Bois-Franc station

Bois-Franc (French pronunciation: [bwafʁɑ̃]) is a Réseau express métropolitain (REM) interchange station in the Bois-Franc neighbourhood of Montreal, Quebec, Canada. REM service began at the station on 17 November 2025.^[9]

It replaced a commuter rail station of the same name on the Deux-Montagnes line, which was closed when Exo service ended in 2020 in preparation for the construction of the REM. After the stations inbound of here were closed on May 11, 2020 so construction works could begin on the Mount Royal Tunnel, Bois-Franc served as the inbound terminus of a remnant of the line out to Deux-Montagnes, until finally being closed on December 31, 2020.

The station is located at 5465 Henri Bourassa Boulevard West, between Marcel-Laurin Boulevard/Boulevard Laurentien (Route 117) and Grenet Street in Saint-Laurent on the border with Cartierville.

The original station was named Lazard^[10] (likely for the Franco-American merchant bank Lazard Frères & Co. which underwrote the construction of the Mount Royal Tunnel on this rail line). In 1926, the station was renamed Val-Royal. After the modernization of the Deux-Montagnes Line, between 1993 and 1995, a new station named Bois-Franc was built; the original station was then demolished at the request of the Canadian National Railway and with the permission of Transport Canada on June 5, 1995.^[11] The old station site is now a parking lot on the east side of Boulevard Marcel-Laurin.

The name Bois-Franc (lit. 'hardwood') dates back to 1717, when the Sulpician order, seigneurs of the Island of Montreal, created a concession or côte in this area, which became known as Côte Saint-Louis or Côte du Bois-Franc.^[12]The name "Bois-Franc" referred to an extensive maple forest in the area, remnants of which make up the Bois-de-Liesse and Bois-de-Saraguay nature parks.^[13][14] In keeping with the practice in other côtes, the road serving the area took the name of the côte, Chemin du Bois-Franc.^[12]

In 1911, an airport opened in the area, known as Bois-Franc Field, later Cartierville Airport. It was decommissioned in 1988 and a residential development, also called Bois-Franc, was built in its place, opening in 1993, shortly before the commuter train station was rebuilt.^[15]

A single-track electrified (2400 V DC) branch to Cartierville, a relic of when the line terminated there in Canadian Northern Railway days, left the line at (then) Val-Royal station. When the line was run by Canadian National, only one rush-hour trip was scheduled in each direction. It was abandoned in the early 1980s when STM predecessor STCUM took over operations of the Deux-Montagnes line. The Cartierville station was located at the corner of Gouin West and Laurentian boulevards.^[16] The Cartierville Station was to have been the terminus of Line 3 (Red) of the Montreal Metro.

Proposals to extend the Orange Line of the Metro to Bois-Franc have been considered since the late 2000s.^[17] Following the construction of a Metro garage beyond Côte-Vertu station in the 2010s, only 1.2 kilometres (0.75 mi) of tunnelling is required to extend the line to interchange with the REM. As of 2022, studies are underway on the potential of an extension to Bois-Franc.^[18]

• Montreal Metro future projects
• Orange Line west branch extension

Media related to Bois-Franc (Réseau express métropolitain) at Wikimedia Commons