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By car the drive to Parliament Hill from Laval takes two hours. VIA Rail has daily service from downtown Montreal. Flying time is under one hour.
This suburban Montreal riding takes up the western portion of the island of Laval. The Rivière-des-Milles-Îles and Rivière-des-Prairies flow along its northwestern and southwestern borders. Most of the businesses and enterprises can be found along its two waterfronts and close to its major thoroughfares. The riding has seen in the past few years an important surge in it residential development.
The riding includes parts of Chomedy (an English enclave on the island of Laval), Laval-Ouest, Laval-sur-le-Lac, and Sainte-Dorothée.
French is widely spoken as a mother tongue across the riding. The riding also has one of Canada’s highest populations of Eastern Orthodox Christians.
About 33% of the riding’s population are immigrants, with some of the largest populations born in Lebanon, Greece, and Syria.
Arabic and Armenian are the most common non-official mother tongues in the riding.
Less than 1% of the riding’s population identify as Aboriginal.
Average individual income is $43,489.
Laval is known as the Flower and Garden Capital of Quebec. The city and province actively promote the island as a location where visitors can pick their own strawberries, sample fresh goat cheese, and buy flowers, honey, or vegetables.
The Laval-sur-le-lac golf course is a 36-hole facility. The storied club was established in 1917 and has hosted several notable tournaments, including the 1962 Canadian Open.
The Chateau Taillefer Lafon in Sainte-Dorothée was the first Quebec vineyard to be authorized to use the “chateau” designation, meaning that the wine is made using only grapes grown and cultivated on the property.
The city of Laval encourages visitors to see its many roadside Christian crosses made from all sorts of materials, but mostly wood or metal. Some are simple, while others are ornate and elaborate depictions of Christ dying on the cross.
More than half of the working force has a postsecondary education.
The economy is fueled mostly by the industries of retail trade, manufacturing, health care as well as professional, scientific and technical services. The pharmaceutical industry has a large presence here, as do high technology. Many residents are employed at the Cité de la Biotech, in the adjacent riding.
For one week each April, citizens of Laval are encouraged to take part in the ‘Grand ramassage du printemps’ – the Big Spring Clean-up. From schoolyards to side-road ditches to city parks, thousands of Lavalois and Lavaloises don rubber boots and gloves to help out.
The area of Laval-Ouest along the riverfront, known as Plage-Laval, was originally farmland until 1926, when two developers from New York, the Smedback brothers, bought the property. The two then subdivided the land into lots and built cottages that were in turn sold to Montrealers looking for a vacation home. So successful was their venture, that by 1930 the community of Plage-Laval was large enough to become a proper municipality.
