What is Montreal?

Montreal is the largest city in Quebec and the second-largest city in Canada, with a population of about 1.78 million in the city proper and about 4.4 million in the Census Metropolitan Area (about 11 per cent of Canada's national population). Montreal is the second-largest French-speaking city in the world after Paris, with about 65 per cent of residents speaking French as their first language. The city is built on the Island of Montreal, formed by the confluence of the St. Lawrence and Ottawa rivers in southern Quebec.

Montreal was founded as Ville-Marie on May 17, 1642 by Paul Chomedey de Maisonneuve and Jeanne Mance as a French Catholic missionary settlement. The city was named after Mount Royal (Mont Real), the 234-metre hill that dominates the centre of the island and was named by Jacques Cartier on his 1535 visit to the Iroquois village of Hochelaga. Montreal remained the largest city in Canada from the early 1800s until approximately 1976, when Toronto overtook it during the Quebec exodus that followed the 1976 election of the Parti Quebecois and the 1977 Charter of the French Language (Bill 101).

Montreal is a major financial, industrial, technological, cultural, and transportation hub. The city hosts the head offices of Bombardier, Bell Canada, Power Corporation, BCE, the National Bank of Canada, and the Caisse de depot et placement du Quebec (Quebec's $480 billion pension fund). Greater Montreal is the third-largest aerospace cluster in the world after Seattle and Toulouse, anchored by the Bombardier-Airbus A220 line at Mirabel, Bell Helicopter, Pratt and Whitney Canada, and CAE. The artificial-intelligence cluster around the Mila institute and Universite de Montreal is one of the largest in North America.

Montreal hosted the 1967 World's Fair (Expo 67) and the 1976 Summer Olympics. The Montreal Metro subway system, opened in 1966, is the third-busiest in North America. Major attractions include Vieux-Montreal (Old Montreal, with cobblestone streets and 17th to 19th century buildings), the Notre-Dame Basilica (1829), Saint Joseph's Oratory (the largest church in Canada), the Olympic Stadium, the Botanical Garden, and the Biodome. The Montreal Canadiens of the NHL are the most successful franchise in major North American sports history with 24 Stanley Cup championships. The city has four universities (Universite de Montreal, McGill, Concordia, and the Universite du Quebec a Montreal) with about 200,000 students, the highest student concentration in North America.