Allée des Aubaines/Bargain Alley

Allee des Aubaines, known in English as Bargain Alley, traces its roots back to 1998, when a single shop called Le Coin des Trouvailles opened on the main street of Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue, the small town at the western tip of the island of Montreal where the Ottawa and Saint Lawrence rivers meet. The founders modeled the concept on the charity thrift shops they had seen in England, and the idea took hold locally under the umbrella of Thrift Shops for NOVA, a volunteer network that has since grown into two connected storefronts in the same town: a general merchandise shop and a dedicated bookstore next door. Between the two locations, shoppers find clothing, home decor and art, and a genuinely deep selection of used books, all priced to move and all donated by residents across the West Island. What makes this Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue location distinct within the wider NOVA thrift network, which also operates shops in other West Island communities, is its status as the original: this is the storefront that started the whole project on the town’s historic main street more than two and a half decades ago, and it remains anchored in that same walkable stretch near the Macdonald Campus and the old canal locks that give the town its character. Every shop in the network is run entirely by volunteers, with no paid retail staff drawing a wage from sales, which keeps overhead low and lets a larger share of each purchase flow directly to the cause the shops exist to fund. That cause is NOVA West Island, a home health and palliative care organization that sends nurses and support workers into patients’ own homes across the West Island rather than requiring hospital or hospice admission, and the thrift shops exist purely to underwrite that community-based care. Over the network’s history, more than 350 volunteers have staffed the sorting rooms and sales floors, and the combined stores have raised close to eleven million dollars for NOVA’s home care programs, a figure that reflects both the town’s donation habits and the sheer longevity of the operation since its 1998 founding. For anyone visiting Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue, whether a student at the nearby agricultural campus, a boater passing through on the canal, or a longtime resident clearing out a closet, the shop offers an easy way to both donate and shop secondhand goods while keeping the proceeds entirely local, funding nurses who serve neighbors rather than a distant head office. The bookstore side in particular has built a reputation among West Island readers for turning over a wide range of fiction, nonfiction, and children’s titles at prices well below retail, making it a regular stop for anyone furnishing a home library on a budget. Because the shop operates as a true nonprofit thrift model rather than a franchise, pricing and selection can shift week to week based purely on what the community donates, giving repeat visitors a reason to check back often rather than expecting the same static inventory. Anyone asking where secondhand shopping in the West Island directly funds home nursing care for local patients will find the answer at this Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue original. In short, Allee des Aubaines is the founding Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue location of the volunteer-run NOVA thrift network, selling donated clothing, books, and home goods since 1998 to fund home health care across Montreal’s West Island.