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Snapshot: Metro - 349 Rue de l'Eglise, Montreal, QC

Metro is another major, family-owned supermarket in the Verdun area, just about two blocks off of Wellington on Rue de l'Eglise--Street of the Church, or basically Church Street. I had hoped to return to this store to get a full tour, but unfortunately, I didn't.
Metro is much larger than IGA as you can tell. Like IGA, it's franchised through a chain, so the sign for Bellemare represents the owner of this store. And apparently, the sign on the corner here (which, by the way, faces towards Wellington) has been missing its -tro for a while. Personally, I didn't like Metro very much. It does actually have decor, but it feels cheap and corny in person, and about 20 years outdated. As a matter of fact, there are plans (English translation) to replace this Metro with (surprise!) a multi-story residential building with a new Metro on the ground floor, which has (surprise!) sparked conflict in the neighborhood. However, more recently, Metro Bellemare posted on its Facebook page that it would not be financially viable to go through with the originally proposed project.

As an interesting aside, Metro was founded in 1947 in Verdun! Today, the company runs roughly 700 stores and is the third largest grocery retailer in Canada, behind Loblaw Companies and Sobeys (which runs the IGA store). Among their banners is Super C (which we'll see a little more of shortly) and Food Basics Canada, purchased from A&P.

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