History of Montreal
The human history of Montreal, located in Quebec, Canada, spans some 8,000 years. At the time of European contact, the area was inhabited by the St. Lawrence Iroquoians, a discrete and distinct group of Iroquoian-speaking indigenous people. They spoke Laurentian. Archeological studies since the 1950s has demonstrated they were a culture distinct from those the French later called the Huron to the west and the Iroquois nations, which formed largely in present-day New York to the south. Jacques Cartier became the first European to reach the area now known as Montreal in 1535 when he entered the village of Hochelega on the Island of Montreal while in search of a passage to Asia during the Age of Exploration. He also visited Stadacona (near present-day Quebec City) and other villages in the valley. He recorded about 200 words of the Laurentian language.
Seventy years later, Samuel de Champlain found no evidence of the villages or people of the St. Lawrence Iroquoians, or any human habitation. He unsuccessfully tried to create a fur trading post but the Mohawk of the Iroquois defended what they had been using as their hunting grounds. A mission named Ville Marie was built in 1642 as part of a project to create a French colonial empire. Ville Marie became a centre for the fur trade and French expansion into New France until 1760, when it was surrendered to the British army, following the French defeat of the Battle of the Plains of Abraham. British immigration expanded the city. The city's golden era of fur trading began with the advent of the locally owned North West Company.
Montreal was incorporated as a city in 1832. The city's growth was spurred by the opening of the Lachine Canal and Montreal was the capital of the United Province of Canada from 1844 to 1849. Growth continued and by 1860 Montreal was the largest city in British North America and the undisputed economic and cultural centre of Canada. Annexation of neighbouring towns between 1883 and 1918 changed Montreal back to a mostly Francophone city. During the 1920s and 1930s the Prohibition movement in the United States turned Montreal into a haven for Americans looking for alcohol. As with the rest of the world, the Great Depression brought unemployment to the city but this waned in the mid 1930s and skyscrapers began to be built.
World War II brought protests against conscription and caused the Conscription Crisis of 1944. Montreal's population surpassed one million in the early 1950s. A new metro system was added, Montreal's harbour was expanded and the St. Lawrence Seaway was opened during this time. More skyscrapers were built along with museums. International status was cemented by Expo 67 and the 1976 Summer Olympics. A major league baseball team, called the Montreal Expos started playing in Montreal in 1969 but the team moved to Washington, DC to become the Washington Nationals in 2005.
Pre-contact
The area known today as Montreal had been inhabited by indigenous peoples for some 8,000 years, while the oldest known artifact found in Montreal proper is about 4,000 years old. About 1000 CE, nomadic Iroquoian and other peoples around the Great Lakes began to adopt the cultivation of maize and more settled lifestyles. Some settled along the fertile St. Lawrence River, where fishing and hunting in nearby forests supported a full diet. By the 14th century, the people had built fortified villages similar to those described by Cartier on his later visit.
Historians and anthropologists have had many theories about the people encountered by Cartier, as well as the reasons for their disappearance from the valley about 1580. Since the 1950s, archeological and linguistic comparative studies have established many facts about the people. They are now called the St. Lawrence Iroquoians and recognized by scholars as distinct from other Iroquoian-language people, such as the Huron or Iroquois of the Haudenosaunee, although sharing some cultural characteristics. Their language has been called Laurentian, a distinct branch of the family.
The arrival of the French
The first European to reach the area was Jacques Cartier on October 2, 1535. Cartier visited the villages of Hochelaga and Stadacona, and noted others in the valley which he did not name. He recorded about 200 words of the people's language.
Seventy years after Cartier, explorer Samuel de Champlain went to Hochelaga, but the village no longer existed, nor was there sign of any human habitation in the valley. Although at times historians theorized that the people migrated west to the Great Lakes (or were pushed out by conflict with other tribes, including the Huron), or suffered infectious disease. Since the 1950s, other theories have been proposed. Based on increasing understanding of the political dynamics with other tribes and the French, and more knowledge about the origins of other tribes, many historians have now concluded that the St. Lawrence Iroquoians were essentially destroyed by the Mohawk of the Iroquois, who wanted to dominate hunting and trade in the valley below Tadoussac. The Mohawk had most to gain by moving up from New York into this area Tadoussac, at the confluence of the Saguenay and St. Lawrence rivers, was controlled by local Montagnais.
Champlain decided to establish a fur trading post at Place Royal on the Island of Montreal, but the Mohawk, based mostly in present-day New York, successfully defended what had by then become their hunting grounds and paths for their war parties. It was not until 1639 that the French created a permanent settlement on the Island of Montreal, started by tax collector Jérôme le Royer de la Dauversière. Under the authority of the Roman Catholic Société Notre-Dame de Montréal, missionaries Paul Chomedey de Maisonneuve, Jeanne Mance and a few French colonists set up a mission named Ville Marie on May 17, 1642 as part of a project to create a colony dedicated to the Virgin Mary. In 1644, Jeanne Mance founded the Hôtel-Dieu, the first hospital in North America, north of Mexico.
Paul Chomedey de Maisonneuve was governor of the colony. On January 4, 1648, he granted Pierre Gadois (who was in his fifties) the first concession of land - some 40 acres. In November of 1653, another 140 French arrived to enlarge the settlement.
By 1651, Ville-Marie had been reduced to less than 50 inhabitants by repeated attacks by the Mohawk. Maisonneuve returned to France that year to recruit 100 men to bolster the failing colony. He had already decided that should he fail to recruit these settlers, he would abandon Ville-Marie and move everyone back downriver to Quebec City. (Even 10 years after its founding, the people of Quebec City still thought of Montreal as "une folle entreprise" - a crazy undertaking.) These recruits arrived on 16 November 1653 and essentially guaranteed the evolution of Ville Marie and of all New France. In 1653 Marguerite Bourgeoys arrived to serve as a teacher. She founded Montreal's first school that year, as well as the Congrégation de Notre-Dame, which became mostly a teaching order. In 1663, the Sulpician seminary became the new Seigneur of the island.
Ville Marie would become a centre for the fur trade. The town was fortified in 1725. The French and Iroquois Wars threatened the survival of Ville-Marie until a peace treaty (see the Great Peace of Montreal) was signed at Montreal in 1701. With the Great Peace, Montreal and the surrounding seigneuries nearby (Terrebonne, Lachenaie, Boucherville, Lachine, Longueuil, ...) could develop without the fear of Iroquois raids.
Surrender of the colony
Ville-Marie remained French settlement until 1760, when Pierre François de Rigaud, Marquis de Vaudreuil-Cavagnal surrendered it to the British army under Jeffrey Amherst. With Great Britain's victory in the Seven Years War, the Treaty of Paris in 1763 marked its end, with the French being forced to cede Canada and all its dependencies to the other nation..
As a British colony, and with immigration no longer limited to members of the Roman Catholic religion, the city began to grow from British immigration. American Revolutionists under General Richard Montgomery briefly captured the city during the 1775 invasion of Canada but left when it became obvious they could not hold Canada. Often having suffered loss of property and personal attacks during hostilities, thousands of English-speaking Loyalists migrated to Canada from the American colonies during and after the American Revolution. The government provided most with land, settling them in what became Upper Canada (Ontario) to the west, as well as Nova Scotia and New Brunswick to the east. With 19th century immigration, more and more English-speaking merchants and residents continued to arrive in what had by then become known as Montreal. Soon the main language of commerce in the city was English. 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.
The town's population was majority Francophones until around the 1830s. From the 1830s, to about 1865, it was inhabited by a majority of Anglophones, most of recent immigration from the British Isles or other parts of British North America. Fire destroyed one quarter of the town on May 18, 1765.
Scottish contributions
Scots constructed Montreal's first bridge across the Saint Lawrence River and founded many of the city's great industries, including Morgan's, the first department store in Canada, incorporated within the Hudson's Bay Company in the 1970s; the Bank of Montreal; Redpath Sugar; and both of Canada's national railroads. The city boomed as railways were built to New England, Toronto, and the west, and factories were established along the Lachine Canal. Many buildings from this time period are concentrated in the area known today as Old Montreal. Noted for their philanthropic work, Scots established and funded numerous Montreal institutions such as McGill University, the Literary and Historical Society of Quebec and the Royal Victoria Hospital.
The City of Montreal
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 even more English-speaking immigrants: Late Loyalists, Irish, Scottish, and English. Riots led by Tories led to the burning of the Provincial Parliament, forcing the government to choose another city to represent the capital of its colony. The decision was taken to move the capital to Toronto. The Anglophone community built one of Canada's first universities, McGill, and the wealthy built large mansions at the foot of Mont Royal.
These linked the established port of Montreal with continental markets and spawned rapid industrialization during the mid 19th century. The economic boom attracted French Canadian labourers from the surrounding countryside to factories in satellite cities such as Saint-Henri and Maisonneuve. Irish immigrants settled in tough working class neighbourhoods such as Point Saint Charles and Griffintown, making English and French linguistic groups roughly equal in size. The growing city also attracted immigrants from Italy, and Eastern Europe.
In 1852, Montreal had 58,000 inhabitants and by 1860, Montreal was the largest city in British North America and the undisputed economic and cultural centre of Canada. From 1861 to the Great Depression of 1930, Montreal went through what some historians call its Golden Age. St. James Street became the most important economic centre of the Dominion of Canada. The Canadian Pacific Railway made its headquarters there in 1880, and the Canadian National Railway in 1919. At the time of its construction in 1928, the new head office of the Royal Bank of Canada at 360 St. James Street was the tallest building in the British Empire. With the annexation of neighbouring towns between 1883 and 1918, Montreal became a mostly Francophone city again. The tradition of alternating between a francophone and an anglophone mayor thus began, and lasted until 1914.
War and the Great Depression
Montrealers volunteered to serve in the army to defend Canada during World War I, but most French Montrealers opposed mandatory conscription. After the war, the Prohibition movement in the United States turned Montreal into a haven for Americans looking for alcohol. Americans would go to Montreal for drinking, gambling, and prostitution, unrivalled in North America at this time, which earned the city the nickname "Sin City."
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 real estate developers began to build skyscrapers, changing Montreal's skyline. The Sun Life Building, built in 1931, was for a time the tallest building in the Commonwealth. During World War II its vaults were the secret hiding place of the gold bullion of the Bank of England and the British Crown Jewels.
Canada could not escape World War II. Mayor Camillien Houde protested against conscription. He urged Montrealers to ignore the federal government's registry of all men and women because he believed it would lead to conscription. Ottawa, considering Houde's actions treasonable, put him in a prison camp for over four years, from 1940, until 1944, when the government was forced to institute conscription (see Conscription Crisis of 1944).
The Quiet Revolution and the modernization of Montreal
By the beginning of the 1960s, a new political movement was rising in Quebec. The newly elected Liberal government of Jean Lesage made reforms that helped francophone Quebecers gain more and more influence in politics and in the economy, thus changing the face of the city. More businesses were starting to be owned by francophones as Montreal became the centre of French culture in North America.
A two-year period from 1962 to 1964 saw the completion of four of Montreal's ten tallest buildings: Tour de la Bourse, Place Ville-Marie, the CIBC Building and CIL House. Montreal gained an increased international status due to the World's Fair of 1967, Expo 67. During the 1960s, mayor Jean Drapeau carried out a series of infrastructure upgrades throughout the city such as the construction of the Montreal Metro while the provincial government built much of what is today's highway system. Like many other North American cities during these years, Montreal experienced massive growth too quickly for its infrastructures to satisfy its needs.
The Quebec Independence Movement
At the end of the 1960s, the independence movement in Quebec was in full swing due to a constitutional debate between the Ottawa and Quebec governments. Radical groups formed, notably the FLQ, who kidnapped and murdered Pierre Laporte, a minister in the National Assembly; and also kidnapped James Cross, a British diplomat (who was later released). These events became known as the October Crisis of 1970. Pierre Elliot Trudeau, the Prime Minister of Canada at the time, ordered the military occupation of Montreal and gave unprecedented peacetime powers to police by invoking the War Measures Act. Sovereignty was then addressed through the ballot box, with the Parti Québécois holding two referendums on the question, in 1980 and in 1995.
About 300 000 English-speaking Quebecers left Quebec in those decades. The extent of the transition was greater than the norm for major urban centres, with social and economic impacts, as a significant number of (mostly Anglophone) Montrealers, as well as businesses, migrated to other provinces, away from an uncertain political climate. Bill 101 was passed in 1977 and gave primacy to French as Quebec's (and Montreal's) only official language for government, the main language of business and culture, and enforced the exclusive use of French for public signage and business communication.
Economic recovery
During the 1980s and early 1990s, Montreal experienced a slower rate of economic growth than many other major Canadian cities. By the late 1990s, however, Montreal's economic climate had improved, as new firms and institutions began to fill the traditional business and financial niches.
As the city celebrated its 350th anniversary in 1992, construction began on two new skyscrapers : 1000 de La Gauchetière and 1250 René-Lévesque. Montreal's improving economic conditions allowed further enhancements of the city infrastructure, with the expansion of the metro system, construction of new skyscrapers and the development of new highways including the start of a ring road around the island. The city also attracted several international organisations to move their secretariats into Montreal's Quartier International: International Air Transport Association (IATA), International Council of Societies of Industrial Design (Icsid), International Council of Graphic Design Associations (Icograda), International Bureau for Children's Rights (IBCR), International Centre for the Prevention of Crime (ICPC) and the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS). With developments such as Centre de Commerce Mondial (World Trade Centre), Quartier International, Square Cartier, and proposed revitalization of the harbourfront, the city is regaining its international position as a world class city.
Origin of the name
During the early 18th century, the name of the island came to be used as the name of the town. Two 1744 maps by Nicolas Bellin name the island Isle de Montréal and the town, Ville-Marie; but a 1726 map refers to the town as "la ville de Montréal." The name Ville-Marie soon fell into disuse to refer to the town, though today it is used to refer to the Montreal borough that includes downtown.
In the modern Iroquois language, Montreal is called Tiohtià:ke. Other native languages, such as Algonquin, refer to it as Moniang.
External links
- Historic FAQ - Centre d'Histoire de Montréal.
- Exhibition: Montreal, 500 years of History in Archives
- Montréalistes, Montreal Archives Portal
- Web sites on the History of Montreal
- Montreal History Links
- Montréal, Metropole Québecs
License
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Historic preservation".
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