East Laurier Running Club Running Hard and Living Well in Montreal

Every Tuesday at 7:25 in the evening, a group of runners gathers outside Bar Chez Baptiste in Montreal. The ritual looks simple from the outside: people stretching, lacing up, catching up on the week. But what has unfolded from this corner of the city since 2012 is something with considerably more weight. The East Laurier Running Club did not begin as a grand project. It began with a few roommates, a shared apartment, and an idea borrowed from somewhere else.

A Name Born From a Street Address

The story of East Laurier Running Club starts with Jean-Philippe, known to everyone as JP, and the friends and roommates who surrounded him in the early months of 2012. JP had been watching what was happening in Toronto, where the Parkdale Roadrunners were building something that felt different from a traditional running club. It was social, creative, irreverent, and genuinely community-driven. That energy was transferable. Back in Montreal, JP and his circle decided to start something of their own, and they named it after the street they lived on. East Laurier is not an official neighborhood. It does not appear on city planning maps or tourism brochures. But as a name, it carried something personal and specific, the kind of detail that signals authenticity rather than marketing. Over the years, that name has traveled far beyond the street itself. East Laurier Running Club has earned recognition in the global running community, not through a branding campaign but through the simple accumulation of Tuesday evenings, city-wide events, and a culture that people genuinely want to be part of. The founding members were experienced runners, people who took performance seriously and wanted to push each other. That competitive edge remains a thread in the club's fabric. But the story of East Laurier is also a story of opening up, of realizing that a running crew becomes richer when it stops being exclusive. The transition from a tight circle of performance-minded runners to a genuinely inclusive community did not happen overnight. It happened gradually, run by run, as new people showed up and stayed.

Run Hard Party Harder

The mantra of East Laurier Running Club is not complicated: run hard, party harder. Four words that tell you almost everything you need to know about the tone of the place. There is no tension between taking running seriously and having a very good time afterward. Both things are true simultaneously, and neither cancels the other out. This is not a crew that treats post-run socializing as an afterthought tacked onto the end of a training session. The social element is structural. It is part of why people come back. Bar Chez Baptiste functions as the club's true home base, the place where the run begins and where the evening continues long after the kilometers are done. The bar is where connections are made between a seasoned local and a visiting runner from abroad, between someone who has been coming for years and someone who showed up for the first time that night. That continuity of place matters. A crew with a consistent meeting spot builds a different kind of culture than one that drifts from location to location. East Laurier has that rootedness. The same corner, the same bar, the same evening of the week, year after year. Stability, it turns out, is one of the things that makes a running community feel safe enough to grow.

Creativity as Part of the Culture

One of the more interesting aspects of East Laurier Running Club is the way it channels the skills of its members beyond the run itself. Coaching, graphic design, event coordination, photography: these are contributions that members have brought to the table over the years, and the club has built a space where those contributions are genuinely valued. Running events that draw people from across the city do not organize themselves. Someone designs the graphics. Someone plans the route. Someone handles the logistics. At East Laurier, those someones tend to be members who see the crew as more than a weekly workout. They see it as a creative community, one where their particular skills have a home. This approach has produced city-wide events that pair serious racing with equally serious celebrations. The post-race party is not a formality. It is, in many ways, the point. The run gives you the story. The party is where you tell it. That combination, of athletic ambition and genuine festivity, gives East Laurier its particular character. It is a place where performance and joy are not in competition.

Tuesday Evenings on the East Laurier Route

The weekly run leaves Bar Chez Baptiste every Tuesday at 7:25 pm, a start time specific enough to feel intentional. There is something about that precision, not 7:30 but 7:25, that reflects the club's personality. It is slightly unconventional, slightly its own thing. The route takes runners through Montreal streets that shift in character depending on the season. In summer, the evenings are long and warm, and the city feels generous. In winter, which in Montreal means something genuinely demanding, the crew runs anyway. That willingness to show up in cold and dark is part of what binds a running community together. Anyone can run in perfect conditions. The people who come out in February, under streetlights, with their breath visible in the air, those are the ones who mean it. East Laurier has cultivated that kind of commitment without turning it into a gatekeeping exercise. The atmosphere is challenging and welcoming at the same time, which is a harder balance to strike than it might seem. Runners of different speeds and different levels of experience share the same Tuesday evening. The faster ones push. The newer ones find their footing. Everyone ends up at the bar.

Montreal as a Running City

Montreal rewards the runner who pays attention. The city offers a range of terrain and scenery that few urban environments can match. Mont-Royal Park sits in the middle of the island like a green lung, with more than thirty kilometers of trails winding through forest and open meadow, with views across the city that shift with the light and the season. The Lachine Canal stretches westward from the old port, offering a flat and scenic path along the water with the St. Lawrence River visible in the distance. The city's network of bike paths extends into neighborhoods that reward exploration on foot, from the industrial textures of Saint-Henri to the residential calm of Outremont. Montreal's streets are relatively flat by the standards of cities built on more dramatic topography, which makes it accessible for long runs and tempo work alike. But the city also offers enough variety, through parks, canal paths, riverside routes, and quiet side streets, that a runner never has to repeat the same experience. For a crew like East Laurier Running Club, the city is not just a backdrop. It is a collaborator. The routes change, the seasons change, but the act of moving through Montreal together remains the anchor.

A City Full of Running Crews

East Laurier Running Club exists within a broader ecosystem of running communities that has made Montreal one of the more interesting running cities in North America. November Project Montreal brings people together twice a week for free, high-energy workouts that require no registration and no fee, just the willingness to show up. NDG Run Rite Athletics Club offers structured programming across running, track and field, and strength training, with a focus on building athletes of every level. Yamajo Run Crew has built a community around running and socializing in equal measure, with group runs that consistently end in a post-run gathering somewhere in the city. And OutRun, founded by Alexia, has created a safe and affirming space for LGBTQ+ runners and allies, meeting at Lafontaine Park and beyond. Each of these crews brings something different to the city's running culture, and together they form a community of communities, interconnected and mutually reinforcing. East Laurier Running Club has been part of this landscape since nearly the beginning, and its longevity is its own kind of statement. Twelve years of Tuesday evenings is not an accident. It is the result of people who built something real and kept showing up to protect it.

Showing Up at Bar Chez Baptiste

If you find yourself in Montreal on a Tuesday evening with running shoes in your bag and a few hours to spare, the directions are straightforward. Bar Chez Baptiste, 7:25 pm. The East Laurier Running Club will be there. They have been there, in one form or another, since 2012, and the welcome extended to a new face has always been genuine. The crew that JP and his roommates started as a small circle of performance-focused runners has grown into something considerably more open. The performance is still there. The ambition is still there. But so is the understanding that running is a democratic sport, one that belongs to everyone willing to lace up and go. That understanding has shaped East Laurier from the beginning, and it shapes every Tuesday evening that follows. You do not need a particular pace or a particular background. You need to show up. The rest follows.