Kirkland is primarily a residential community, with a commercial core, and an industrial park straddling the Trans-Canada Highway (Autoroute 40).

The city is composed of mainly single-family residences, with some multi-unit facilities (apartments, town houses, and condos) available.

It was part of the Parish of Saint-Joachim de la Pointe Claire, which included the present territory of the cities of Beaconsfield, Kirkland, and Pointe-Claire.

[1] According to the Office québécois de la langue française, Kirkland has been officially recognized as a bilingual municipality[7] since 2005-11-02.

[9] The town of Kirkland has a large business and industrial park spanning both sides of Quebec Autoroute 40.

List of former mayors:[14] The Kirkland Public Library has an impressive collective of more than 80,000 volumes in French and English for adults, teens and children.

The library also offers online database searching, children and adult programs, computer rooms, wireless Internet, inter-library loans, photocopying and reserved books.

[16] Around the town there are multiple outdoor centres for soccer, baseball, tennis, football, basketball, beach volleyball and ice rinks as well as a 5 kilometre bike trail.

The Town of Kirkland has many halls and park chalets, which citizens, associations and organizations can rent out for different occasions or activities (banquets, meetings, parties, exhibits, shows, etc.