Overview of the city
A true garden paradise with an urban forest much in evidence, Saint-Lambert features an enchanting setting and a beautiful place to live where individuals and families can find fulfillment. Thanks to the special character and charm of each of its neighbourhoods, Saint-Lambert is able to offer a choice of lifestyle and style of housing to satisfy all tastes.
Saint-Lambert is a mature city whose land is nearly fully developed, mainly because there is so little vacant land available. Essentially a residential city, dwellings represent 95% of all the buildings on its territory, and 57% of these are single-family dwellings.
A portrait of our cultural heritage and identity
Through a cooperative approach, the Conférence régionale des élus de l’agglomération de Longueuil (CRÉ), Ministère de la Culture et des Communications (MCC) and the Forum jeunesse Longueuil, in collaboration with the Conseil montérégien de la culture et des communications (CMCC), sought to use a cooperative approach to identify and showcase the heritage identity features of the five municipalities within the Agglomeration.
The first part of this mandate involved compiling, enhancing and documenting the information available on the distinctive heritage identity features of the territory. In 2015, this exercise led to the development of five portraits characterizing the different municipalities in the Agglomeration.
Overview of the municipal organization
The Ville de Saint-Lambert’s organizational structure is comprised of City Council, composed of a mayor and eight councillors, and the municipal departments. Five offices, which are overseen by the city manager, work together with approximately twenty departments to plan and provide municipal services for the population.
The City is supported by over 165 talented and knowledgeable employees. During the summer, day camps, swimming pools, and student jobs swell the ranks of the municipal team by approximately 90 people. For a list of the various municipal departments and their contact persons, visit the directory.
History
Saint-Lambert is essentially a residential city. For generations, daily life has reflected a tradition of following a balanced lifestyle. If you ask residents why they live in Saint-Lambert, the answer will inevitably include words such as charm, convenience, safety and security, and rich community life. Discover how Saint-Lambert's history shaped the city of today.
The origins of Saint-Lambert date back to the 17th century. The town is made up of what were the outermost portions of two seigniories: La Prairie, which had been granted to the Jesuits in 1647, and Longueuil, which had been conferred upon the Montreal trader Charles Le Moyne in 1657. Present-day Victoria Avenue represents the dividing line between the two seigniories.
The tract of land that had been part of La Prairie, then known as Mouillepied, was granted between 1674 and 1697, and the portion that had been the Longueuil seigniory would only be donated at the end of the 17th century. Some of Saint-Lambert’s current residents are descended from the early pioneering families: Trudeau, Marsil, Ste-Marie, Achim. Sadly, however, no traces remain of these 17th-century colonists, but their descendants built fieldstone houses in the last quarter of the 18th century that still stand today for us to admire: the O’Donnell house, the maison Beauvais, and the maison Marsil (the Museum of Costume and textile of Québec, formerly the Marsil Museum).
English farmers settled there in the first part of the 19th century, and the territory retained its rural character until the beginning of the 1850s, when Montreal business- men and the managers of the Champlain and St. Lawrence Railroad saw an opportunity for development in Saint-Lambert’s proximity to Montreal.
In 1852, they built a line off the main railroad that had linked the villages of La Prairie and Saint-Jean since 1836. The terminal was moved from La Prairie to Saint-Lambert. The railway line thus stretched across Mouillepied all the way to the river, between Lorne and Argyle avenues. A branch extending to Île Moffat, where Île Notre-Dame is today, was added so that trains could unload their cargo, which would then be transported by boat across the river to Montreal. In 1854, a bold enterprise began to see the light of day: the construction of the Victoria Bridge. It was completed in 1859.
With the infrastructures needed for the establishment of the railway in place, the urbanization of this territory, which had, up until that point, been primarily agricultural, was inevitable. In 1857, conscious of the promise the presence of the railway held for the development of the territory, the property owners of Saint-Lambert requested that it be incorporated as a municipality; it became a village in 1892, a town in 1898, and, eventually, a city in 1921.
In the 1880s, the municipality of Saint-Lambert evolved into a middle-class, predominantly Anglo-Protestant, residential suburb, made up of white-collar workers, middle managers, craftsmen, and shopkeepers, whose livelihoods were largely linked to the railway. In the decades following, the erstwhile majority Francophone Catholic population dwindled, to recover its numbers only around the 1970s.
In 1969, the town of Préville was annexed to Saint-Lambert. In January 2002, Saint-Lambert was merged with seven other South-Shore cities to form the new city of Longueuil. However, following a referendum, under Bill 9 and various government decrees, the city of Saint-Lambert was officially reconstituted on January 1, 2006.
Coat-of-Arms
The Ville de Saint-Lambert took advantage of its 150th anniversary in 2007 to officially repatriate its coat-of-arms. Part of it appears in the City’s logo and on its flag.
The shield surmounted by a golden mural crown has seven crenellated towers that denote Saint-Lambert's status as a City.
In the upper part of the shield the 'fleur de lys' at the left, represents the population of French origin, and the rose, at the right, the population of English origin.In the centre, the hunting horn recalls Lambert Raphaël Closse, a great hunter, after whom Saint-Lambert has been named.
The ship, the central and most important armorial bearing, symbolizes Saint-Lambert's geographical position on the shore of the St. Lawrence River.
The motto ''Maximus in Minimis'' or ''To seek greatness even in the smallest details'' describes the continued efforts of the municipality to serve its fellow citizens.