Would it be accurate to say that other than Laval and Longueuil, the South Shore and the North Shore are rural and aren't really suburbs per se? Are there other smaller but still suburban cities in the South Shore and the North Shore?
The Montreal 'suburbs' seem to be very different than the Vancouver suburbs or the Toronto suburbs.
The South Shore and North Shore along with Laval constitute Montréal's answer to the 905, the 450, and include many more suburbs than Laval and Longueuil -- in fact the North Shore is larger than Laval! Some larger (Liberal) ones are Vaudreuil, Châteauguay and Brossard, the latter being the most multicultural city in Quebec, and the two large Bloc ones are Terrebonne at 115k and Repentigny at 80k.
There are many smaller suburbs as well -- over 50 others -- and most of them are BQ except for a few near Vaudreuil, Saint-Lambert (the closest suburb to Montréal, even closer than Westmount) and to a lesser extent Candiac and the wealthy Saint-Bruno on the South Shore and Rosemère on the North Shore.
In a clockwise direction they are:
- Varennes
- Boucherville (50k)
- Saint-Amable (10k)
- Sainte-Julie (32k)
- Saint-Mathias-de-Beloeil and a few small villages by the Richelieu River and the Chemin des Patriotes (8k)
- Saint-Bruno-de-Montarville (26k; contains a provincial park)
- Saint-Basile-le-Grand
- Beloeil
- Mont-Saint-Hilaire (20k)
- Otterburn Park (8k)
- McMasterville (6k)
- Carignan (8k; agricultural/exurban and without a town centre, in fact in two disjoint pieces)
- Chambly (25k; NHS of Fort Chambly)
- Saint-Lambert (28k; Victoria and Jacques-Cartier Bridges empty here)
- Brossard (91k; Champlain Bridge empties here)
- Candiac
- La Prairie (Canada's first rail line)
- Delson
- Saint-Constant
- Sainte-Catherine
- Saint-Rémi and a few exurban/agricultural towns (10k; ancestral home of the Trudeaus)
- Kahnawake
- Châteauguay (48k)
- Mercier
- Ile Perrot (40k; several municipalities)
- Les Cèdres
- Les Coteaux (also a suburb of Valleyfield)
- Vaudreuil-Dorion
- Saint-Lazare (26k)
- Hudson (wealthy and anglo, also in two disjoint pieces)
- Oka (Kanesatake)
- Pointe-Calumet (exurb and large beach club)
- Saint-Joseph-sur-le-Lac (exurb)
- Saint-Marthe
- Deux-Montagnes
- Saint-Eustache (45k; site of 1837 uprising battle and very dear to separatists)
- Boisbriand (19k; Hassidic community)
- Rosemère (14k)
- Mirabel (61k; an amalgamation of small towns and exurbs, contains Mirabel airport)
- Sainte-Thérèse (26k)
- Blainville (58k)
- Saint-Jérôme (72k; debatable whether this is an exurb or a regional centre, but growing quickly)
- Lorraine (9k)
- Bois-des-Filion (12k)
- Sainte-Sophie (outside of the Montreal CMA)
- Sainte-Anne-des-Plaines (15k; Canada's SuperMax Prison)
- Terrebonne (120k; the A-40 Charles-de-Gaulle Bridge from Montréal empties at its easternmost extremity in the premerger town of Lachenaie)
- Mascouche (50k)
- Saint-Lin-Laurentides (exurb; NHS of Sir Wilfrid Laurier House)
- Céline Dion Central (or Charlemagne - 6k)
- Repentigny (82k)
- L'Epiphanie (7k; agricultural/exurb)
- L'Assomption (35k, Legault's own stomping ground)
- Saint-Sulpice (4k; strictly agricultural with no room for growth)
- Lavaltrie (13k; in a separate MRC and also closer to Joliette)
Montréal is unique for the number of suburbs it has in Canada (although per capita Vancouver is competitive). Circa 2000 amalgamation only reduced the count by 6 or so. I wouldn't say they are more unique than Toronto or Vancouver suburbs, or at least only to the extent that Québec is unique... It is true that the 450 is not completely well-defined. Administratively it is part of the Montérégie region on the South Shore and the Laurentides and Lanaudière region on the North, and the rural parts of Montérégie, and especially Lanaudière are among the areas of the province with the least distinct identities.
Finally you cannot go directly from the North Shore to the South Shore, except for a seasonal ferry between Hudson and Oka (the Ottawa River is the delineator between the two west of Montréal), and a permanent one, although well away from the suburbs, between Sorel and Berthierville.
In the context of this thread, the PLQ hold Saint-Lambert, Vaudreuil and Brossard, and could lose all three to the CAQ in descending order of probability. (QS has never been strong here and the PQ is headed nowhere fast.)
