Twin towns and sister cities

Pre-European contact

Archaeological evidence demonstrates that First Nations native people occupied the island of Montreal as early as 4,000 years ago. 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. The French explorerJacques Cartier visited Hochelaga on October 2, 1535, and estimated the population of the native people at Hochelaga to be "over a thousand people".

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. In 1611 Champlain established a fur trading post on the Island of Montreal, on a site initially named La Place Royale. 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

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. 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. By the early 18th century, the Sulpician Order was established there. 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.

Modern history

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. 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.

Architecture

For over a century and a half, Montreal was the industrial and financial centre of Canada. The variety of buildings included factories, elevators, warehouses, mills, and refineries which today provide a legacy of historic and architectural interest, especially in the downtown area and the Old Port area. There are 50 National Historic Sites of Canada, more than any other city.

There are many historic buildings in Old Montreal still in their original form: Notre-Dame de Montréal Basilica, Bonsecours Market, and the impressive 19th‑century headquarters of all major Canadian banks on St. James Street(French: Rue Saint Jacques). Saint Joseph's Oratory, completed in 1967, Ernest Cormier's Art Deco Université de Montréal main building, the landmark Place Ville Marie office tower, the controversial Olympic Stadium and surrounding structures, are but a few notable examples of 20th-century architecture.

The Underground City (officially RÉSO or La Ville Souterraine in French) is the set of interconnected complexes (both above and below ground) in and around Downtown.

Old Montreal

Old Montreal (French: Vieux-Montréal) is a historic area southeast of downtown containing many attractions such as the Old Port of Montreal, Place Jacques-Cartier, Montreal City Hall, the Bonsecours Market, Place d'Armes, Pointe-à-Callière Museum, the Notre-Dame de Montréal Basilica, and the Montreal Science Centre.

Architecture and cobbled streets in Old Montreal have been maintained or restored and are frequented by horse-drawn calèches carrying tourists. Old Montreal is accessible from the downtown core via theunderground city and is served by several STM bus routes and metro stations, ferries to the South Shore and a network of bicycle paths.

The riverside area adjacent to Old Montreal is known as the Old Port. The Old Port was the former site of the worldwide Port of Montreal, but its shipping operations have been moved further east to its current larger site, leaving the former location as a recreational and historical area maintained by Parks Canada. The new Port of Montreal is now Canada's largest container port and the largest inland port on Earth.^[81]

Mount Royal

The mountain is the site of Mount Royal Park (French: Parc du Mont-Royal), one of Montreal's largest greenspaces. The park, most of which is wooded, was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, who also designed New York's Central Park, and was inaugurated in 1876.

The park contains two belvederes, the more prominent of which is the Kondiaronk Belvedere, a semicircular plaza with a chalet, overlooking Downtown Montreal. Other features of the park are Beaver Lake, a small man-made lake, a short ski slope, a sculpture garden, Smith House, an interpretive centre, and a well-known monument to Sir George-Étienne Cartier. The park hosts athletic, tourist and cultural activities.

The mountain is home to two major cemeteries, Notre-Dame-des-Neiges (founded in 1854) and Mount Royal (1852). Mount Royal Cemetery is a 165 acres (67 ha) terraced cemetery on the north slope of Mount Royal in the borough of Outremont. Notre Dame des Neiges Cemetery is much larger, predominantly French-Canadian and officially Catholic.^[83] More than 900,000 people are buried there.^[84]

Demographics

People of European ethnicities formed the largest cluster of ethnic groups. The largest reported European ethnicities in the 2006 census were French 23%, Italians 10%, Irish 5%, English 4%, Scottish 3%, and Spanish 2%.^[91]Some 26% of the population of Montreal and 16.5% that of Greater Montreal, are members of a visible minority (non-white) group,^[92] up from 5.2% in 1981.^[93]

Visible minorities comprised 31.7% of the population in the 2011 census. The five most numerous visible minorities are Blacks (9.1%), Arabs (6.4%), Latin Americans (4.2%), South Asians (3.3%), and Chinese (2.9%).^[94] Visible minorities are defined by the Canadian Employment Equity Act as "persons, other than Aboriginals, who are non-white in colour."^[95]

Culture

Montreal was referred to as "Canada's Cultural Capital" by Monocle magazine. The city is Canada's centre for French language television productions, radio, theatre, film, multimedia, and print publishing. Montreal's many cultural communities have given it a distinct local culture.

As a North American city, Montreal shares many cultural characteristics with the rest of the continent. It has a tradition of producing both jazz and rock music. The city has also produced much talent in the fields of visual arts, theatre, music, and dance. Yet, being at the confluence of the French and the English traditions, Montreal has developed a unique and distinguished cultural face. Another distinctive characteristic of cultural life is the animation of its downtown, particularly during summer, prompted by cultural and social events, particularly festivals. The city's largest festival is the Just for Laughs comedy festival, which is the largest in the world of its kind. Other popular festivals include the Montreal International Jazz Festival, Montreal World Film Festival,Les FrancoFolies de Montréal, Nuits d'Afrique, Pop Montreal, Divers/Cité, Fierté Montréal and the Montreal Fireworks Festival.

A cultural heart of classical art and the venue for many summer festivals, the Place des Arts is a complex of different concert and theatre halls surrounding a large square in the eastern portion of downtown. Place des Arts has the headquarters of one of the world's foremost orchestras, the Montreal Symphony Orchestra. The Orchestre Métropolitain du Grand Montréal and the chamber orchestra I Musici de Montréal are two other well-regarded Montreal orchestras. Also performing at Place des Arts are the Opéra de Montréal and the city's chief ballet companyLes Grands Ballets Canadiens. Internationally recognized avant-garde dance troupes such as Compagnie Marie Chouinard, La La La Human Steps, O Vertigo, and the Fondation Jean-Pierre Perreault have toured the world and worked with international popular artists on videos and concerts. The unique choreography of these troupes has paved the way for the success of the world-renowned Cirque du Soleil.

Nicknamed la ville aux cent clochers (the city of a hundred steeples), Montreal is renowned for its churches. As Mark Twain noted, "This is the first time I was ever in a city where you couldn't throw a brick without breaking a church window."^[149] The city has four Roman Catholic basilicas: Mary, Queen of the World Cathedral, the aforementioned Notre-Dame Basilica, St Patrick's Basilica, and Saint Joseph's Oratory. The Oratory is the largest church in Canada, with the second largest copper dome in the world, after Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome.^[150]

Education

With four universities, seven other degree-awarding institutions, and 12 CEGEPs in an 8-kilometre (5.0 mi) radius, Montreal has the highest concentration of post-secondary students of all major cities in North America (4.38 students per 100 residents, followed by Boston at 4.37 students per 100 residents).

· Université de Montréal (UdeM) is the second largest research university in Canada and ranked as one of the top universities in Canada. Two separate institutions are affiliated to the university: the École Polytechnique de Montréal (School of Engineering) and HEC Montréal (School of Business). HEC Montreal was founded in 1907 and is considered as one of the best business schools in Canada.^[^{citation needed}^]

· Université du Québec à Montréal (UQÀM) is the Montreal campus of Université du Québec. UQÀM generally specializes in liberal-arts, although many programs related to the sciences are available.

· The Université du Québec network also has three separately run schools in Montréal, notably the École de technologie supérieure (ETS), the École nationale d'administration publique (ÉNAP) and the [[Institut national de la recherche scientifique]] (INRS).

· L'Institut de formation théologique de Montréal des Prêtres de Saint-Sulpice (IFTM) specializes in theology and philosophy.

· Le Conservatoire de musique de Montréal offers both a Bachelor and a Master program in classical music.

Additionally, two French-language universities, Université de Sherbrooke and Université Laval have campuses in the nearby suburb of Longueuil on Montreal's south shore. Also, l'Institut pastorale des Dominicains is Montreal's university center of Ottawa's Collège Universitaire Dominicain/Dominican University College. The Faculté de théologie évangélique is Nova Scotia's Acadia University Montreal based serving French Protestant community in Canada by offering both a Bachelor and a Master program in theology.

Higher Education (English)

· McGill University is one of Canada's leading post-secondary institutions, and widely regarded as a world-class institution. In 2014, McGill was ranked as the top University in Canada for the ninth consecutive year by Macleans,^[169] and as the best University in Canada; 21st best University in the world, by the QS World University Rankings.^[170]

· Concordia University was created from the merger of Sir George Williams University and Loyola College in 1974.^[171] Concordia is also home to the John Molson School of Business which is recognized as one of Canada's top business schools and ranks within the top 50 worldwide.^[172]

The education system in the province of Quebec is slightly different from other systems in North America. Between the high school and university levels, there is an additional college level called CEGEP. It is at the same time a preparatory school (preparing students for admission to university) and a technical school (offering courses which lead to technical diplomas and specializations). In Montreal, seventeen CEGEPs offer courses in French and five in English.

Air

Montreal has two international airports, one for passengers only, the other for cargo. Montréal-Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport (also known as Dorval Airport) in the City of Dorval serves all commercial passenger traffic and is the headquarters of Air Canada and Air Transat. To the north of the city is Montréal-Mirabel International Airport in Mirabel, which was envisioned as Montreal's primary airport but which now serves cargo flights along with MEDEVACs and general aviation and some passenger services.

Twin towns and sister cities

Montreal has sister cities:

· Algiers, Algeria – 1999