Montreal’s Notman House enters final funding stage
By Francis Moran 
For the past couple of years, with more than a little envy that we haven’t a similar facility here in Ottawa, I have been watching Notman House in Montreal slowly coalesce as a critical locus for that city’s startup, entrepreneur and diverse geek, maker and hacker communities.
For those not familiar with Notman, it’s a rambling old rabbit warren of a place that was built in the mid-1800s and, until 1991, was operated as a hospital for the terminally ill. More recently, the OSMO Foundation, a group of community-minded people, has opened the house up to the broader startup community. In the last year alone, the house has hosted more than 125 events, including user group meet-ups hackathons, and learning events, been home to over 50 startups, and been visited by over 10,000 entrepreneurs, investors, students and others involved in the growing Montreal tech scene. The OSMO Foundation has been trying to raise the funds necessary to build and refurbish both the main building and a large, even more dilapidated, brick building behind it, and operate them as a not-for-profit hub for Montreal’s startup community. This week, they announced they are within $100,000 of completing their fundraising goal, and they’re asking for community support to get them over the finish line.
