Montreal

Canada

Canada facts & history in brief

Montreal in the province of Quebec is Canada's second largest city and the world's largest French speaking city after Paris.
About two-thirds of Montreal's people speak French and have French ancestry.
Montreal is one of the world's largest inland seaports and a major business, industry, culture, education, and transportation centre.
Montreal has an unusual location.
It lies and covers about two-fifths of the Island of Montreal at the place where the St Lawrence and Ottawa rivers meet in southern Quebec and built around a mountain, on a series of terraces that rise steeply from the banks of the St Lawrence River west of Mount Royal.
The tree covered mountain, rises 233 metres in the city's centre.
On shore level are the port facilities, warehouses and wholesale trade establishments.
Old Montreal lies on the lowest terraces, near the riverfront.
Farther up are the towering office buildings and busy shops of central Montreal.
The city centre lies west of Old Montreal.
It has some of Canada's tallest buildings, busiest department stores, and finest hotels.
Underground city one of Montreal's liveliest sections lies beneath the central streets.
Montreal's metropolitan area is the second largest urban area in Canada after Toronto.
About 75 cities and towns make up the Montreal metropolitan area with about 65 per cent of the people living in this area.
The Algonkian, Huron and Iroquois lived in the area, before Europeans settled in the area.
In 1535, the French explorer Jacques Cartier sailed up the St Lawrence River to explore the Island of Montreal.
In 1642 French colonists built a fort on the site, that is now Old Montreal and established the settlement of Ville-Marie, the first permanent European settlement.
The city probably took its name from 'the mountain', named Mont Royal.
By the early 1700's, Ville-Marie had become known as Montreal.
The township soon became a major trading post, mainly in furs.
The Iroquois wanted the fur trade for themselves, and attacked the colony regularly, until the 1701 peace treaty was signed.
Montreal became a busy exploration base and commercial hub of France's North American empire, Nouvelle France.
Many of the buildings from the period can still be seen in Vieux Montreal today.
The protracted French and Indian war from 1754 to 1763, was a turning point in the French influence in North America.
In 1760, British troops captured Montreal.
The Treaty of Paris, signed in 1763, made Canada a British colony.
Montreal soon developed into a British commercial centre.
The anti British American colonies also attacked the British in and around Montreal and took Montreal, but soon were forced to retreat from Quebec City and Montreal.
In the 1900s the city continued to grow and prosper as expanding shipping and rail lines turned the city into Canada's commercial and cultural centre as many Central and Eastern European and Jewish Europeans immigrants settled here looking for work.
Jean Drapeau, a new mayor in the early 1950s drew up plans that dramatically changed the face of the city, succeeding in cleaning up the city, encouraging redevelopment and enhancing Montreal's international reputation with both the World's Fair in 1967 and the Olympic Games in 1976.
In the mid 1980s due to the uncertainties stirred up by a growing Quebec separatist movement that became a dominant political cause, Toronto had surpassed Montreal as Canada's economic capital, due to the relocation of foreign investors to less turbulent waters.
The 'Quiet Revolution' eventually gave French Québecers more say in industry and politics and saw the supremacy of the French language in the province.
Montreal's residents voted firmly to stay with Canada, although the issue is no less passionate or complex even today.
The growth of high-tech industries helped Montreal to emerge from economic hardship, and modernisation of the city took off again throughout the 1990s.
The riverfront, downtown and Vieux Port area were redeveloped and enhanced and it became a more cheerful and prosperous, culturally rich and complex city.
Canadians of French ancestry are by far the largest group in the city.
Signs throughout the city appear mainly in French.
Montreal is the headquarters of a separatist movement, which aims to make Quebec an independent nation, separate from the rest of Canada.
The school system is based on the basis of language and religion providing lessons either in French or English, Catholic and Protestant schools.
Montreal also has four universities.
The city lies in the productive farming region of Quebec and became an important food-processing, petroleum refining, clothing, tobacco products, and transportation equipment manufacturing centre.
Some of Montreal's major attractions are;
The Place Jacques Cartier, a public market since 1803, in Montreal's romantic Vieux Montreal (Old Montreal), near the plain looking Hôtel de Ville (City Hall).
The park-lined Promenade de Vieux Port (Old Port) along the waterfront and the narrow, cobblestone streets around Rue St Paul with its old stone houses and buildings that now house little restaurants, galleries and clubs are popular tourist attractions.
The Place d'Armes, is another major square in the area, featuring the magnificent Basilica Notre Dame.
Built in 1829 and big enough to hold 5000 people.
The beautiful interior houses the Chapelle du Sacré Couer (Sacred Heart Chapel).
In the west end of Vieux Montréal is the Place Royale where Ville Marie, Montreal's first small fort town, was built.
It later became a marketplace and is now the forecourt of the Veille Douane (Old Customs House), linked to the Pointe à Callière Museum of Archaeology & History, built on the exact spot of Montreal's first European settlement, in the actual ruins of buildings and an ancient sewage system.
Downtown Montreal has many skyscrapers, shops, restaurants and hotels, but it also houses the city's finest museums, several grand churches and the Chinatown district.
The Rue St. Catherine is the main shopping street and there is the huge performing arts complex, Place des Arts, home to the legendary Montreal Jazz Festival and the impressive Musée d'Art Contemporian, also the Musée des Beaux Arts (Fine Arts Museum), Montreal's main art gallery, with many great works.
McGill University is in the northern section of downtown, and it is one of Canada's most prestigious universities.
The Cathedral Basilica Marie Reine du Monde (Cathedral of Mary, Queen of the World), a small, magnificent version of St Peter's Basilica in Rome is nearby.
Not far is the Quartier Latin is the Paris-style student district with the Université du Quebec à Montreal (UQAM), with trendy bars, streetside cafés, bistros and clubs.
The Village, around Rue St. Catherine Est is the hub of the gay community.
The Plateau Mont Royal is a lively ethnic district, between Rue Sherbrooke and Blvd St Joseph with many night-clubs, interesting shops and restaurants.
The Carrée St Louis, Rue Prince Arthur and Ave Duluth are colourful neighbourhoods with many more restaurants and ornate, stylish 19th-century Victorian style homes.
The Parc des Îles in the middle of the St Lawrence, is one of Quebec's biggest attractions.
The island park was t he former site of the 1967 World's Fair.
Within the park is the large spaceship shaped Casino de Montreal, a Grand Prix racetrack that also used as an inline skate park, an Olympic rowing basin that becomes a giant skate rink in the winter, the popular Biosphere and miles of beautiful, parks, for cycling, strolling or picnicking.
Three kilometres east of downtown, is the magnificent and very popular Parc Olympique where the 1976 Montreal Olympic Games were held.
Nearby is the Montreal Tower, that you can visit with a cable car.
In the northern parts of downtown Montreal's is Little Italy, with its many good Italian restaurants.
The ethnically diverse Jean Talon Market is Montreal's largest market with over 250 stalls on a huge square, ringed by shops stocking produce year-round.
About an hour's drive north-west of Montreal is the Rouge River, one of the best white-water rivers in North America.
Montreal is well served with domestic, and overseas flights.
Also many train and bus lines connections to Canadian and US cities.
Montreal also have a good and reliable local bus, Metro and Taxi service.
Some of the outstanding local events are the Montréal Jazz Festival and the Canadian Grand Prix, held in early June.
Montréal City covers an area of 158 sq km with a population of around 4 million.

We had a major Tiki tour of the university after our arrival from Toronto.
The University only a short distance from the Bus Depot and Hui Chin and I were looking for an Internet Café or similar.
It was time to touch base with Endre, home in Auckland.
Well we were sent this way, that way, up the stairs, down the stairs, until a nice young lady pointed to some computers in the Library and spoilt our victory of finding it, where's your I.D. (Student I.D., I suppose).
Well, no internet.
So off we went walking and trying to find the far end of Rue Sainte-Catherine.
Boy, oh boy, it's not half long!
It was dark and we were fair dead on our feet when we got back to our hostel, the Le Gite du Parc Lafontaine, near the Bus Depot.
We found an Internet Café too and a 'Subway' (The sandwich place of course) too, we go to like them for their freshness, variety and nutritional value.
The Rue Sainte-Catherine is long, long street and its beginning is a bit seedy, or the beginning where we started off, than it gets very posh, than seedy, than posh again.
We did like Montreal, very nice and friendly place.
Soon we would be on our way to Ottawa, another city another lot of adventure.

You can click on these photos for an enlargement.

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