Montreal

Jacques Cartier landed here in 1535 and took the territory for his King, François I of France. Officially founded in 1642, Montréal is one of North America's most important cities. Not only is it the second biggest city in Canada, it is also the second largest French-speaking city in the world.

Located as it is on the St Lawrence Seaway, the city has prospered since the 18th c. as a hub of communications and trade, a port of call for seagoing vessels from the Atlantic and the waterborne traffic along the St Lawrence and westward to the Great Lakes. It also has its share of administration and academic life, and is the seat of the bishopric.

Having also won itself a high international profile with the Expo in 1967 and the Olympic Games in 1976, in 1992 Montréal celebrated the 350th anniversary of its foundation.

An impressive view of the city is to be had from Mount Royal or one of the skyscraper viewing platforms. Another way of enjoying the city skyline is from a boat trip on the St Lawrence.

Montréal's climate swings between the extremes of high humid heat in summer and heavy snowfalls in winter. The average temperature in January is -10°C (14°F), and -20°C (24°F) is not unusual. In July the thermometer hovers around 22°C (72°F), occasionally reaching 30°C (86°F). Mean precipitation over the year is around 750 mm (30 in.).

Montréal's population growth has always tended to be dominated by immigration, whether from overseas or elsewhere in North America. This was at its highest between 1851 and 1861, and 1951 to 1961. The city's population in the 19th c. was 82 per cent British and French in origin, but since the second half of the 19th c. it has been overwhelmingly French-Canadian. At the turn of the century there was an influx of Jews from Eastern Europe, followed by Southern Europeans. In 1971 the city had 64 per cent French Canadians, 11 per cent English Canadians, with 25 per cent ethnic minorities including Jews and Italians as the largest groupings, followed by German, Poles, Ukrainians and Dutch, Greeks and Portuguese, as well as Asians and Afro-Caribbeans. The number of inner-city dwellers has fallen sharply in recent years as many have moved out into the suburbs, and this exodus from downtown Montréal, and from elsewhere in Québec Province to suburbia for that matter, is continuing. While many small ethnic minorities get along with one another in the everyday way of city life, this is not the case with the French and English Canadians, for whom the gulf between their cultures seems as wide as ever, and the demands for autonomy of Canada's French-speaking population have intensified considerably in the recent past.

When Jacques Cartier, on his 1535/1536 voyage of discovery, was the first European to set foot in what is now Montréal, he found an Indian village of some thousand souls, called "Hochelaga" by the Huron, just below a hill (where McGill University stands today), which he named "Mont Réal", the royal mount, in honour of his French king. It was almost three-quarters of a century before the territory was visited again, this time by Samuel de Champlain, the founder of Québec, who came here in 1603. He found no trace of the Indian village, and in 1611 established a short-lived trading post called "Place Royale".

Another 30 yea