Apple doubles down on downtown Montreal with expanded Apple Sainte-Catherine store

Apple has opened a reimagined Apple Sainte-Catherine store in downtown Montreal, expanding its footprint on Sainte-Catherine Street West and more than doubling the size of its prior location, as the iPhone maker leans into physical retail as an experiential showcase for hardware, services and support.

The new store occupies a historic building at the corner of Sainte-Catherine Street West and Rue de la Montagne, replacing Apple’s earlier nearby downtown site. Apple said the location is designed to highlight products and services while offering in-store help, including an Apple Pickup area and a Genius Bar.

“For nearly 20 years, we’ve been proud to be part of the downtown Montreal community, whose spirit of creativity and innovation continues to inspire us,” said Deirdre O’Brien, Apple’s senior vice president of Retail and People. “We’re incredibly excited to build on this long-standing relationship and create a destination where our customers can experience the very best of Apple, from our innovative products to the expert care and support of our amazing team.”

Apple positioned the redesign as both a capacity upgrade and an accessibility push. It said the space is intended to feel more welcoming, with varied table and seating heights and wider access routes to give wheelchair users more room to navigate.

The façade is central to the “reimagined” pitch. Apple said it blends historic Saint-Marc stone from Quebec with local granite, and that local copper artisans restored the building’s cornice, an attempt to keep the store’s street presence aligned with its heritage setting rather than replacing it with a blank slab of glass and steel.

Inside, Apple is pairing retail with programming. The company said free Today at Apple sessions will cover photography and video editing, as well as how to use Apple Intelligence and the basics of assistive technology. The inclusion of Apple Intelligence, Apple’s on-device and cloud-assisted artificial intelligence feature set, reflects how Apple retail is increasingly being used to coach customers through software and services, not just sell devices.

To mark opening weekend, Montreal-based illustrator Catherine Potvin is leading live iPad art demonstrations on 16 January and 17 January, with customers receiving hand-drawn illustrations on their Apple retail bags at select times. Apple’s Canadian retail page for the store lists sessions scheduled for 11am to 1pm on Friday and 2pm to 4pm on Saturday.

The new site will be staffed by a team of nearly 200 trained Specialists, which Apple says collectively speak dozens of languages, underscoring the store’s role as a high-volume service hub as much as a sales floor.

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The reopening also serves as a statement about Montreal’s downtown retail corridor, where brands have been recalibrating store formats to encourage longer visits and higher attachment to services such as subscriptions, financing and trade-ins. Apple said the store offers personalised shopping sessions, flexible monthly financing and trade-in options.

In a broader Canadian context, Apple said it has operated in Canada for more than 40 years and now runs 28 retail stores nationwide, including five in Quebec. For Apple, the enlarged Sainte-Catherine location strengthens coverage in a city where the company has long combined retail visibility with a sizeable local developer community and a growing role in creative industries.

The Recap

• Apple opens a redesigned Sainte‑Catherine store in downtown Montreal.
• Store more than doubles the size of previous location.
• Artist demonstrations scheduled on 16 January and 17 January.