Friperie Emilie, listed here under the name Cartier Emilie, is a social economy thrift shop based inside the Centre culturel et communautaire in the Bordeaux-Cartierville neighborhood of Montreal, at 12225 rue Grenet. For more than thirty years the shop has offered clothing and household items at affordable prices to residents of the area, but its mission goes further than simple resale. As a social economy enterprise, Friperie Emilie reinvests its profits directly into its own community programs rather than distributing them as private profit, which means every purchase made in the shop carries a secondary community impact beyond the transaction itself.
The shop organizes its work around three linked activities that all point back to the same neighborhood mission. Under Acheter, the buying side, shoppers will find clothing and household goods across a wide range of tastes and budgets, priced to stay accessible to families and individuals who might otherwise be priced out of retail. Under Donner, the shop accepts donations of functional items that people no longer need, along with monetary gifts and volunteer time, framing every donation as both a practical contribution and an environmentally sound choice that keeps usable goods circulating instead of heading to a landfill. Under Recevoir, the shop connects with organizations that support parents and newcomers to Montreal, acting as a resource for anyone who needs help furnishing a home or dressing for a Quebec winter without the means to buy everything new.
That partnership work with organizations serving new arrivals to the city is one of the more distinctive parts of Friperie Emilie’s mission, positioning the shop as more than a standalone secondhand store: it functions as a working piece of the social support network in Bordeaux-Cartierville, a neighborhood in Montreal’s north end that has long been a landing point for newcomer families. Housed within a cultural and community center rather than a standalone commercial storefront, the shop is woven into the daily life of the building’s other community programming, and its location reflects that integration rather than a typical retail strip placement.
Friperie Emilie runs periodic fundraising campaigns to support its broader mission, inviting the community it serves to give back in turn, and the shop’s own materials make clear that this reciprocal relationship between donor, shopper, and recipient is central to how it understands its work. Anyone wanting more detail on hours, current donation guidelines, or how to connect with the shop’s newcomer and parent support partnerships can reach the team directly by email or through the shop’s own site. Friperie Emilie, doing business as Cartier Emilie, is a thirty-plus-year-old Bordeaux-Cartierville institution where buying secondhand, donating unused goods, and receiving community support all function as three sides of the same neighborhood mission.
