.
