Laval-Ouest did not grow the way the rest of Île Jésus grew. On April 23, 1926, the New York firm Warren & Arthur Smadbeck ltée — already behind the Long Island resorts of Mastic Beach and Amityville — bought farmland along the rivière des Mille Îles to lay out a summer village for Montrealers. It took the name Plage-Laval, became a town in 1932, was renamed ville de Laval-Ouest on January 1, 1951, raised to cité de Laval-Ouest on June 18, 1964, then dissolved into the Ville de Laval in 1965. The City sums up what happened in between better than we could: “Laval-Ouest does not see the kind of large residential development that various other municipalities of the Laval territory do, before their merger in 1965. Laval-Ouest therefore develops under the sign of stability.” In 1963 the count stood at 6,500 permanent residents, plus another 1,500 to 2,000 people each summer.
That family tree is still legible on the ground, and it decides how we deliver. The municipal planning study describes rectangular blocks running north-south, most often 50 to 60 m wide, a lot pattern it calls “greatly heterogeneous” and ties to the resort areas of the first half of the 20th century, and a built grain “rather small and medium in size” where the picturesque summer cottage, the bungalow and the neo-eclectic house sit side by side. Read that as a delivery instruction: two adjoining driveways are not the same width, and the report publishes no typical dimension for this neighbourhood — we will not invent one. In a fabric like this, the only measurement that counts is the one at your own address, and two or three questions on the phone are enough to take it.
One last figure, with its caveat attached. The CISSS de Laval breaks the 2021 census down by planning sector, and Laval-Ouest shares its own with Sainte-Dorothée, Laval-sur-le-Lac, the Îles-Laval and western Fabreville: none of those numbers describes Laval-Ouest by itself. At that scale, the west end of the island is the part of Laval where people most often own the roof over their heads — 79.1% of the stock is a house against 56.7% for Laval, 81.2% of households are owners against 66.6% — with a median household income of $102,000 in 2020 and a median dwelling value of $428,000. An older stock held by the people living in it is another way of saying renovation work.
laval.ca, municipal history page “Laval-Ouest”; Ville de Laval, typo-morphological study (March 2020), sheet LAO_01; CISSS de Laval, portrait of the 2021 census by planning sector (May 2023), from Statistics Canada — consulted August 17, 2026.