Little Burgundy

Little Burgundy (French: Petite-Bourgogne, pronounced [pətit buʁɡɔɲ]) is a neighbourhood in the South West borough of the city of Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

Its approximate boundaries are Atwater Avenue to the west, Saint-Antoine to the north, Guy Street to the east, and the Lachine Canal to the south.

The adjacent neighbourhoods are the borough of Ville-Marie and downtown Montreal to the north and northeast, Griffintown to the southeast, Pointe-Saint-Charles to the south, and Saint-Henri to the west.

The neighbourhood comprises the former city of Sainte-Cunégonde and Saint-Joseph's ward.

There are differing accounts of the origin of the name Petite-Bourgogne (Little-Burgundy). A surveyor's map of 1855 identifies a property called Bourgogne, owned by the heirs of the Hon. Louis Guy (brother of Étienne Guy, for whom Guy Street was named). The property corresponds to the areas bounded today by Rue des Seigneurs, Rue Notre-Dame, Rue Saint-Martin, and Rue Saint-Antoine.

Official use of the name "Petite Bourgogne" originates from the 1965 preliminary study for the urban renewal program to refer to the area between the Lachine Canal, the CN railway right of way (now expanded to the Autoroute Ville-Marie), Atwater street and Guy Street in the 1965 preliminary study for the urban renewal program. The report takes inspiration from the writing of Édouard-Zotique Massicotte, archivist of the City of Montreal and resident of Sainte-Cunégonde, who described the area as a meadow known as "la petite Bourgogne." The authors of the urban renewal study "kept this name, full as it is of poetry and nostalgia for another landscape," and this name was retained as the name of the neighbourhood after the renewal program ended.

In the early 1980s, the City of Montreal renamed Petite-Bourgogne to Quartier Georges-Vanier, after the Governor General Georges Vanier, in an attempt to remove the stigma of the low-income area which public officials believed was deterring investment from private developers. During the public consultations for the City of Montreal's Master Plan (Plan d'urbanisme) in 1990, residents requested that the name Petite Bourgogne/Little Burgundy be reinstated.

Essentially agricultural until 1810, today's Little Burgundy began to be built up the ward of St. Joseph, a faubourg spreading outside the city walls. The area around Richmond Square was built up in 1819.