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Originally called Ville-Marie, or "City of Mary",[8] it is named after Mount Royal,[9] the triple-peaked hill in the heart of the city. According to one theory, the name derives from mont Réal, as it was spelled in Middle French (Mont Royal in modern French), but Cartier's 1535 diary entry, naming the mountain, refers to "le mont Royal". Another argument, mentioned by the Government of Canada on its web site concerning Canadian place names, is that the name was adopted as it is written nowadays because an early map of 1556 used the Italian name of the mountain, "Monte Real".[27] History Main article: History of Montreal See also: Timeline of Montreal history Pre-European contact Archaeological evidence demonstrates that First Nations native people occupied the island of Montreal as early as 4,000 years ago.[28] By the year AD 1000, they had started to cultivate maize. Within a few hundred years, they had built fortified villages.[29] The Saint Lawrence Iroquoians, a people distinct from the Iroquois nations of the Haudenosaunee then based in present-day New York, established the village of Hochelaga at the foot of Mount Royal two centuries before the French arrived. Archeologists have found evidence of their habitation there and at other locations in the valley since at least the 14th century.[30] The French explorer Jacques Cartier visited Hochelaga on October 2, 1535, and estimated the population of the native people at Hochelaga to be "over a thousand people".[30] La Place Royale Seventy years later, the French explorer Samuel de Champlain reported that the St Lawrence Iroquoians and their settlements had disappeared altogether from the St Lawrence valley. This is believed due to outmigration, epidemic of European diseases, or intertribal wars.[30][31] In 1611 Champlain established a fur trading post on the Island of Montreal, on a site initially named La Place Royale. At the confluence of Petite Rivière and St. Lawrence River, it is where present-day Pointe-à-Callière stands.[32] 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 to evangelize natives. Ville-Marie Main article: Fort Ville-Marie Dauversiere hired Paul Chomedey de Maisonneuve, then 30, to lead a group of colonists to build a mission on his new seigneury. The colonists left France in 1641 for Quebec, and arrived on the island the following year. On May 17, 1642, Ville-Marie was founded on the southern shore of Montreal island, with Maisonneuve as its first governor. The settlement included a chapel and a hospital, under the command of Jeanne Mance.[33] By 1643, Ville-Marie had already been hit by Iroquois raids. In the spring of 1651, the Iroquois attacks became so frequent and so violent that Ville-Marie thought its end had come. Maisonneuve made all the settlers take refuge in the fort. By 1652, the colony at Montreal had been so reduced that he was forced to return to France to raise 100 volunteers to go with him to the colony the following year. If the effort had failed, Montreal was to be abandoned and the survivors re-located downriver to Quebec City. Before these 100 arrived in the fall of 1653, the population of Montreal was barely 50 people. By 1685, Ville-Marie was home to some 600 colonists, most of them living in modest wooden houses. Ville-Marie became a centre for the fur trade and a base for further French exploration.[33] In 1689, the English-allied Iroquois attacked Lachine on the Island of Montreal, committing the worst massacre in the history of New France.[34] By the early 18th century, the Sulpician Order was established there. To encourage French settlement, they wanted the Mohawk to move away from the fur trading post at Ville-Marie. They had a mission village, known as Kahnewake, south of the St Lawrence River. The fathers persuaded some Mohawk to make a new settlement at their former hunting grounds north of the Ottawa River. This became Kanesatake.[35] In 1745 several Mohawk families moved upriver to create another settlement, known as Akwesasne. All three are now Mohawk reserves in Canada. The Canadian territory was ruled as a French colony until 1760, when it was surrendered to Great Britain after the Seven Years' War.[36] Ville-Marie was the name for the settlement that appeared in all official documents until 1705, when Montreal appeared for the first time, although people referred to the "Island of Montreal" long before then.[37] Modern history Montreal was incorporated as a city in 1832.[38] The opening of the Lachine Canal permitted ships to bypass the unnavigable Lachine Rapids,[39] while the construction of the Victoria Bridge established Montreal as a major railway hub. The leaders of Montreal's business community had started to build their homes in the Golden Square Mile from about 1850. By 1860, it was the largest municipality in British North America and the undisputed economic and cultural centre of Canada.[40][41] The Montreal Harbour in 1889. 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 the passage of the Rebellion Losses Bill.[42] For strategic reasons, the government established Ottawa as the capital, as it was located more in the interior of the nation. Saint Jacques Street (formerly St. James Street), in 1910 An Internment camp was set up at Immigration Hall in Montreal from August 1914 to November 1918.[43] After World War I, the Prohibition movement in the United States led to Montreal becoming a destination for Americans looking for alcohol.[44] Unemployment remained high in the city, and was exacerbated by the Stock Market Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression.[45] 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.[46] The government at Ottawa was furious over Houde's stand and held him at a prison camp until 1944.[47] That year the government decided to institute conscription to be able to expand the armed forces. (see Conscription Crisis of 1944).[46] By 1951, Montreal's population had surpassed one million.[48] The Saint Lawrence Seaway opened in 1959, allowing vessels to bypass Montreal. In time this development led to the end of the city's economic dominance as businesses moved to other areas.[49] During the 1960s there was continued growth, including the World's Fair known as Expo 67, and the construction of Canada's tallest skyscrapers, new expressways and the subway system known as the Montreal Metro. The 1970s ushered in a period of wide-ranging social and political changes, stemming largely from the concerns of the French-speaking majority about the conservation of their culture and language, given the traditional predominance of the English-Canadian minority in the business arena.[50] The October Crisis and the 1976 election of the Parti Québécois, supporting sovereign status for Quebec, resulted in the departure of many businesses and people from the city.[51] In 1976, Montreal was the host of the Olympics.[52] During the 1980s and early 1990s, Montreal experienced a slower rate of economic growth than many other major Canadian cities. Montreal was merged with the 27 surrounding municipalities on the Island of Montreal on January 1, 2002, creating a unified city covering the entire island. There was great resistance from the suburbs to the merger, with the perception being that it was forced on the mostly English suburbs by the Parti Québécois. As expected, this move proved unpopular and several mergers were later rescinded. Several former municipalities, totaling 13% of the population of the island, voted to leave the unified city in separate referendums in June 2004. The demerger took place on January 1, 2006, leaving 15 municipalities on the island, including Montreal. De-merged municipalities remain affiliated with the city through an agglomeration council that collects taxes from them to pay for numerous shared services.[53] The 21st century has brought with it a revival of the city's economic and cultural landscape. The construction of new residential skyscrapers, two super-hospitals (the Centre hospitalier de l'Université de Montréal and McGill University Health Centre), the creation of the Quartier des Spectacles, reconstruction of the Turcot Interchange, reconfiguration of the Decarie and Dorval interchanges, gentrification of Griffintown, subway line extensions and the purchase of new subway cars, the complete revitalization and expansion of Montreal-Trudeau International Airport, the completion of Quebec Autoroute 30, and the construction of a new toll bridge to Laval are helping Montreal continue to grow. Montreal (Listeni/ˌmʌntriːˈɒl/;[6] French: Montréal ,[7] pronounced: [mɔ̃ʁeal] ( listen)) is a city in the Canadian province of Quebec. It is the largest city in the province, the second-largest in Canada and the 9th-largest in North America. Originally called Ville-Marie, or "City of Mary",[8] it is named after Mount Royal,[9] the triple-peaked hill in the heart of the city. The city is on the Island of Montreal, which took its name from the same source as the city,[10][11] and a few much smaller peripheral islands, the largest of which is Île Bizard. In 2011 the city had a population of 1,649,519.[2] Montreal's metropolitan area (CMA) (land area 4,259 square kilometres (1,644 sq mi)) had a population of 3,824,221[4] and a population of 1,886,481 in the urban agglomeration, all of the municipalities on the Island of Montreal included.[12] French is the city's official language[13][14] and is the language spoken at home, as Québécois French, by 56.9% of the population of the city, followed by English at 18.6% and 19.8% other languages (in the 2006 census).[15] In the larger Montreal Census Metropolitan Area, 67.9% of the population speaks French at home, compared to 16.5% who speak English.[16] Montreal is one of the most bilingual cities in Quebec and Canada with 56% of the population able to speak both English and French.[17] Montreal is the second largest primarily French-speaking city in the world, after Paris.[18][19][20] [21] Montreal was named a UNESCO City of Design.[22][23] Historically the commercial capital of Canada, it was surpassed in population and economic strength by Toronto in the 1970s. It remains an important centre of commerce, aerospace, finance, pharmaceuticals, technology, design, culture, tourism, gaming, film and world affairs.[24] In 2009, Montreal was named North America's leading host city for international association events, according to the 2009 preliminary rankings of the International Congress and Convention Association (ICCA).[25] In 2012, QS World University Rankings ranked Montreal the 10th-best place in the world to be a university student.[26] |
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