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Montreal in the Province of Quebec, Canada
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Montreal, or Montréal in French, is the second-largest city in Canada and the largest city in the province of Quebec. Originally
called Ville-Marie ('City of Mary'), some historians think the city takes its present name from the Mont Réal (as it was pronounced
in Middle French, or Mont Royal / Mount Royal in present French), the three-head hill at the heart of the city, whose name was also
initially given to the island on which the city is located.
Formerly the largest city in Canada, it is now positioning itself as the second-largest French-speaking city in the world. As of the
2006 Canadian Census, 1,620,693 people resided in the city of Montreal proper, of which roughly half live and work in English, half
in French. The population of the Montreal Census Metropolitan Area (also known as Greater Montreal Area) was 3,635,571 at the same
2006 census. This larger census metropolitan area, which includes all the former suburbs that were swallowed up by the mega city,
is predominantly French-speaking, bringing the average figure for "language most spoken at home" to 70.5% of the population
(as of 2006 census). In 2007, Montreal was ranked as the 10th cleanest city in the world.
Quebec Tourism Guide
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Quebec Tourism Guide
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HISTORY
Archeological evidence suggests that various nomadic native peoples had occupied the island of Montreal for at least 2,000 years
before the arrival of Europeans.[9] With the development of the maize horticulture, the St. Lawrence Iroquoians established the village
of Hochelaga at the foot of the Mount Royal. The French explorer Jacques Cartier visited Hochelaga on October 2, 1535, claiming the
St. Lawrence Valley for France. He estimated the population to be "over a thousand".
Seventy years later, French explorer Samuel de Champlain reported that the St. Lawrence Iroquoians and their settlements had disappeared
altogether from the St. Lawrence valley, likely due to inter-tribe wars, European diseases, and out-migration. Champlain established
in 1611 a fur trading post on the Island of Montreal, on a site initially named La Place Royale, at the confluence of Saint-Pierre
river and St-Lawrence river, where present-day Pointe-à-Callière stands.
In 1639, Jérôme Le Royer de La Dauversière obtained the Seigneurial title to the Island of Montreal in the name of the Société de
Notre-Dame de Montréal to establish a Roman Catholic mission for evangelizing natives. Ville-Marie, the first permanent French settlement
on the Island, was founded in 1642 at Pointe-à-Callière. Paul Chomedey de Maisonneuve would act as governor of the colony, and Jeanne
Mance built the Hôtel-Dieu, Montreal's first hospital.
By 1651, Ville-Marie had been reduced to less than 50 inhabitants by relentless attacks by Iroquois. Maisonneuve returned to France
that year with the intention of recruiting 100 men to bolster the failing colony. He had already decided that should he fail to recruit
these settlers, he would abandon Ville-Marie and move everyone back downriver to Quebec City. (Even 10 years after its founding, the
people of Quebec City still thought of Montréal as "une folle entreprise" - a crazy undertaking.) These recruits arrived on 16th November
1653 and essentially guaranteed the evolution of Ville Marie and of all New France. Marguerite Bourgeoys would found the Congrégation de
Notre-Dame, Montreal's first school, in 1653. In 1663, the Sulpician seminary became the new Seigneur of the island.
Complementing its missionary origins, Ville-Marie became a centre for the fur trade and a base for further French exploration in North
America. The bloody French and Iroquois Wars would threaten the survival of Ville-Marie until a peace treaty (see the Great Peace of
Montreal was signed at Montreal in 1701. With the Great Peace, Montreal and the surrounding seigneuries nearby (Terrebonne, Lachenaie,
Boucherville, Lachine, Longueuil, ...) could develop without the fear of Iroquois raids. Ville-Marie remained a French colony until 1760,
when Pierre François de Rigaud, Marquis de Vaudreuil-Cavagnal surrendered it to the British army under Jeffrey Amherst during the French
and Indian War.
The Treaty of Paris in 1763 ended the Seven Years' War and ceded eastern New France to the Kingdom of Great Britain. American
Revolutionists under General Richard Montgomery briefly captured the city during the 1775 invasion of Canada.
Montreal was incorporated as a city in 1832. The opening of the Lachine Canal permitted ships to bypass the unnavigable Lachine Rapids,
while the construction of the Victoria Bridge established Montreal as a major railway hub. These linked the established Port of Montréal
with continental markets and spawned rapid industrialization during the mid 1800s. The economic boom attracted French Canadian labourers
from the surrounding countryside to factories in satellite cities such as Saint-Henri and Maisonneuve. Irish immigrants settled in tough
working class neighbourhoods such as Point Saint Charles and Griffintown, making English and French linguistic groups roughly equal in
size. By 1852, Montreal had 60,000 inhabitants; by 1860, it was the largest city in British North America and the undisputed economic
and cultural centre of Canada.
Montreal was the capital of the Province of Canada from 1844 to 1849, but lost its status when a Tory mob burnt down the Parliament
building to protest passage of the Rebellion Losses Bill.
After World War I, the Prohibition movement in the United States turned Montreal into a haven for Americans looking for alcohol. Montreal
became known as Sin City, due to the abundance of alcohol and burlesque shows, unrivaled in North America at this time. Unemployment
remained high in the city, and was exacerbated by the Stock Market Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression. Canada began to recover
from the Great Depression in the mid-1930s, when skyscrapers such as the Sun Life Building began to appear.
During World War II, Mayor Camillien Houde protested against conscription and urged Montrealers to disobey the federal government's
registry of all men and women. Ottawa was furious over Houde's insubordination and held him in a prison camp until 1944, when the
government was forced to institute conscription (see Conscription Crisis of 1944).
After Montreal's population surpassed one million in the early 1950s, Mayor Jean Drapeau laid down plans for the future development of
the city. These plans included a new public-transit system and an underground city, the expansion of Montreal's harbour, and the
opening of the Saint Lawrence Seaway. Tall, new buildings replaced old ones in this time period, including Montreal's two tallest
skyscrapers up to then: the 43-storey Place Ville-Marie and the 47-story Tour de la Bourse. Two new museums were also built, and in 1966,
the Montreal Metro system opened, along with several new expressways.
The city's international status was cemented by Expo 67 and the 1976 Summer Olympics.
The mid-1970s ushered in a period of wide-ranging social and political changes, stemming in large part from the concerns of the
French-Canadian majority about the conservation of their culture and language, given the traditional predominance of the English-Canadian
minority in the business arena. The October Crisis and the election of the separatist political party, the Parti Québécois, resulted in
major political, ethnic and linguistic shifts. The extent of the transition was greater than the norm for major urban centres, with social
and economic impacts, as a significant number of (mostly Anglophone) Montrealers, as well as businesses, migrated to other provinces,
away from an uncertain political climate. Bill 101 was passed in 1977 and gave primacy to French as Quebec's (and Montreal's) only official
language for government, the main language of business and culture, and enforced the exclusive use of French for public signage and
business communication.
During the 1980s and early 1990s, Montreal experienced a slower rate of economic growth than many other major Canadian cities. By the
late 1990s, however, Montreal's economic climate had improved, as new firms and institutions began to fill the traditional business and
financial niches. As the city celebrated its 350th anniversary in 1992, construction began on two new skyscrapers : 1000 de La Gauchetière
and 1250 René-Lévesque. Montreal's improving economic conditions allowed further enhancements of the city infrastructure, with the
expansion of the metro system, construction of new skyscrapers and the development of new highways including the start of a ring road
around the island. The city also attracted several international organisations to move their secretariats into Montreal's Quartier
International: International Air Transport Association (IATA), International Council of Societies of Industrial Design (Icsid),
International Council of Graphic Design Associations (Icograda), International Bureau for Children's Rights (IBCR), International
Centre for the Prevention of Crime (ICPC) and the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS). With developments such as Centre de Commerce
Mondial (World Trade Centre), Quartier International, Square Cartier, and proposed revitalization of the harborfront, the city is
regaining its international position as a world class city.
Montreal was merged with the 27 surrounding municipalities on the Island of Montreal on 1 January 2002. The merger created a unified city
of Montreal which covered the entire island of Montreal. This move proved unpopular, and several former municipalities, totalling 13%
of the population of the island, voted to leave the newly unified city in separate referendums in June 2004. The demerger took place
on 1 January 2006, leaving 15 municipalities on the island, including Montreal.
In 2006, the city was recognized by the international design community as a UNESCO City of Design, one of the three world design capitals.
GEOGRAPHY
Montreal is located in the southwest of the province of Quebec, approximately 275 kilometres (168 miles) southwest of Quebec City,
the provincial capital, and 190 kilometres (118 mi) east of Ottawa, the federal capital. It also lies 550 kilometres (335 mi) northeast
of Toronto, and 625 kilometres (380 mi) directly north of New York City.
The city rests on the Island of Montreal at the confluence of the Saint Lawrence and Ottawa Rivers. The port of Montreal lies at one
end of the Saint Lawrence Seaway, which is the river gateway that stretches from the Great Lakes into the Atlantic Ocean. Montreal is
bordered by the St. Lawrence river on its south side, and by the Rivière des Prairies on the north. The city is named after the most
prominent geographical feature on the island, a three-head hill called Mount Royal.
Montreal lies at the confluence of several climatic regions. Usually, the climate is classified as humid continental or hemiboreal
(Köppen climate classification Dfb).
Precipitation is abundant with an average snowfall of 2.25 metres (84 in) per year in the winter. Regular rainfall throughout the year
averages 900 mm (35.3 in). Summer is the wettest season statistically, but it is also the sunniest.
The coldest month of the year is January which has a daily average temperature of -10.4 °C (13 °F) — averaging a daily low of -14.9 °C
(5.2 °F), colder than either Moscow (-10 °C) or Saint Petersburg (-6 °C). Due to wind chill, the perceived temperature can be much
lower than the actual temperature and wind chill factor is often included in Montreal weather forecasts. The warmest month is July which
has an average daily high of 26.3 °C (79.3 °F); lower nighttime temperatures make an average of 20.9 °C (69.6 °F) thus air exchangers
often achieve the same result as air conditioners. The lowest temperature ever recorded was -37.8 °C (-36.0 °F) on 15 January 1957 and
the highest temperature ever was 37.6 °C (99.7 °F) on 1 August 1975. High humidity is common in the summer which makes the perceived
temperature higher than the actual temperature. In spring and autumn, rainfall averages between 55 and 94 millimetres (2.2 and 3.7 in)
a month. Some snow in spring and autumn is normal. Similarly, late heat waves as well as "Indian summers" are a regular feature of the
climate.
2006 was noted as the only year in the history of Montreal when there was more rain than there was snow. There were 122.3 cm (48.1 in)
of snow, and there were 1,225.0 mm (48.2 in) of rain. That year, Montreal received more rain than Vancouver, British Columbia.
DEMOGRAPHICS
According to Statistics Canada, at the 2006 Canadian census the city of Montreal proper had 1,620,693 inhabitants. However, 3,635,571
lived in the Montreal Census Metropolitan Area (CMA) at the same 2006 census, up from 3,451,027 at the 2001 census (within 2006 CMA
boundaries), which means a population growth of +1.05% per year between 2001 and 2006. In the 2001 census, children under 14 years of age
(618,855) constituted 18.06 percent, while inhabitants over 65 years of age (442,720) numbered 12.92 percent of the total population.
Some 13.55 percent of the population are member of a visible minority (non-white) group. Canadians of African descent contribute to the
largest visible minority group in greater Montreal, numbering some 160,000 (4.5% of Montreal inhabitants), which is the second-largest
community of African-origin people in Canada, after Toronto. Other groups, such as Arabs, Latin American, South Asian, and Chinese are
also large in number. (Chart on ethnicity on the left includes multiple responses.)
In terms of first language learned (in infancy), the 2001 census reported that on the island of Montreal itself, 53% spoke French as a
first language, followed by English at 18%. The remaining 29% percentage is made up of many languages including Italian (3.6%),
Arabic (2.1%), Spanish (1.9%), Chinese (1.24%), Greek (1.21%), Creole (predominantly of Haitian origin) (1.02%), Portuguese (0.86%),
Romanian (0.70%), Vietnamese (0.60%), and Polish (0.40%). In terms of additional languages spoken, a unique feature of Montreal throughout
Canada, noted by Statistics Canada, is the working knowledge of both French and English by most of its residents. For this reason,
it is sometimes considered a bilingual city rather than a French speaking city.
The city of Montreal is overwhelmingly Roman Catholic, however, church attendance in Quebec is among the lowest in Canada. Historically
Montreal has been a centre of Catholicism in North America with its numerous seminaries and churches, including the Notre-Dame Basilica,
the Cathédrale Marie-Reine-du-Monde, and Saint Joseph's Oratory. Some 84.56 percent of the total population is Christian,[31] largely
Roman Catholic (74.51%), which is largely due to French, Irish, and Italian origins. Protestants which include Anglican, United Church,
Lutheran and other number 7.02%, while the remaining 3.03% consists mostly of Orthodox Christians, fuelled by a large Greek population.
Due to the large number of non-European cultures, there is a diversity of non-Christian religions. Islam is the largest non-Christian group,
with some 100,000 members, the second-largest concentration of Muslims in Canada, constituting 2.96%. The Jewish community in Montreal has a
population of 93,000. In cities such as Cote St. Luc and Hampstead, Jewish people constitute the majority,[32] or a substantial part of the
population. As recently as the 1960s the Jewish community was as high as 130,000. Political and economic uncertainties led many to leave
Montreal and the province of Quebec.
Source: Wikipedia
Quebec Tourism Guide
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