Montreal

For other uses, see Montreal (disambiguation).Template:Canadian City

Montreal or Montréal¹ (pronounced Missing image
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[[Media:Montreal-english-pronunciation.ogg |]] in Canadian English, Missing image
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[[Media:Montreal2.ogg |]] in standard French, and in Quebecois French) is the second largest Canadian city. With a population of 1,812,800 people, it is the largest city and primary economic engine of the province of Quebec, of which it constitutes an administrative region. 3,607,000 people live in the Montreal metropolitan area (Statistics Canada 2004 estimate) (See Greater Montreal Area).

Montreal is the second largest French-speaking city in the world (after Paris and before Dakar). It is also the largest city in the Americas where the majority of the population is francophone. Montreal has a substantial anglophone minority and an increasing population of allophones (those whose first language is neither English nor French), including both ethnic communities with deep historical roots and substantial numbers of recent immigrants of whom a substantial number are integrated into the French-speaking community.

Montreal is situated in the southwest of Quebec, approximately 200 kilometres (120 miles) southwest of Quebec City, the provincial capital, and 150 kilometres (90 miles) east of Ottawa, the federal capital. The city sits on the Island of Montreal at the confluence of the Saint Lawrence River and Ottawa River; the island divides the Saint Lawrence between the main channel and Rivière des Prairies. The city also includes a total of 74 nearby islands such as Île des Soeurs, Île Bizard, Île Sainte-Hélène, and Île Notre-Dame. The city is spread over an area of 482.84 km² (186.43 square miles).

History

Algonquin, Huron, and Iroquois have inhabited the Montreal area for some 8 thousand years. Jacques Cartier became the first European to reach the area when on October 2, 1535 he entered the village of Hochelega, on the Island of Montreal. Cartier was searching for gold but didn't find any.

Seventy years later, Samuel de Champlain decided to establish a fur trading post at Port Royal on the Island of Montreal, but the local Iroquois successfully defended their land. The first permanent European settlement was created on the Island of Montreal in 1639 by a French tax collector named Jérôme Le Royer. Missionaries Paul Chomedey de Maisonneuve, Jeanne Mance and a few French colonists set up a mission named Ville Marie on May 17, 1642 as part of a project to create a French colonial empire dedicated to the Virgin Mary.

Ville Marie became a centre for the fur trade, the Catholic religion, as well as a base for further exploration into New France. The Iroquois continued their attacks on the settlement until a peace treaty was signed in 1701. The town remained French until 1760, when Pierre de Cavagnal, Marquis de Vaudreuil surrendered it to the British army under Jeffrey Amherst. Fire destroyed one quarter of the town on May 18, 1765.

The Treaty of Paris in 1763 ended the French and Indian War and ceded New France to the Kingdom of Great Britain. American Revolutionists briefly held the city in 1775 but soon left. By this time the city was known as Montreal and it started to grow from British immigration. The golden era of fur trading began in the city with the advent of the locally-owned North West Company, the main rival to the primarily British Hudson's Bay Company.

Montreal was incorporated as a city in 1832. The city's growth was spurred by the opening of the Lachine Canal, which permitted ships to pass by the unnavigable Lachine Rapids south of the island. Montreal was the capital of the United Province of Canada from 1844 to 1849, bringing even more English-speaking immigrants. The now large and wealthy Anglophone community built one of Canada's first universities, McGill, and built large mansions at the foot of Mont Royal.

In 1852, Montreal had 58,000 inhabitants and by 1860, Montreal was the largest city in British North America and the undisputed economic and cultural centre of Canada. The Canadian Pacific Railway made its headquarters there in 1880, and the Canadian National Railway in 1919. With the annexation of neighbouring towns between 1883 and 1918, Montreal became a mostly Francophone city again. The tradition to alternate between a francophone and an anglophone mayor began and lasted until 1914.

After World War I, the Prohibition movement in the United States turned Montreal into a haven for Americans looking for alcohol. Despite the increase in tourism, unemployment remained high in the city, and was exacerbated by the 1929 stock market crash and the Great Depression. However, Canada began to exit the Great Depression in the mid 1930s and skyscrapers, such as the Sun Life Building were built.

During World War II Mayor Camillien Houde protested against conscription and urged Montrealers to ignore the federal government's registry of all men and women. Ottawa was furious over Houde's insubordination and put him in a prison camp until 1944, when the government was forced to institute conscription (see Conscription Crisis of 1944).

Old Montreal in 2004

After Montreal's populations surpassed one million in the early 1950s, Mayor Jean Drapeau laid down plans for the future development of the city. These plans included a new metro system and an underground city, the expansion of Montreal's harbour, and the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway. New buildings were built on top of old ones in this time period, including Montreal's two tallest skyscrapers up to then: the 43-storey Place Ville-Marie and the 47-storey Tour de la Bourse. Two new museums were also built, and finally in 1966 the metro opened along with several new expressways.

International status was cemented by Expo '67 and the summer Olympics. A major league baseball team, called the Montreal Expos, was named after the Expo and started playing in Montreal in 1969 but the team moved to Washington, DC in 2005.

Montreal celebrated its 350th anniversary in 1992, prompting the construction of two of Montreal's tallest skyscrapers: 1000 de La Gauchetière and 1250 René-Lévesque. Currently, Montreal's favourable economic conditions allow further improvements in infrastructure with the expansion of the metro system and the development of a ring road around the island. Neighbourhood gentrification is also occurring. Montreal now constitutes one of the regions of Quebec.

City government

The head of the city government in Montreal is the mayor, who is first among equals in the City Council. The current mayor is Gérald Tremblay who is a member of the Montreal Island Citizens Union. The city council is a democratically elected institution and is the primary decision-making authority in the city. It consists of 73 members from all boroughs of the city.

The council has jurisdiction over many matters including public security, agreements with governments, subsidy programs, the environment, urban planning, and three-year capital expenditure program. The council is also required to supervise, standardise or approve certain decisions made by the borough councils.

Reporting directly to the city council, the executive committee exercises the decision-making powers appropriate to it and is responsible for preparing various documents including budgets and by-laws, submitted by the city council for approval.

The decision-making powers of the executive committee cover, in particular, the awarding of contracts or grants, the management of human and financial resources, supplies and buildings. It may also be assigned further powers by the city council.

Standing committees are the council's instruments for public consultations. They are responsible for the public study of pending matters and for making the appropriate recommendations to the council. They also review the annual budget forecasts for departments under their jurisdiction. A public notice of meeting is published in both French and English daily newspapers at least seven days before each meeting. All meetings include a public question period.

The current standing committees have a two-year term. There are seven standing committees. In addition, the city council may decide to create special committees at any time. Each standing committee is made up of seven to nine members, including a chairman and a vice-chairman. The members are all elected municipal officers, with the exception of a representative of the government of Quebec on the public security committee.

Merger and demerger

Island of Montreal before the 2002 merger: City of Montreal (186 km²) and 27 independent municipalities

Until 2001, the island of Montreal was divided into 28 municipalities: the city of Montreal proper, and 27 independent municipalities. On January 1, 2002, the 27 independent municipalities of the island of Montreal were merged with the city of Montreal, under the slogan : "Une île, une ville" ("One island, one city"). This merger was part of a larger provincial scheme launched by the Parti Québécois all across Quebec, resulting in the merging of many municipalities. It was felt that larger municipalities would be more efficient, and would be more able to withstand comparison with the other cities in Canada, which had already expanded their territory, such as Toronto which merged with its neighbouring municipalities in 1998 to form the large City of Toronto.

As happened elsewhere in Canada, the city mergers in Quebec were bitterly contested by a significant part of the population, especially on the island of Montreal. The situation on the island of Montreal was further complicated by the presence of municipalities predominantly English-speaking that were due to merge with the predominantly French-speaking city of Montreal. English speakers were afraid to lose their rights, despite claims by the mayor of Montreal that their linguistic rights would remain protected in the new city of Montreal. Many street protests were organized, law suits were filed, 15 municipalities appealed to the Court of Appeal of Quebec, but it was all to no avail. At the 2001 census, the city of Montreal (185.94 km²/71.8 sq. miles) had 1,039,534 inhabitants. After the merger, the population of the new city of Montreal (500.05 km²/193.1 sq. miles) was 1,812,723 (based on 2001 census figures). For comparisons, at the 2001 census the city of Toronto (629.91 km²/243.2 sq. miles) had 2,481,494 inhabitants.

The new city of Montreal is divided into 27 boroughs (known in French as "arrondissements") in charge of local administration, while the city above them is responsible for larger matters such as economic development or transportation issues. It is only a coincidence that there were 27 independent municipalities before 2002, and that there are now 27 arrondissements. In fact, in most areas the arrondissements do not correspond to the former municipalities, cutting across the territory of the former municipalities.

At the provincial elections of April 2003, the Liberal Party of Quebec defeated the Parti Québécois. One central promise during their campaign was that they would allow merged municipalities to organize referendums in order to demerge if they wished to do so. Indeed, on June 20, 2004, the referendums were held throughout Quebec. On the island of Montreal, referendums were held in 22 of the 27 previously independent municipalities. Following the referendum results, 15 of the previously independent municipalities will recover their independence. These are predominantly English-speaking municipalities, with also some French-speaking municipalities. Oddly, one of the 15 municipalities to be recreated, L'Île-Dorval, had no inhabitants at the 2001 census.

The demerger is now scheduled to take place on January 1, 2006. After this date, there will be 16 municipalities on the island of Montreal (city of Montreal proper plus 15 independent municipalities). The post-demerger city of Montreal will have a territory of 366.02 km² (141.3 sq. miles) and a population of 1,583,590 inhabitants (based on 2001 census figures). Compared with the pre-merger city of Montreal, this is a net increase of 96.8% in land area, and 52.3% in population.

Corporate lobbies close to the Liberal Party of Quebec stress the fact that after the demerger, the city of Montreal will still have almost as many inhabitants as the current unified city of Montreal (the suburban municipalities to be recreated are less densely populated than the core city), and that the overwhelming majority of industrial sites will still be located on the territory of the post-demerger city of Montreal. Nonetheless, the post-demerger city of Montreal will be only about half the size of the post-1998 merger city of Toronto (both in terms of land area and population).

However, it should be noted that both the Liberal government of Quebec and the municipality of Montreal made it clear that the 15 municipalities to be recreated will not have as many powers as before the 2002 merger. Many powers will remain with a joint board covering the entire island of Montreal, in which the city of Montreal will have the upper hand.

Despite the demerger referendums held in 2004, the controversy is still raging in Quebec. It is now focusing on the cost of demerging. Several studies are showing that the recreated municipalities will incur substantial financial costs, thus forcing them to increase taxes (a startling prospect in the generally wealthier English-speaking municipalities of Montreal). Proponents of the demergers contest these surveys.

The island of Montreal is only one component of the Metropolitan Community of Montreal (Communauté Métropolitaine de Montréal), in charge of planning, coordinating, and financing economic development, public transportation, garbage collection, etc., across the metropolitan area of Montreal. The Metropolitan Community of Montreal covers 3,839 km² (1,482 sq. miles), with 3,431,551 inhabitants living inside its borders in 2002; it is thus larger in area and population than the city of Toronto (even after its 1998 merger). However, the city of Toronto is larger than the city of Montreal proper, and Toronto's metro area (not a legal entity) is larger than the Metropolitan Community of Montreal, with 7,000km² and 5.8 million people. The president of the Metropolitan Community of Montreal is the mayor of Montreal.

See also: Parliamentary representation in Montreal, 2004

Climate

Thanks to competing climactic influences, the climate in Montreal varies greatly, both by season and from day to day, and is considered a character of the city by Montrealers.

Precipitation is abundant, with an average snowfall of 2.4 metres per year in the winter and regular rainfall throughout the year. Each year the city government spends more than $50 million on snow removal. Frequent thunderstorms make summer the wettest season statistically, but it is also the sunniest.

The coldest month is January, with a daily average of −10.4°C (13°F). Due to wind chill, the perceived temperature can be much lower than the actual temperature, and wind chill temperatures are often included in weather forecasts. The warmest month is July, with a daily average of 20.9°C (70°F). The lowest temperature ever recorded is −40°C (−40°F) on January 14, 2004, and the highest temperature ever was 37.6°C (100°F) in August of 1975.

Moderate to high humidity is common in the summer. In spring and autumn, temperatures and precipitation amounts average between 55 to 94 mm (2.5 to 4 inches) a month. Some snow in spring and autumn is normal. Similarly, late heat waves as well as "Indian summer" are a regular feature of the climate. [1] (http://www.weather.com/outlook/travel/climatology/monthly/CAXX0301)

Despite its widely varying climate, the Montreal region supports a diverse array of plants and wildlife. The maple is one of the most common trees, and the sugar maple in particular is an enduring symbol of Montreal and Quebec, thanks to the production of maple syrup.

Demographics

The Chinatown gate on boulevard Saint-Laurent

Main article: Demographics of Montreal

The greater Montreal area has a population of 3,607,000 people (Statistics Canada 2004), including the neighbouring major cities of Laval and Longueuil, among other smaller cities. Montreal proper will be home to about 1.6 million people after the demerger set for January 1, 2006. A resident of Montreal is known as a Montrealer in English, and a Montréalais(e) in French. Residents sometimes refer to the city by the shorthand name of MTL.

Most Montrealers speak French as their first language[2] (http://www.statcan.ca/english/Pgdb/demo14b.htm); a sizeable minority speak English, but a majority of residents have at least a working knowledge of both languages.[3] (http://www.statcan.ca/english/Pgdb/demo18a.htm) This trend has increased after the French language reforms of the 1970s.

About 67.8% of the population of the Greater Montreal Area are francophone. 18.4% are allophone (they have neither French nor English as their first language) and 13.8% are native anglophone. Allophones and anglophones are most highly-represented on the Island of Montreal, where they make up 27.7% and 18.8% of the total population, respectively. A majority of allophones speak French or English as a second language. A May 2004 survey noted that 53% of the people in Montreal speak both French and English, while 37% speak only French and 7% speak only English.

Around 87% of the population of the population is White chiefly of French, Italian, Irish, and Portuguese. Blacks constitute about 4% or 150 000 people which is the second largest Black community in the country. The remaining 9% are Arab, non-White Hispanic, Vietnamese, and other Asian. The city also has well-established Irish, Italian, Jewish, Greek, Arab, Asian, Hispanic, Haitian, and Portuguese communities, along with smaller communities of people from almost every nation in the world.

While the official language of Montreal is French, services are also commonly offered in English in downtown and tourist areas as well as in areas designated as bilingual boroughs. The Irish have been settling in Montreal and the province of Quebec for centuries as they saw it as a more inviting place than many other parts of the British Empire. The Irish and French shared a common religion, Roman Catholicism. This made it easier for the Irish to be accepted and not discriminated against, as they were in Toronto (York). A large number arrived during the Great Famine of 1845-1852 in Ireland, which resulted in many orphans being adopted by French families. The tide of immigration continued for many years and by some estimates, it is believed that nearly 40% of Francophones have a mixture of French and Irish heritage.

Each of the many neighbourhoods in the city has a predominant language. The parts of the city that lie to the west of Boulevard St.-Laurent can be said to be predominantly Anglophone, while the neighbourhoods to the east are predominantly Francophone. Westmount, on the southwestern slopes of Mont Royal, is traditionally the home of wealthy Anglophones, while Outremont, on the opposite side, is the home of wealthy Francophones. However, these distinctions are increasingly becoming obsolete in fact and in the public mind. Speakers of both languages are found in all parts of the city.

Montreal is the home or former home of multiple famous people, including two prime ministers, many well known artists and musicians, and a number of politicians.

See also: List of famous Montrealers

Economy

Avenue McGill College in downtown Montreal

Once the largest city in Canada, Montreal remains a vibrant major centre of commerce, industry, culture, finance, and world affairs. Montreal is a major port city, being at the start of the Saint Lawrence Seaway a deep-draft inland waterway which links it to the industrial centres of the Great Lakes. As one of the most important ports in Canada, it is a transshipment point for grain, sugar, petroleum products, machinery, and consumer goods. For this reason, it is part of the railway backbone of Canada and has always been an extremely important rail city; it is the eastern terminus of the Canadian Pacific Railway and home to the headquarters of the Canadian National Railway.

Montreal industries include pharmaceuticals, high technology, textile and clothing manufacturing, higher education, electronic goods, transportation devices, printed goods, fabric, and tobacco.

Montreal is one of the world's top aerospace industry centres. It is often said that Montreal is the only city in the world where an entire airplane can be built, from the start of engine crafting to the last paint drop. The leading wagon of the industry is unquestionably Bombardier, which is one of the most important aerospace companies in the world, rivalling Boeing and Airbus, particularly in the area of medium-sized aircraft.

The headquarters of the Canadian Space Agency are located in Longueuil, southeast of Montreal. Montreal also hosts the headquarters of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), a United Nations body, and the International Air Transport Association (IATA), as well as some 60 other international organizations in various fields.

Places in Montreal

Downtown Montreal (Centre-Ville) is at the foot of Mount Royal, whose expanse forms a major urban park. Downtown contains dozens of notable skyscrapers, including 1000 de La Gauchetière, 1250 René-Lévesque, and Ieoh Ming Pei's Place Ville-Marie. This cruciform office tower built in 1962 sits atop an underground shopping mall which forms the nexus of Montreal's underground city, one of the world's largest, with indoor access to over 1,600 shops, restaurants, offices, and businesses, as well as metro stations, transportation termini, and tunnels extending all over downtown. The central axis for downtown is rue Sainte-Catherine.

Southeast of downtown is Old Montreal (Vieux-Montreal), a historic centre with such attractions as the Old Port, Place Jacques-Cartier, City Hall, Place d'Armes, Pointe-à-Callière museum, and Notre-Dame de Montréal Basilica.

Downtown and Old Montreal are connected by the recent Quartier international de Montréal development.

Montreal was host of one of the most successful World's Fairs in history, Expo '67. Partially based upon the success of the World's Fair, Montreal was awarded the 1976 Summer Olympics. The Olympic Stadium has the world's tallest inclined tower and, until the end of the 2004 season, was the home of the Montreal Expos baseball team. Montreal is also home to the Montreal Canadiens, one of the oldest teams of the NHL and a member of the 'Original Six'. The Olympic complex also includes a modern ecology museum, an insectarium, and the Jardin botanique de Montréal, one of the largest botanical gardens in the world, second only to Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew in England.

Montreal is the centre of Quebec and a major centre of Canadian culture in general. It has many specialised museums such as the Redpath Museum, the McCord Museum of Canadian History, and the Canadian Centre for Architecture. The Place des Arts cultural complex houses the Museum of Contemporary Art and several theatres, and is the seat of the Montreal Opera and for the moment the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, which is scheduled to receive a new concert hall adjacent to Place des Arts.

Nicknamed "the city of saints," or "la ville aux cent clochers", Montreal is renowned for its churches, causing Mark Twain to comment: "This is the first time I was ever in a city where you couldn't throw a brick without breaking a church window." The city has four Roman Catholic basilicas: Marie-Reine-du-Monde Cathedral, Notre-Dame Basilica, St. Patrick's Basilica, and St. Joseph's Oratory. This last is the largest church in Canada, with the largest dome of its kind in the world after that of Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome. Other well-known churches include the pilgrimage church of Notre-Dame-du-Bon-Secours which is sometimes called the Sailors' Church, and the Anglican Christ Church Cathedral, which was completely excavated and suspended in mid-air during the construction of part of the Underground City. All of the above are major tourist destinations, particularly Notre-Dame and the Oratory.

Montreal has a small Chinatown (Quartier chinois), just south of downtown, featuring Chinese shops and restaurants, as well as a number of Vietnamese establishments. The principal axes of Chinatown are boulevard Saint-Laurent and rue de la Gauchetière.

Montreal is known as a Queer or Gay-friendly city. Its pride festival, Divers/Cité, is the second largest in North America after Toronto's; in 2002, organizers estimated it drew 1.4 million people ([4] (http://fugues.vortex.qc.ca/main.cfm?p=100&Article_ID=3224)). It benefits from financial support from all three levels of government. Montreal is home to one of the largest gay villages in North America, centred around the downtown Beaudry metro station, and known in French as le Village gai. Montreal is an epicentre of Queer life and culture in Canada, and hosts several circuit parties every year. The 2006 World Outgames are to be held in Montreal.

Every Sunday in the summer, hundreds of people gather at the foot of Mount Royal for several hours of synchronized drumming, dancing, and juggling (amongst many other activities) in an event that has come to be known as the Tam Tams. It is unclear how this event started; but, as it has no formal organization and has carried on for many years, there is no indication that it will end soon.

Montreal's trendy Plateau Mont-Royal district is located on the twin North-South axes of boulevard Saint-Laurent and Rue Saint-Denis, and East-West axis of Rue Mont-Royal. Within this district is the hip promenade Rue Prince-Arthur.

Rue Saint-Denis is also the heart of the Latin Quarter of Montreal (Quartier latin), which is just south of the Plateau and filled with clubs, bars, and street festivals. The principal east-west axes of this district are rue Sainte-Catherine, Boulevard de Maisonneuve, and rue Saint-Denis as the north-south axis.

Crescent Street is party central for Montreal's anglophone population, lying at the edge of Quartier Concordia (Concordia University Quarter). It feature street festivals throughout the summer. The big bash of the Formula 1 Grand Prix of Canada unofficially starts off Montreal's non-stop festival season in the summers. Crescent street features many clubs and bars.

Sports

Montreal is famous for its hockey-hungry fans. Hockey's storied history began here. Montreal is the site of the Canadian Grand Prix, a Formula One auto race held annually at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve on Île Notre-Dame. Montreal also hosts the Molson Indy Montreal of the Champcars Series. Both events allow the city to host festivities celebrating the racing industry. The F1 festivities begin on Crescent Street the week leading up to the race. Molson Indy festivities begin three days prior to the race and are held in the Latin Quarter around St. Denis Street. On July 13, 1982, Montreal hosted the first baseball All-Star Game outside the United States.

Current professional franchises

• Montreal Canadiens est. 1909, National Hockey League. Awarded Stanley Cup 24 times. Last win in 1993
• Montreal Alouettes , Canadian Football League. Awarded Grey Cup six times. Last win in 2002
• Montreal Impact, United Soccer Leagues. Awarded the League Championship twice. Last win in 2004

Past professional franchises

• Montreal Expos (baseball) 1969-2005. Awarded the Division Title twice. Relocated to Washington DC.
• Montreal Express (lacrosse) 2001-2004. Relocated to Minnesota
• Montreal Maroons (hockey) 1924-1938. Awarded the Stanley Cup twice. Disbanded.
• Montreal Wanderers (hockey) 1917-1918. Disbanded.
• Montreal Shamrocks (hockey) 1896-1910. Awarded the Stanley Cup twice. Disbanded.

Transportation

Montreal is a transportation hub for eastern Canada with well-developed air, road, rail, and marine links to the rest of Canada as well as the United States and Europe.

Mass transit

The Montreal Metro was inaugurated in 1966 in time for the Expo 67 World's Fair held in the city the following year. Montreal is also served by a commuter rail system, which is managed and operated by the Agence métropolitaine de transport.

Airports

Montreal has two international airports, although only one is currently open for passenger flights. Montréal/Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport (formerly Dorval airport, the name most locals still use) in the City of Dorval serves all commercial passenger traffic. To the north of the city is Montreal-Mirabel International Airport in Mirabel, which was envisioned as Montreal's primary airport but which now serves only cargo flights.

Roads

Montreal has a problem with vehicular traffic, especially from off-island suburbs such as Laval on Île Jésus, and Longueuil on the south shore. The width of the Saint Lawrence River has made the construction of fixed links to the south shore expensive and difficult. Accordingly there are only four road bridges (plus one road tunnel, two railway bridges, and a metro line), whereas the Rivière des Prairies is spanned by eight road bridges (six to Laval and two to the north shore).

Since Montreal is on an island, the directions used in the city plan do not precisely correspond with compass directions, as they are oriented to the geography of the island. North and south are defined on an axis roughly perpendicular to the St. Lawrence River and the Rivière des Prairies: north is towards Rivière des Prairies, and south is towards the St. Lawrence. East and west directions are defined as roughly parallel to the St. Lawrence River (which flows southwest to northeast) and the Rivière des Prairies. East is downstream, and west is upstream.

Boulevard Saint-Laurent divides Montreal into east and west sectors. Streets that lie on both sides of boulevard Saint-Laurent are divided into two parts, which have East (est) or West (ouest) appended to their names. Streets that lie on only one side of boulevard Saint-Laurent do not generally contain a direction in their names. Address numbering begins at one at boulevard Saint-Laurent. East of it, numbers increase to the east, while west of it, numbers increase to the west. On north-south streets, house numbers begin at the St. Lawrence River and increase to the north. Odd numbers are on the east or north sides of the street; even, west or south. Numbered streets generally run north and south, and the street numbers increase to the east. The municipalities annexed to Montreal in 2002 do not follow this system, except for Verdun and Montréal-Nord.

According to the rules of the Commission de toponymie du Québec (http://www.toponymie.gouv.qc.ca/), the French-language form of street names is the only official one, and is to be used in any language: e.g. chemin de la Côte-des-Neiges; rue Sainte-Catherine; côte du Beaver Hall. Many English speakers, however, use English generics such as "street" or "road", as do English-language media such as the Montreal Gazette. Officially bilingual boroughs have the right to use such names in official contexts, such as on street signs. In the past, a number of streets had both English and French names, such as avenue des Pins or Pine Avenue, rue Saint-Jacques or St. James Street, rue de la Montagne or Mountain Street (originally named after Bishop Mountain, not Mount Royal). Some of these names are still in common colloquial use in English. There are many streets whose French names incorporate an English specific, such as chemin Queen Mary, rue University, avenue McGill College. There are also a few cases where two names are official, such as chemin du Bord-du-Lac/chemin Lakeshore.

Education

Universities

Montreal has one of the highest per-capita populations of post-secondary students of any large city in North America, due to its four urban universities:

• McGill University
• Université de Montréal (including the École Polytechnique de Montréal and the École des Hautes Études Commerciales de Montréal)
• Concordia University
• branches of the Université du Québec:
  • Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM),
  • École de technologie supérieure
  • École nationale d'administration publique.

Neighbouring Longueuil, on the South Shore of Montreal (across the St. Lawrence), is home to the Université de Sherbrooke à Longueuil.

Private schools

St. George's High School (http://www.stgeorges.qc.ca/site/index.htm) is a co-educational private high school with no dress code.

Neighbouring Municipalities

See also

Template:Commons

• List of communities in Quebec
• List of Quebec regions
• List of Montreal boroughs
• List of Montreal media outlets
• List of Montreal metro stations
• List of Montreal bridges
• List of Montreal mayors
• List of malls in Montreal
• List of Montreal's 10 tallest skyscrapers
• List of old Montreal buildings

Template:Spoken Wikipedia

Notes

1. According to The Canadian Style, the official style guide of the federal and provincial governments, the name of the city is to be written with an accent as Montréal in all printed materials in both English and French. However, it is more common to omit the accent in English usage and keep the accent in French usage.

External links

• Template:Wikitravel
• Ravewave- Rave.Ca (http://www.rave.ca/) - Site listing all rave, nightlife and bar events in the Montreal, Quebec and Ontario areas...
• Montreal Restaurant Guide - RestoMontreal.Ca (http://www.restomontreal.ca/) - Greater Montreal City guide to restaurants, cafés and bars. View restaurant profile pages complete with menus, videos, picture galleries and more...
• Official portal of Montreal (http://ville.montreal.qc.ca/portail_VME/accusoma.shtm)
• moreMontreal.com (http://www.moremontreal.com/) / toutMontreal.com (http://www.toutmontreal.com/)
• Montreal Travel Guide - GuideRoyal.Com (http://www.guideroyal.com/) - City guide to Montreal with information on travel, transport, shopping, airports, hotel booking, restaurants, night clubs, bars, events and more.
• Hospitality Club Montreal (http://secure.hospitalityclub.org/hc/membersrcexternal.php?country=36&xregion=Qu%E9bec&city=Montr%E9al) - stay with friendly Montrealers for free
• Historical maps of Montreal:
  • Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection (University of Texas) (http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/historical): Montreal 1894 (476K) (http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/historical/montreal_1894.jpg)
  • The Atlas of Canada (http://atlas.gc.ca/site/english/maps/archives): Montreal, circa 1915 (http://atlas.gc.ca/site/english/maps/archives/2ndedition/peopleandsociety/culturalgeography/page71_72)
  • Bibliothèque Nationale du Québec (http://www4.bnquebec.ca/cargeo/accueil.htm) (Quebec National Library): various very nice high-resolution maps, accessible via "Index des toponymes" / "M" / "Montréal (Québec)"

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