Montreal
Montreal
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|---|---|
| Ville de Montréal (French) | |
 Logo | |
| Nicknames: | |
| Motto: Concordia Salus ("well-being through harmony") | |
 Interactive map of Montreal | |
  Montreal Location within Canada  Montreal Location within Quebec  Montreal Montreal (North America) | |
| Coordinates: 45°30′32″N 73°33′15″W / 45.50889°N 73.55417°W[5] | |
| Country | Canada |
| Province | Quebec |
| Region / Urban agglomeration | Montreal |
| Founded | May 17, 1642 |
| Incorporated | 1832 |
| Constituted | January 1, 2002 |
| Named for | Mount Royal |
| Boroughs | List
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| Government | |
| • Type | Montreal City Council |
| • Mayor | Soraya Martinez Ferrada |
| • Federal riding | List |
| • Provincial riding | List |
| • MPs | List of MPs |
| Area (2021)[8] | |
| • Land | 364.74 km2 (140.83 sq mi) |
| • Population centre | 1,382.47 km2 (533.77 sq mi) |
| • Census metropolitan area | 4,670.10 km2 (1,803.14 sq mi) |
| Highest elevation | 233 m (764 ft) |
| Lowest elevation | 6 m (20 ft) |
| Population (2021)[8] | |
• Total | 1,762,949 (2nd) |
| • Density | 4,833.5/km2 (12,519/sq mi) |
| • PC | 3,675,219 (2nd) |
| • PC density | 2,658.5/km2 (6,885/sq mi) |
| • CMA | 4,291,732 (2nd) |
| • CMA density | 919/km2 (2,380/sq mi) |
| Demonyms | Montrealer Montréalais(e)[9] |
| GDP (Nominal, 2021) | |
| • CMA | CA$253.9 billion (US$203.12 billion) |
| • Per capita | CA$58,636 (US$46,908.8) |
| Time zone | UTC– 05:00 (EST) |
| • Summer (DST) | UTC– 04:00 (EDT) |
| Postal codes |
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| Area codes | 514, 438 and 263 |
| Police | SPVM |
| Website | montreal |
Montreal[note 1] (French: Montréal)[note 2] is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest in Canada, and the eighth-largest in North America. Founded in 1642 as Ville-Marie, or "City of Mary",[14] it now takes its name from Mount Royal,[15] the triple-peaked mountain around which the early settlement was built.[16] The city is centred on the Island of Montreal[17][18] and a few, much smaller, peripheral islands, the largest of which is Île Bizard. It lies 196 kilometres (122 mi) east of the national capital, Ottawa, and 258 kilometres (160 mi) southwest of the provincial capital, Quebec City.
As of the 2021 Canadian census[update], the city had a population of 1,762,949 and a metropolitan population of 4,291,732,[8] making it the second-largest metropolitan area in Canada after Toronto. French is the city's official language.[19][20] In 2021, 85.7% of the population of the city of Montreal considered themselves fluent in French while 90.2% could speak it in the metropolitan area.[21][22] Montreal is one of the most bilingual cities in Quebec and Canada, with 58.5% of the population able to speak both French and English.[23] Montreal is the largest primarily French speaking city in the Americas.
Historically the commercial capital of Canada, Montreal was surpassed in population and economic strength by Toronto in the 1970s.[24] It remains an important centre of art, culture, literature, film and television, music, commerce, aerospace, transport, finance, pharmaceuticals, technology, design, education, tourism, food, fashion, video game development, and world affairs. Montreal is the location of the headquarters of the International Civil Aviation Organization, and was named a UNESCO City of Design in 2006.[25][26] In 2017, Montreal was ranked the 12th-most livable city in the world by the Economist Intelligence Unit in its annual Global Liveability Ranking,[27] although its ranking dropped to 40th in the 2021 index, primarily due to stress on the healthcare system caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.[28] It is regularly ranked as one of the ten best cities in the world to be a university student in the QS World University Rankings.[29] In 2018, Montreal was ranked as a global city.[30]
Montreal has hosted numerous important international events, including the 1967 International and Universal Exposition, and is the only Canadian city to have hosted the Summer Olympics, having done so in 1976.[31][32] The city hosts the Canadian Grand Prix of Formula One;[33] the Montreal International Jazz Festival,[34] the largest jazz festival in the world;[35] the Just for Laughs festival, the largest comedy festival in the world;[36] and Les Francos de Montréal, the largest French-language music festival in the world.[37] In sports, it is home to multiple professional teams, most notably the Canadiens of the National Hockey League, who have won the Stanley Cup a record 24 times.
Etymology and original names
[edit]In the Ojibwe language, the land is called Mooniyaang[38] or Moon’yaang[39] which was "the first stopping place" in the Ojibwe migration story as related in the seven fires prophecy.
In the Mohawk language, the land is called Tiohtià:ke.[40][41][42][43] This is an abbreviation of Teionihtiohtiá:kon, which loosely translates as "where the group divided/parted ways".[42][44]
French settlers from La Flèche in the Loire Valley first named their new town, founded in 1642, Ville Marie ("City of Mary"),[14] named for the Virgin Mary.[45]
The current form of the name, Montréal, is generally thought to be derived from Mount Royal (Mont Royal in French),[15][46] the triple-peaked hill in the heart of the city. There are multiple explanations for how Mont Royal became Montréal. In 16th-century French, the forms réal and royal were used interchangeably, so Montréal could simply be a variant of Mont Royal.[47][48][49] In the second explanation, the name came from an Italian translation. Venetian geographer Giovanni Battista Ramusio used the name Monte Real to designate Mount Royal in his 1556 map of the region.[46] However, this explanation is disputed by the Commission de toponymie du Québec.[48]
In English, the accent mark is often omitted (Montreal); however, officially, the name includes the accent mark (Montréal),[50][51][a] even though English rarely uses diacritical marks.[53]
François de Belleforest was the first to use the form Montréal with reference to the entire region in 1575.[46]
History
[edit]Pre-European contact
[edit]
Archaeological evidence in the region indicates that First Nations native people occupied the island of Montreal as early as 4,000 years ago.[54] By the year AD 1000, they had started to cultivate maize. Within a few hundred years, they had built fortified villages.[55] The Saint Lawrence Iroquoians, an ethnically and culturally distinct group 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.[56] 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".[56]
Early European settlement (1600–1760)
[edit]In 1603, 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 to be due to outmigration, epidemics of European diseases, or intertribal wars.[56][57] 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 Riviere and St. Lawrence River, it is where present-day Pointe-à-Callière stands.[58] On his 1616 map, Champlain named the island Lille de Villemenon in honour of the sieur de Villemenon, a French dignitary who was seeking the viceroyship of New France.[59] In 1639, Jérôme Le Royer de La Dauversière obtained the Seigneurial title to the Island of Montreal in the name of the Notre Dame Society of Montreal to establish a Roman Catholic mission to evangelize natives.
Dauversière hired Paul Chomedey de Maisonneuve, then age 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.[60] By 1643, Ville-Marie had come under Iroquois raids. In 1652, Maisonneuve returned to France to raise 100 volunteers to bolster the colonial population. 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 exploration.[60] In 1689, the English-allied Iroquois attacked Lachine on the Island of Montreal, committing the worst massacre in the history of New France.[61] By the early 18th century, the Sulpician Order was established there. To encourage French settlement, it wanted the Mohawk to move away from the fur trading post at Ville-Marie. It 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.[62] 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 Montreal fell to a British offensive during the Seven Years' War. The colony then surrendered to Great Britain.