History of Montreal

In 1535 the French explorer Jacques Cartier was the first European known to land on Montréal Island.

The city of Montréal (at first also called Ville Marie) was founded in May 1642 as a missionary colony.

The city’s founder and first governor, Paul de Chomedey, sieur de Maisonneuve, settled along the Saint Lawrence with some 40 colonists.

After difficult beginnings, the city prospered as the fur-trading center of the French colony of New France and became the gateway to the western interior.

Fur traders departed from Montréal to explore and start trading posts in the Great Lakes area and the Mississippi valley.

By 1760 the city’s population of French origin had reached about 4,000.

In 1760 Montréal surrendered to British forces that were completing their conquest of Canada during the French and Indian War (1754-1763).

In the wake of the British conquest a small group of enterprising merchants, mostly Scots, took over the fur trade.

Their ventures grew into the North West Company, which built a powerful fur-trading empire reaching to the Arctic and Pacific oceans.

In 1821 the North West Company merged with the Hudson’s Bay Company, and Montréal lost its centuries-long control of the fur trade.

By then Montréal already had a new role as commercial center for the provinces of Lower Canada (now Québec) and Upper Canada (now Ontario).

The port of Montréal became a major transshipment point on the naval route between Britain and the Great Lakes, fueling rapid growth of the city.

Montréal’s population grew from about 9,000 inhabitants in 1800 to about 57,700 by 1851, surpassing Québec city as the most populous place in British North America.

Because of immigration, people of British origin were the majority in Montréal from 1831 to 1866. This change had a visible impact on architecture: the new public and private buildings reflected British tastes.

In 1832 Montréal received its first city charter, which expired in 1836; a new one was granted in 1840.

In 1844 the city became the capital of Canada, but it lost this position in 1849 after riotous crowds burned the buildings of Parliament, Canada’s legislature.

By the mid-19th century Montréal was Canada’s leading manufacturing center, producing a vast array of durable and consumer goods.

It also emerged as the national railway hub and maintenance center with the establishment of the Grand Trunk Railway of Canada (1852) and the Canadian Pacific (1881). Montréal was then the commercial, industrial, and financial metropolis of the country.

Population grew accordingly, reaching 216,650 (250,165 with the suburbs) in 1891 and 467,986 (528,397 with the suburbs) by 1911.

New suburban municipalities sprang up on the island, most of which were annexed to the city between 1883 and 1918.

Job prospects attracted many rural French Canadians, and the ethnic majority shifted again: by 1911 Francophones were 63.5 percent of the city’s population.

With new immigration at the beginning of the 20th century, Montréal also became a more cosmopolitan city.

Among the new groups, eastern European Jews were prominent and made up almost 6 percent of the population by 1911.

These economic and population trends continued during the 1920s, but the Great Depression—the worldwide hard times of the 1930s—dealt a severe blow to Montréal’s economy.

Unemployment soared, and immigration and rural migration came to a halt.

Economic activity recovered during World War II (1939-1945) and gained strength after the war as new investments fueled the recovery.

However, fundamental changes were taking place. Montréal had thrived as the link between Britain and Canada, but the growing integration of Canada into the North American economy was of more benefit to Toronto.

The province of Ontario received the bulk of American investment in Canada. Gradually major corporations found it more convenient to be based in Toronto, and after the war they began to move their head offices there.

By 1960 Toronto was clearly Canada’s leading financial and commercial metropolis.

The gap between the two cities widened as manufacturing declined in Montréal.

As a result of these changes, many jobs were lost, unemployment rose, and growth lagged after 1971.

There is nevertheless a brighter side to the story: Montréal in some ways experienced a renewal starting in 1960.

Public investment supported the building of a subway in 1966 (the Métro), a full network of freeways, and numerous bridges.

New public buildings dotted the landscape.

Montréal strengthened its role as the North American center of French-language creative arts and became an international capital of French culture.

International recognition first came in 1967, when Montréal hosted the International Exhibition (Expo 67), and was confirmed with the Summer Olympic Games of 1976.

The transformation of Montréal was influenced by the Quiet Revolution—a period when Francophones improved their economic and political power in Québec province.

In 1969 the provincial government adopted a law requiring French instruction for most children, and later legislation required all public signs to be primarily in French.

Anglophone business leaders hired more French-speaking managers and employees, and more large corporations were owned by Francophones.

Today Montréal is still a bilingual city, but the primary language is now French.

Montréal is nevertheless distinct from the rest of Québec, which is overwhelmingly Francophone and of French origin.

Many different ethnic groups coexist in Montréal. This helps to explain why the idea of separate sovereignty for Québec, which has been a controversial political issue in Canada for a generation, gets less support in Montréal than in the rest of the province.

In the October 1995 referendum on sovereignty, the yes votes managed a showing of only 21.7 percent in the western (Anglophone) part of Montréal Island and 47.5 percent in the eastern (Francophone and ethnic) part, compared with 49.4 percent for the province as a whole.