[13] Two years later he donated the land to the Congrégation de Notre-Dame,[14] who in 1710 built the building now preserved as the Maison Nivard-De Saint-Dizier.

[11] The Canal de l'Aqueduc, now Verdun's northwestern boundary, was dug in 1854 to furnish Montreal with drinking water from the St.

[citation needed] Settlement had been hampered due to frequent flooding, but a dyke was built starting in 1896; its completion resulted in a population boom.

Between 1911 and 1924 the population tripled and urbanization expanded rapidly "westward" (according to "Montreal directions" - actually due southward), and the farms were divided for residential use.

The Moffat area west of rue Desmarchais was built in with "plexes"—the typical Montreal layered apartment—between 1920 and 1930,[17] and the Crawford Park area in the far west of the town was built starting in 1945, in a more suburban style unlike the orthogonal grid used in the rest of Verdun.

The municipality of Île-Saint-Paul, occupying what was by then universally known as Nuns' Island or Île des Sœurs, was annexed to Verdun in 1956.

Then a chiefly agricultural area, it was rapidly urbanized following the opening of the Champlain Bridge in 1962, with development including contributions by the famous Modernist architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.

[18] Rapid development would continue to the present day, with the erosion of the sensitive natural woodland of the Domaine Saint-Pierre becoming an increasingly pressing concern.

Earlier in the 20th century, Verdun was a partially dry community, with taverns, night clubs and cabarets banned since 1965, and alcohol sales restricted to restaurants with liquor licences, grocery stores and the SAQ.

[8] In recent years, Verdun, along with the neighbouring Le Sud-Ouest borough, have experienced rapid gentrification and social change.

Long considered to be one of the city's poorer neighbourhoods, it's today one Montreal's most desirable areas to live, with a large influx of students and professionals arriving in the last decade.

The Montreal Island part of the borough is defined on its eastern side by the St. Lawrence River, and on the west by the Canal de l'Aqueduc.

Verdun was historically a chiefly residential area, however, the late 1990s and 2000s saw a gradual revival of the Wellington Street commercial artery, with several shops, restaurants, and cafés opening.

By 2020, Wellington was considered one of the city's trendiest streets, comparable to Mount Royal Avenue in the Plateau,[7][8][25] and hosted part of the Jazz Fest in 2019.

Recreational facilities include the Verdun Auditorium, a hockey arena and concert hall, the home of the now defunct Junior de Montréal team.

Expansive parks (L'Honorable-George-O'Reilly, Mgr-J-A-Richard, and Arthur-Therrien) with bike paths line the banks of the St. Lawrence River, making Verdun one of the few parts of the Island of Montreal to open onto the whole length of its waterfront, a legacy of the flooding that once impeded settlement.

The waterfront also features the Verdun Natatorium, public-access docks and a marina, an open-air dancing shell, a lawn bowling green, and football, baseball, and soccer fields.

Another of the borough's major green spaces, the Domaine Saint-Paul (Boisé de l'Île-des-Sœurs), preserves the natural woodland of Nuns' Island, home to more than a hundred species of birds as well as the scarce brown snake.

Prior to 1998 Commission des écoles catholiques de Verdun operated Roman Catholic schools of all language backgrounds.