Les Promenades Gatineau — Local services in Gatineau

It is considered to be the second largest shopping centre in the Gatineau-Ottawa area in terms of retail space, trailing only St. Laurent Centre's 972,000 square feet (90,301.8 m2). The website claims it has about 845,000 square feet (78,503 m2) in total space including its three-story office building in the south side of the complex that houses a dental clinic and federal government offices.

The mall is sprawled out on one single level with several secondary corridors and sections lined up in different directions which can make it difficult to locate smaller boutiques. The anchor tenants at Les Promenades include La Baie d'Hudson, Costco, La Maison Simons and Sports Experts.

This shopping centre is located in a very busy part of the city, and draws people from all over as it is on many transit routes as well. With Polyvalente Le Carrefour High School being across the road from one of the shopping centre's entrances, students often visit the shopping centre on their lunch breaks, or...

My daughter and I wanted to have a little car stroller for our Sunday afternoon stroll and the lady, mid age and height at the desk didn’t even want to look at me when I asked in English to rent one. She was extremely rude, horrible to me and my 3 year old daughter who was well below the 36” height requirement and refused to lend us a car stroller. A few minutes later we ran into another couple/ French and English speaking and they had a car stroller with their much taller and older child inside. I went back and asked her why that little boy was aloud when he was taller and she said nothing but ended up lending me a stroller after all. It’s clear she didn’t like that I spoke English and I would highly recommend her to be dismissed from working a customer service job because I will take this to upper management until she is dismissed. I will never come back to this mall, where I ended up spending over $700 and I will let all of my friends and family in Ottawa aware....

I've known this sprawling anomaly of a mall for over 40 years and if you go for the people watching you're likely to be less disappointed than if you set your main sights on shopping. A chunk of their business provided by the adjoining Costco, the store collection doesn't offer much by way of novelty.

The Simons is their biggest asset IMO--the rest consists mostly of stuff you can find at any other old mall, but nothing more.

I mean, name another mall of that size and with that amount of patronage that does not have a pharmacy, a pet supply store (I'm not advocating for more pet shops; just using that as an example), a liquor store, a store with basic foodstuffs (that you don't need to buy a membership to and that's not a dollar store).

Beware of their arcane store hours too: they're only open til 9 from Wednesday to Friday.

Maybe once they get their promised Zellers they'll finally enter the 21st century, ironic as that...