Montreal: Encyclopedia II - Montreal - History

Montreal - History

Algonquin, Huron, and Iroquois have inhabited the Montreal area for some eight thousand years. The first European to reach the area was Jacques Cartier, when, on October 2, 1535, he entered the village of Hochelega, on the Island of Montreal.

Seventy years later, Samuel de Champlain arrived on the island, but the village of Hochelaga no longer existed. In 1611, he established La Place Royale, a fur trading post on the Island of Montreal, but the local Iroquois successfully defended their land. The first permanent European settlement on the Island of Montreal was created 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.

Ville Marie became a centre for the fur trade and 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 François de Rigaud, Marquis de Vaudreuil-Cavagnal 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 Seven Years' 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 had gained its present name of 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 more English-speakers to the city, making it roughly bilingual. The now large Anglophone community built one of Canada's first universities, McGill, and the wealthy began building large mansions at the foot of Mont Royal.

In 1852, Montreal had 58,000 inhabitants and by 1860, it 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. Saint Jacques Street in what is now Old Montreal, then better known as Saint James Street, became the centre of the Canadian financial industry in the late 19th century; the name "Saint James Street" was used as a metonym for Canadian high finance much as "Wall Street" is used in the United States, or "Bay Street" is used today. 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 thus 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 Stock Market Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression. However, Canada began to recover from the Great Depression in the mid-1930s, and skyscrapers, such as the Sun Life Building, began appearing.

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).

After Montreal's population 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 Saint 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.

The city's international status was cemented by Expo '67 and the Summer Olympics in 1976. A major league baseball team, called the Montreal Expos, was named after the Expo and started playing in Montreal in 1969. The team however moved to Washington, DC in 2005, and became the Washington Nationals.

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 its own region of Quebec.Image:1545montreal-07.jpg

In late 2005, Montreal hosted the United Nations Climate Change Conference, the first meeting joint meeting of the parties to the Kyoto Protocol and to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "History", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki