Montreal
Montreal is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest in Canada, and the eighth-largest city in North America. Founded in 1642 as Ville-Marie, or "City of Mary", it now takes its name from Mount Royal, the triple-peaked mountain around which the early settlement was built. The city is centred on the Island of Montreal and a few, much smaller, peripheral islands, the largest of which is Île Bizard. It lies east of the national capital, Ottawa, and southwest of the provincial capital, Quebec City.
, the city had a population of 1,762,949, and a metropolitan population of 4,291,732, making it the second-largest metropolitan area in Canada, after Toronto, Ontario. French is the city's official language. 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. 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. 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. 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. In 2017, Montreal was ranked the 12th-most livable city in the world by the Economist Intelligence Unit in its annual Global Liveability Ranking, although its ranking dropped to 40th in the 2021 index, primarily due to stress on the healthcare system caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. 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. In 2018, Montreal was ranked as a global city.
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. The city hosts the Canadian Grand Prix of Formula One; the Montreal International Jazz Festival, the largest jazz festival in the world; the Just for Laughs festival, the largest comedy festival in the world; and Les Francos de Montréal, the largest French-language music festival in the world. 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
In the Ojibwe language, the land is called Mooniyaang or Moon’yaang 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. This is an abbreviation of Teionihtiohtiá:kon, which loosely translates as "where the group divided/parted ways".
French settlers from La Flèche in the Loire valley first named their new town, founded in 1642, Fort Ville-Marie, named for the Virgin Mary.
The current form of the name, Montréal, is generally thought to be derived from Mount Royal, 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. 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. However, the Commission de toponymie du Québec disputes this explanation.
In English, the accent mark is often omitted, however, officially the name includes the accent mark, even though English rarely uses diacritical marks.
Historiographer François de Belleforest was the first to use the form Montréal with reference to the entire region in 1575.
History
Pre-European contact
evidence in the region indicates that First Nations native people occupied the island of Montreal as early as 4,000 years ago. By the year AD 1000, they had started to cultivate maize. Within a few hundred years, they had built fortified villages. The Saint Lawrence Iroquoians, an ethnically and culturally distinct group from the Iroquois nations of the Haudenosaunee, 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. 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". Evidence of earlier occupation of the island, such as those uncovered in 1642 during the construction of Fort Ville-Marie, have effectively been removed.Early European settlement (1600–1760)
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. 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. 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. 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. 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. In 1689, the English-allied Iroquois attacked Lachine on the Island of Montreal, committing the worst massacre in the history of New France. 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. 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.
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.
American occupation (1775–1776)
As part of the American Revolution, the invasion of Quebec resulted after Benedict Arnold captured Fort Ticonderoga in present-day upstate New York in May 1775 as a launching point to Arnold's invasion of Quebec in September. While Arnold approached the Plains of Abraham, Montreal fell to American forces led by Richard Montgomery on November 13, 1775, after it was abandoned by Guy Carleton. After Arnold withdrew from Quebec City to Pointe-aux-Trembles on November 19, Montgomery's forces left Montreal on December 1 and arrived there on December 3 to plot to attack Quebec City, with Montgomery leaving David Wooster in charge of the city. Montgomery was killed in the failed attack and Arnold, who had taken command, sent Brigadier General Moses Hazen to inform Wooster of the defeat.Wooster left Hazen in command on March 20, 1776, as he left to replace Arnold in leading further attacks on Quebec City. On April 19, Arnold arrived in Montreal to take over command from Hazen, who remained as his second-in-command. Hazen sent Colonel Timothy Bedel to form a garrison of 390 men 40 miles upriver in a garrison at Les Cèdres, Quebec, to defend Montreal against the British army. In the Battle of the Cedars, Bedel's lieutenant Isaac Butterfield surrendered to George Forster.
Forster advanced to Fort Senneville on May 23. By May 24, Arnold was entrenched in Montreal's borough of Lachine. Forster initially approached Lachine, then withdrew to Quinze-Chênes. Arnold's forces then abandoned Lachine to chase Forster. The Americans burned Senneville on May 26. After Arnold crossed the Ottawa River in pursuit of Forster, Forster's cannons repelled Arnold's forces. Forster negotiated a prisoner exchange with Henry Sherburne and Isaac Butterfield, resulting in a May 27 boating of their deputy Lieutenant Park being returned to the Americans. Arnold and Forster negotiated further and more American prisoners were returned to Arnold at Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue, Quebec, on May 30.
Arnold eventually withdrew his forces back to the New York fort of Ticonderoga by the summer. On June 15, Arnold's messenger approaching Sorel spotted Carleton returning with a fleet of ships and notified him. Arnold's forces abandoned Montreal prior to the June 17 arrival of Carleton's fleet.
The Americans did not return British prisoners in exchange, as previously agreed, due to accusations of abuse, with Congress repudiating the agreement at the protest of George Washington. Arnold blamed Colonel Timothy Bedel for the defeat, removing him and Lieutenant Butterfield from command and sending them to Sorel for court-martial. The retreat of the American army delayed their court martial until August 1, 1776, when they were convicted and cashiered at Ticonderoga. Bedel was given a new commission by Congress in October 1777 after Arnold was assigned to defend Rhode Island in July 1777.