History
The island of Montreal was first occupied by the St Lawrence Iroquois , whose small village of Hochelaga ("Place of the Beaver") was situated at the base of Mont Royal. European presence began in October 1535 when Jacques-Cartier was led here while searching for a northwest route to Asia. However, even after the arrival of Samuel de Champlain, the French settlement was little more than a small garrison, and it wasn't until 1642 that the colony of Ville-Marie was founded by the soldiers of Paul de Chomedey , Sieur de Maisonneuve. They were on orders from Paris to "bring about the Glory of God and the salvation of the Indians", a mission that predictably enough found little response from the aboriginal peoples. Bloody conflict with the Iroquois, fanned by the European fur-trade alliances with the Algonquins and Hurons, was constant until a treaty signed in 1701 prompted the growth of Ville-Marie into the main embarkation point for the fur and lumber trade. When Quebec City fell to the British in 1759, Montreal briefly served as the capital of New France, until the Marquis de Vaudreuil was forced to surrender to General Amherst the following year. The ensuing British occupation suffered a seven-month interruption in 1775, when the Americans took over, but after this hiatus a flood of Irish and Scottish immigrants soon made Montreal North America's second-largest city. It was not a harmonious expansion, however, and in 1837 the French Patriotes led by Louis-Joseph Papineau rebelled against the British ruling class. Their insurgency failed and was followed by hangings and exiles. With the creation of the Dominion of Canada in 1867, Montreal emerged as the new nation's premier port, railroad nexus, banking centre and industrial producer. Its population reached half a million in 1911 and doubled in the next two decades with an influx of emigres from Europe. It was also during this period that Montreal acquired its reputation as Canada's "sin city". During Prohibition in the US, Quebec became the main alcohol supplier to the entire continent: the Molsons and their ilk made their fortunes here, while prostitution and gambling thrived under the protection of the authorities. Only in the wake of World War II and the subsequent economic boom did a major anti-corruption operation begin, a campaign that was followed by rapid architectural growth, starting in 1962 with Place Ville Marie and the beginnings of the Underground City complex. The most glamorous episode in the city's face-lift came in 1967, when land reclaimed from the St Lawrence was used as the site of Expo '67 , the World Fair that attracted fifty million visitors to Montreal in the course of the year. However, it was Montreal's anglophones who were benefiting from the prosperity, and beneath the smooth surface francophone frustrations were reaching dangerous levels. The crisis peaked in October 1970, when the radical Front de Liberation du Quebec (FLQ) kidnapped the British trade commissioner, James Cross, and then a Quebec cabinet minister, Pierre Laporte. As ransom, the FLQ demanded the publication of the FLQ manifesto, the transportation to Cuba of 25 FLQ prisoners awaiting trial for acts of violence, and $500,000 in gold bullion. Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau responded with the War Measures Act, suspending civil liberties and putting troops on the streets of Montreal. The following day, Laporte's body was found in the boot of a car. By December, the so-called October Crisis was over, Cross was released, and his captors and Laporte's murderers arrested. But the reverberations shook the nation. At last recognizing the need to redress the country's social imbalances, the federal government poured money into countrywide schemes to promote French-Canadian culture. Francophone discontent was further alleviated by the provincial election of Rene Levesque and his Parti Quebecois in 1976, the year the Olympic Games were held in Montreal. The consequent language laws (Bill 101) made French a compulsory part of the school curriculum and banned English signs on business premises; only allowing them inside establishments provided the signs were bilingual and the French was printed twice as large as the English. Businesses that fail to comply are at the mercy of the "language police", inspectors of the Office de la Langue Francaise (OLF) who can go to extraordinary lengths - such as measuring signs and checking Web sites and business cards - to ensure that French is the dominant form of communication. For many anglophones, the threat of sovereignty, combined with language measures they took to be pettily vindictive, prompted an exodus in the tens of thousands from Montreal; plenty of companies left too, moving west to Toronto. For a while it seemed that Montreal's heyday was over as the changes and political uncertainty that dominated the last two decades of the twentieth century, combined with a Canada-wide economic recession in the mid-1990s, saw Quebec lag behind the rest of the country in economic growth. But the turning point came after the 1995 referendum, when a tacit truce was made on the issue of separation. The communal bonds between anglophone and francophone Quebecois were further rejuvenated by the ice storm of 1998, which plunged pockets of the province into darkness for days after 100mm of icy rain downed power lines, and left 1.4 million people without electricity - some for weeks on end. The ice storm's impact on Montreal's green spaces was enormous, and most pronounced on the mountain, where some 80,000 trees were damaged. The city's face has changed visibly in other ways recently. The boarded-up shops that lined rue Ste-Catherine in the mid-1990s have reopened and do bustling business nowadays. Derelict pockets on the edges of downtown and Vieux-Montreal have been renovated to house the booming multimedia industry. And with the rising employment and economic prosperity, popular residential areas like the Plateau are being gentrified and apartment developments abound. Even the city's nightlife scene is changing, as full-time workers opt for the cinq a sept cocktail hour during the week rather than going out late into the evening. But perhaps the most enduring change is that the gaps left by departing anglophones have been filled by young bilingual francophones who at last feel in charge of their own culture and economy. At the same time, the anglophones that stayed have also become bilingual, and these days it's perfectly normal to hear the two languages intermingling with one another wherever you may be.
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