Under what circumstances did Canadian municipalities, charged with ensuring the existence of services which encouraged the development of real property, come to be involved in the field of culture and leisure? By examining the process through which the Municipal Library and the Botanical Garden were established in Montreal, this article attempts to answer this question. Because these projects constituted precedents in relation to the usual areas of Canadian municipal intervention, they provoked vigorous debate. Each in their own way, the projects served to call into question the definition of public culture and the democratization of knowledge. They also raised the equally contentious issue of the role of municipal government in the fields of leisure and culture.