Montréal (Anjou)

Anjou is one of the nineteen boroughs of the city of Montreal, Quebec (Canada). Prior to the 2002 Quebec municipal reorganizations, it constituted a municipality, the City of Anjou, founded in 1956 from the parish of Saint-Léonard-de-Port-Maurice.

Located at the intersection of two key traffic arteries in the Montreal metropolitan area—Autoroute 25 and the Metropolitan Autoroute (A-40)—Anjou is a major commercial and industrial hub in the eastern part of the Montreal metropolitan area. In addition to the imposing Les Galeries d'Anjou shopping center, it is home to an industrial park with over 600 businesses, a large retention lake, around which the Anjou-sur-le-Lac neighborhood is built, and a golf club, all located in the northern part of the borough.

The name Anjou to identify the municipality is relatively recent. When the parish municipality decided to change its municipal status to become a city in the fall of 1955, the municipal council at the time chose this name for the town.

Two hypotheses have been put forward to explain this choice. The first is that Marcel Sylvestre, a resident of Saint-Léonard-de-Port-Maurice, suggested the name Anjou after spending time in this French region as a soldier during World War II. The second suggests that the name was chosen in homage to Anjou, a historic French province where the first settlers of New France originated, including one of the founders of Ville-Marie, Jérôme Le Royer, Sieur de La Dauversière.