Montreal, Canada is the largest city in the province of Quebec and is truly an experience: old world charm, French joie de vivre and a unique cultural face in the world. It has a long-lasting tradition of jazz and rock music, visual arts, theater, music, and dance and is famous for its unparalleled nightlife and culinary fabric. Another distinctive characteristic of Montreal cultural life is to be found in the animation of its downtown, particularly during summer, prompted by cultural events and festivals.
Aviation Capital
Montreal has been one of the international civil aviation capitals since the mid-1940 due to its vast spaces, and its great economic, scientific, technical and aeronautical expansion potential. Canada plays a great role in the development of world aviation with head offices of ICAO, IATA and United Nations located in Montreal.
In 2007, Montreal was the only city in the world where, within a radius of 30 kilometres, one can build an airplane from A to Z: landing gear to the motor, through the wings and assembly. This made Montreal the third aircraft manufacturer pole in the world, behind Toulouse, France, and Seattle, USA.
Climate
|
Weather averages for Montreal, Quebec |
|
Month |
Jan |
Feb |
Mar |
Apr |
May |
Jun |
Jul |
Aug |
Sep |
Oct |
Nov |
Dec |
Year |
|
Average high °C |
-5.7 |
-3.9 |
2.2 |
10.7 |
19.0 |
23.6 |
26.2 |
24.8 |
19.7 |
12.7 |
5.3 |
-2.2 |
11.1 |
|
Average low °C |
-14.7 |
-12.9 |
-6.7 |
0.6 |
7.7 |
12.7 |
15.6 |
14.3 |
9.4 |
3.4 |
-2.1 |
-10.4 |
1.4 |
|
Precipitation mm |
78.3 |
61.5 |
73.6 |
78.0 |
76.3 |
83.1 |
91.3 |
92.7 |
92.6 |
77.8 |
92.6 |
81.3 |
978.9 |
|
Average high °F |
21.7 |
25.0 |
36.0 |
51.3 |
66.2 |
74.5 |
79.2 |
76.6 |
67.5 |
54.9 |
41.5 |
28.0 |
52.0 |
|
Average low °F |
5.5 |
8.8 |
19.9 |
33.1 |
45.9 |
54.9 |
60.1 |
57.7 |
48.9 |
38.1 |
28.2 |
13.3 |
34.5 |
|
Precipitation inches |
3.1 |
2.4 |
2.9 |
3.1 |
3.0 |
3.3 |
3.6 |
3.6 |
3.6 |
3.1 |
3.6 |
3.2 |
38.5 |
|
Source: Environment Canada 18 Dec 2006 |
Architecture
Montreal City Hall
For over a century and a half, Montreal was the industrial and financial centre of Canada. The variety of buildings included factories, elevators, warehouses, mills, and refineries which today provide a legacy of historic and architectural interest, especially in the downtown area and the Old Port area.
Today there are also many historical buildings in Old Montreal still in their original form: Notre-Dame de Montréal Basilica, Bonsecours Market, and the impressive 19th-century headquarters of all major Canadian banks on Saint Jacques Street (formerly Saint James Street). Saint Joseph's Oratory, completed in 1934, Ernest Cormier's Art Deco Université de Montréal main building, the landmark Place Ville Marie office tower, the controversial Olympic Stadium and surrounding structures, are but a few notable examples of 20th century architecture.
Downtown Montreal
Evening skyline
Downtown Montreal lies at the foot of Mount Royal, most of which is a major urban park, and extends toward the St Lawrence River. It is located entirely within the Ville Marie borough. The Downtown area contains dozens of notable skyscrapers — which bylaws restrict to the height of Mount Royal — including the aforementioned 1000 de La Gauchetière and 1250 René-Lévesque. The Tour de la Bourse (Stock Exchange Tower) is also another significant building in Montreal, and is home to the Montreal Exchange, which trades in derivatives such as futures contracts and options. The Montreal Exchange was the first stock exchange in Canada. In 1999 all stock trades were transferred to Toronto in exchange for exclusivity in derivatives trading.
Place Ville-Marie, a cruciform office tower built in 1962, sits atop an underground shopping mall that forms the nexus of Montreal's underground city, the world's largest, with indoor access to over 1,600 shops, restaurants, offices, businesses, museums and universities, as well as metro stations, train stations, bus terminals, and tunnels extending all over downtown. The central axis for downtown is Saint Catherine Street, Canada's busiest commercial artery. Other major streets include Sherbrooke, René Lévesque, Peel, de la Montagne, de Maisonneuve and Crescent. The Montreal Skyline panorama includes two islands, Île Ste. Hélène and Île Notre-Dame. The man-made Notre Dame Island hosts the Canadian Grand Prix Formula One auto race, as well as NASCAR racing. La Ronde, the sole amusement park in the Montreal area, is located on Île Ste. Hélène and is home to the Montreal Fireworks Festival in the summer.
Old Montreal
Place d'Armes and Notre Dame Basilica in winter
Old Montreal (French: Vieux-Montréal) is a historic area located southeast of downtown containing many different attractions such as the Old Port of Montreal, Place Jacques-Cartier, Montreal City Hall, the Bonsecours Market, Place d'Armes, Pointe-à-Callière Museum, the Notre-Dame de Montréal Basilica, and the Montreal Science Centre.
Architecture and cobbled streets in Old Montreal have been maintained or restored and are frequented by horse-drawn calèches carrying tourists. Old Montreal is accessible from the downtown core via the underground city and is served by several STM bus routes and metro stations, ferries to the South Shore and a network of bicycle paths.
Old Montreal was once a worldwide port, but shipping has been moved further east to a new larger site, leaving the Old Port as a historical area. The newer port is now the biggest container port in North America. The riverside area adjacent to Old Montreal is known as the Old Port. It is now a recreational and historical area maintained by Parks Canada.
Mount Royal
Cross on top of Mount Royal, at night
The mountain is the site of Mount Royal Park (officially Parc du Mont-Royal), one of Montreal's largest greenspaces. The park, most of which is wooded, was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, who also designed New York's Central Park, and inaugurated in 1876.
The park contains two belvederes, the more prominent of which is the Kondiaronk Belvedere, a semicircular plaza with a chalet, overlooking downtown Montreal. Other features of the park are Beaver Lake, a small man-made lake; a short ski slope; a sculpture garden; Smith House, an interpretive centre; and a well-known monument to Sir George-Étienne Cartier. The park hosts athletic, tourist, and cultural activities.
The mountain is also home to two major cemeteries, Notre-Dame-des-Neiges (founded in 1854) and Mount Royal (1852). Mount Royal Cemetery is a 165 acres (67 ha) terraced cemetery on the north slope of Mount Royal in the borough of Outremont. Cimetière Notre-Dame-des-Neiges is much larger, predominantly French-Canadian and officially Catholic. More than 900,000 people are buried there.
Underground City
Halles de la gare, going from Gare centrale to Place Ville-Marie
Extending all over downtown is Montreal's Underground City, a set of pedestrian levels built to cross under streets, thereby connecting buildings to each other. It is also known as the indoor city, as not all of it is underground. The connections are considered tunnels architecturally and technically, but have conditioned air and good lighting as any building's livable space does. Many tunnels are large enough to have shops on both sides of the passage. With over 32 kilometres (20 mi) of tunnels spread over more than twelve square kilometres (5 sq mi), connected areas include shopping malls, hotels, banks, offices, museums, universities, seven metro stations, two commuter train stations, a regional bus terminal and the Bell Centre amphitheatre and arena. There are more than 120 exterior access points to the underground city. Each access point is an entry point to one of 60 residential or commercial complexes comprising 3.6 square kilometres (1.4 sq mi) of floor space, including 80% of all office space and 35% of all commercial space in downtown Montreal. In winter, some 500,000 people use the underground city every day. Because of its Underground City, Montreal is often referred to as "Two Cities in One."
Economy
Montreal started out as the economic centre and largest city of Canada from the birth of the country up until the early 1970s when it was overcome by Toronto, due to political and economic crisis. Also, Toronto had been growing faster since the end of the Second World War.
The loss of many headquarters and a large anglophone business community of about 300,000 people lessened Montreal's economic and social importance, and it stayed in a decline for over 15 years.
In the early 1990s, Montreal's economic recovery helped to place it as an important centre of commerce, industry, culture, finance, and world affairs.
Montreal industries include aerospace, electronic goods, pharmaceuticals, printed goods, software engineering, telecommunications, textile and apparel manufacturing, tobacco and transportation. The service sector is also strong and includes civil, mechanical and process engineering, finance, higher education, and research and development. In 2002, Montreal ranked as the 4th largest centre in North America in terms of aerospace jobs.
The Port of Montreal is the largest inland port in the world. As one of the most important ports in Canada, it remains a trans-shipment point for grain, sugar, petroleum products, machinery, and consumer goods. For this reason, Montreal is the railway hub of Canada and has always been an extremely important rail city; it is the eastern terminus of the Canadian Pacific Railway and home to the headquarters of the Canadian National Railway.
The headquarters of the Canadian Space Agency are located in Longueuil, southeast of Montreal. Montreal also hosts the headquarters of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO, a United Nations body); the World Anti-Doping Agency (an Olympic body); the International Air Transport Association (IATA); the International Council of Graphic Design Associations (Icograda); the International Design Alliance (IDA); Gay and Lesbian International Chamber of Commerce, as well as some 60 other international organizations in various fields. It is also the leading Canadian city for its research output, fuelled in part by Montreal's four universities and numerous scientific research centers
Place Ville-Marie
Montreal is also a centre of film and television production. The headquarters of Alliance Atlantis and five studios of the Academy Award-winning documentary producer National Film Board of Canada can be found here, as well as the head offices of Telefilm Canada, the national feature-length film and television funding agency. Given its eclectic architecture and broad availability of film services and crew members, Montreal is a popular filming location for feature-length films, and sometimes stands in for European locations. The city is also home to many recognized cultural, film and music festivals (Just For Laughs, Montreal Jazz Festival, and others), which contribute significantly to its economy. It is also home to one of the world's largest cultural enterprises, the Cirque du Soleil.
The video game industry is also booming in Montreal since 1997, coinciding with the opening of Ubisoft Montreal. Recently, the city has attracted world leading game developers and publishers studios such as Ubisoft, EA, Eidos Interactive, Artificial Mind and Movement, Strategy First, mainly because video games jobs have been heavily subsidized by the provincial government. Every year, this industry generates billions of dollars and thousands of jobs in the Montreal area.
Rio Tinto Alcan, Bombardier, CN, CGI Group, Air Canada, CAE, Saputo, Cirque du Soleil, Quebecor, Power Corporation, Bell Canada, SNC-Lavalin, Hydro-Québec, Abitibi-Consolidated, National Bank of Canada, ABB Canada, and many other corporations are headquartered in the Greater Montreal Area.
Culture
A cultural heart of classical art and the venue for many summer festivals, the Place des Arts is a complex of different concert and theatre halls surrounding a large open-spaced square in the downtown. The Place des Arts harbours the headquarters of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra (OSM: Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal), which performs in its halls regularly. The OSM is one of the world's foremost orchestras, most remembered for the quality of its performance of the repertoire of Maurice Ravel under conductor Charles Dutoit. Since 2006, the OSM has a new conductor, the American Kent Nagano. L'orchestre métropolitain and the chamber orchestra I Musici de Montréal are two other well-regarded Montreal orchestras. Also performing home at Place des Arts is the Opéra de Montréal and the city’s chief ballet company Les Grands Ballets Canadiens. In contemporary dance, Montreal has been active, particularly since the 1980s. Internationally recognized avant-garde dance troupes such as La La La Human Steps, O Vertigo, and the Fondation Jean-Pierre Perreault have toured the world and worked with international popular artists on videos and concerts. The intelligent integration of multi-discipline arts in choreography of these troupes has paved the way for the success of the Montreal-based Cirque du Soleil.
A view of Sainte-Catherine Street
Montreal is the cultural centre of Quebec, and of French-speaking North America as a whole. The city is Canada's centre for French language television productions, radio, theatre, film, multimedia and print publishing. The Quartier Latin is a neighbourhood crowded with cafés animated by this literary and musical activity. The local English-speaking artistic community nevertheless contributes dynamically to the culture of Montreal, and intense collaborations exist between all Montreal communities. The result is a dynamic musical scene, ignited by the presence of numerous musical festivals, that melds different musical styles and traditions. English theatre struggled but survived with the Centaur Theatre. Ethnic theatre, by the 1970s, began to be a force with the Black Theatre Workshop, the Yiddish Theatre established at the Saidye Bronfman Centre and the Teesri Duniya Theatre. In the late 1990s, Montreal started to become a hotspot for low-budget independent English theatre with companies such as Optative Theatrical Laboratories, MainLine Theatre, Gravy Bath Theatre, Sa Booge, Persephone, Pumpkin Productions, and Tableau D'Hôte Theatre adding to the scene.
Festivals
The plaza on Place des Arts is the home of the most important events during several musical festivals, including the Montreal International Jazz Festival and Montreal Francofolies, a festival of French-speaking song artists. Each of the two festivals lasts seven-to-ten days and shows are presented in a wide variety of venues, from relatively small clubs to the large halls of Place des Arts. Some of the outdoor shows are held on cordoned-off streets while others are in terraced parks. The most popular festival, in terms of attendance, is the Just For Laughs Festival. A comedy festival held in both languages, it features comedians, humourists, and stand-ups from all over the world. The Montreal Fireworks Festival also attracts a lot of attention. On the evenings of competition, tens of thousands of people watch the fireworks for free on their roofs or from locations nearby the competition. Other festivals in Montreal include Pop Montreal, The Fringe Festival, la Fête des Neiges de Montréal, and Nujaz. Annual family-oriented events promoting health and cycling are also organized in the streets of Montreal. Parades are also popular in downtown Montreal.
The city is increasingly becoming known for its mainstream party festivals such as the Black and Blue Festival, the world's largest gay-benefit dance festival, attracting thousands of tourists to the city every Canadian Thanksgiving weekend, which raises money for HIV/AIDS and the gay community, as well as the Bal en Blanc held every Easter Sunday, also attracting thousands every year.
Night life
Club Super Sexe is a popular strip club located on Sainte Catherine Street.
During the period of Prohibition in the United States, Montreal became well-known as one of North America's "sin cities" with unparalleled nightlife, a reputation it still holds today. In part, its bustling nightlife is attributed to its relatively late "last call" (3 a.m.), and its many restaurants and after hours clubs that stay open well on into the morning. The large university population (195,000 students), the rarely enforced drinking age of 18, and the excellent public transportation system (a network of night buses, some with service every 15 minutes, replaces the metro between 1:00 and 5:00 a.m.) combine with other aspects of the Montreal culture to make the city's night life unique.
Crescent Street is "party central" for Montreal's tourist population, lying at the edge of the Concordia University campus. Throughout the summer, it features street fairs and festivals. The Formula 1 Canadian Grand Prix unofficially starts off Montreal's non-stop festival season in the summer. Crescent Street also features many clubs and bars. The clientele of Crescent nightclubs and bars are mostly students, tourists and in general a younger crowd looking for exhilaration and excitement. Most venues will play Top 40 music. The nearest subway stops are Peel, Lucien-L'Allier and Guy-Concordia.
Boulevard Saint-Laurent (Saint-Laurent Boulevard, known locally as "The Main" or "Saint Lawrence Boulevard") is one of the best places to find nightlife, with many bars and nightclubs and a wide range of restaurants. Saint-Laurent street night spots are often less mainstream than those on Crescent street, with a great variety: from Top 40 and urban music to electronica and techno, from underground and alternative rock to live bands. South of Prince Arthur Street, toward Sherbrooke Street, one is likely to encounter a "posher" clientele. From Prince Arthur Street north (to Avenue du Mont-Royal and beyond), one should expect to rub shoulders with an "edgier" crowd. The nearest subway stops are Saint-Laurent and Sherbrooke.
Another highly notable nightlife area is the Plateau Mont-Royal neighbourhood, with most of the bars, restaurants and nightclubs centred around Saint-Denis St. and Mont-Royal Ave.
Montreal is also one of the biggest gay destinations in North America with a flourishing gay village, the largest of its kind on the North American continent, which houses three of the city's most popular clubs, Unity, Parking and Sky, along with dozens of restaurants and shops.
Cuisine
Montreal's culinary landscape is perhaps most influenced by the multinational fabric of its allophone communities. Italian, Greek, Portuguese and Jewish communities have contributed to the making up of Montreal's delicatessens and other restaurants. Jewish culinary contributions include the world-renowned Montreal-style smoked meat sandwiches and Montreal style bagels. Lebanese falafels and Japanese sushi have become appreciated cuisines. Due to all of the above, Montreal and its culinary landscape was the focus of Gourmet magazine's March 2006 issue. Since its inception, the magazine has focused its attention on a single city in only five other issues.
Shopping
Still standing since 1866, Ogilvy's is a high fashion department store.
Saint Catherine Street and the downtown area once boasted Montreal's four prominent department stores: Eaton's, Morgan's, Ogilvy's, and Simpson's. Today, only Ogilvy's remains. However, the area remains a shopping destination, with many major retailers having large stores along the streets of downtown. Additionally, many of Montreal's most prominent shopping complexes, including the Faubourg Sainte-Catherine, the Centre Eaton, Les Cours Mont-Royal, the Complexe Desjardins, the Complexe Les Ailes, Place Dupuis, Place Alexis-Nihon, Westmount Square, and Place Montreal Trust all make their home along this street.
Other areas where smaller independent stores may be found include: St-Denis Street and Avenue Mont-Royal , Chabanel Street for discount clothing outlets.
Religion
Saint Joseph's Oratory is the largest church in Canada.
Nicknamed "la ville aux cent clochers" (the city of a hundred belltowers), Montreal is renowned for its churches. Indeed, as Mark Twain once noted, "This is the first time I was ever in a city where you couldn't throw a brick without breaking a church window." The city has four Roman Catholic basilicas: Mary, Queen of the World Cathedral, the aforementioned Notre-Dame Basilica, St. Patrick's Basilica, and Saint Joseph's Oratory. The Oratory is the largest church in Canada, with the largest dome of its kind in the world after that of Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome.
Other well-known churches include Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours Chapel, which is sometimes called the Sailors' Church, and the Anglican Christ Church Cathedral, which was completely excavated and suspended above an excavated pit during the construction of part of the Underground City. All of the above are major tourist destinations, particularly Notre-Dame and the Oratory.
Sports and recreation
The Montreal Canadiens win a game at the Bell Centre.
The biggest sport following in Montreal clearly belongs to hockey – and the city is famous for its hockey-hungry fans. The Montreal Canadiens are one of the Original Six NHL teams, and boast the greatest number of Stanley Cup championships at 24 (11 more than second place Toronto). The only other team in the four major North American sports leagues to have this many titles is baseball's New York Yankees, and their 26 titles.
Montreal has a storied baseball history. The city was the home of the Montreal Royals until 1960 and Jackie Robinson broke the baseball colour barrier with the Royals in 1946. Major League Baseball came to town in the form of the Montreal Expos in 1969. They played their games at Jarry Park until moving into Olympic Stadium in 1977. After 37 years in Montreal, the team relocated to Washington, DC in 2005 and re-branded themselves as the Washington Nationals. Montreal is slated to have a Can-Am League team beginning in 2008 to fill the void created by the departure of the Expos.
The Montreal Alouettes of the CFL draw packed crowds at the small but picturesque Molson Stadium for their regular season games. Late season and playoff games are played at the much larger, enclosed Olympic Stadium, which will also play host to the 2008 Grey Cup. The McGill Redmen, Concordia Stingers, and Université de Montréal Carabins play in the CIS university football league.
Fans fill up the area every year for the Canadian Grand Prix
The city's USL First Division soccer team is called the Montreal Impact. They will open their brand new soccer-specific stadium in 2008 when they move to Saputo Stadium. There has been talk of the team moving to Major League Soccer in time for the 2010 season. The Montreal games of the FIFA 2007 FIFA U-20 World Cup were held at Olympic Stadium.
Montreal is the site of two high-profile racing events each year: the Canadian Grand Prix of F1 racing and a NASCAR race in the Busch Series. These races take place on the famous Circuit Gilles Villeneuve on Île Notre-Dame, where the Champ Car series also raced from 2002 until 2006.
Stade Uniprix (Uniprix Stadium) was built in 1993 and is used for the annual Rogers Cup Tennis Masters tournament. The ATP men's tennis tour and the Sony Ericsson WTA women's tennis tour switch between Montreal and Toronto every year. (In 2007, the women's was played in Toronto, and the men's was played in Montreal)
Olympic Stadium, in the city's eastern section.
Montreal was the host of the 1976 Summer Olympics. The Montreal Games were the most expensive in Olympic history, costing over $5 billion (equivalent to $20 billion in 2006); bad planning led to the Games' cost far exceeding the budget, and the city just finished paying the debt off in December 2006. However, the games were still considered an immense success in the eyes of the IOC, and it furthered Montreal's reputation on the world stage. For a time, it seemed that the Olympic Games might no longer be a viable financial proposition. There was also a boycott by African nations to protest against a recent tour of apartheid-run South Africa by a New Zealand rugby side. The Romanian gymnast Nadia Comaneci won the women's individual all around gold medal with two of four possible perfect scores, thus giving birth to a gymnastics dynasty in Romania. Another female gymnast to earn the perfect score and three gold medals there was Nellie Kim of the USSR.
Montreal hosted the first ever World Outgames in the summer of 2006, attracting over 16,000 participants engaged in 35 sporting activities. They were the biggest sporting event in the city since the Summer Olympics of 1976.
Education
With access to six universities and twelve junior colleges in an 8 kilometre (5 mi) radius, Montreal has the highest concentration of post-secondary students of all major cities in North America (4.38 students per 100 residents, followed by Boston at 4.37 students per 100 residents).
There are two English-language universities in the city. McGill University is a research university, and has occasionally referred to itself as the Harvard of Canada. It was recently rated as Canada's best university, and the twelfth best in the world by Quacquarelli Symonds. Concordia University is the other English-language university, created from the merger of Sir George Williams University and Loyola College.
There are equally two French-language universities located in the city of Montreal. Université du Québec à Montréal (UQÀM) is the largest French-language university in the world. UQÀM generally specializes in liberal-arts. It has several separately run schools, notably École de technologie supérieure (ETS), École nationale d'administration publique (ENAP) and Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique (INRS). The other French-language university, Université de Montréal (UdeM) is a research university. The École Polytechnique de Montréal and the École des Hautes Études Commerciales de Montréal are two schools that are run by UdeM.
Additionally, two more French-language universities,Université de Sherbrooke and Université Laval have campuses in the nearby suburb of Longueuil on the south shore.
The education system in the province of Quebec is slightly different from other systems in North America. Between the high school and university levels, there is an additional college level called "CEGEP". It is at the same time a preparatory school (preparing students for admission to university) and a technical school (offering courses which lead to technical diplomas and specializations). In Montreal, seventeen CEGEPs offer courses in French and five in English.
Transportation
Montreal is a transportation hub for eastern Canada, with well-developed air, road, rail, and maritime links to the rest of Canada, as well as the United States and Europe.
Air
Montréal-Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport
Montreal has two international airports, one for passenger flights only, and the other for cargo. Montréal-Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport (formerly Dorval Airport, the name still used by locals) in the City of Dorval, Borough of Saint-Laurent serves all commercial passenger traffic and is the headquarters for Air Canada and Air Transat. To the north of the city is Montréal-Mirabel International Airport in Mirabel, which was envisioned as Montreal's primary airport but which now serves only cargo flights. In 2006, Montreal-Trudeau was the third busiest airport in Canada by passenger traffic, behind Toronto Pearson and Vancouver. It was fourth in aircraft movements, behind Toronto Pearson, Vancouver and Calgary. It handled 12,407,934 passengers in 2007 and 213,483 aircraft movements in 2006 and with 59% of its passengers being on non-domestic flights it is the busiest international airport in Canada. Trudeau airport serves over 100 destinations worldwide making it one of the most connected airports in North America. Airlines servicing Trudeau offer flights to Africa, Central America, the Caribbean, Europe, the United States, Mexico and other destinations within Canada. It is the only Canadian airport that offers non-stop service to Africa and it also contains the largest duty free shop in North America.
Other airports in the Montreal area serve military and regional use.
Rail
VIA Rail, which is headquartered in Montreal, provides rail service to other cities in Canada, particularly to Quebec City and Toronto with several trains daily. Amtrak, the U.S. national passenger rail system, also provides service to Montreal, operating its Adirondack daily between Montreal and New York City. All intercity trains and most commuter trains operate out of Central Station. The rest of the commuter trains operate out of the Lucien-L'Allier Station
Public local transport is served by a network of buses, subways, and commuter trains that extend across and off the island. The subway and bus system is operated by the Société de transport de Montréal. The commuter rail system is managed and operated by the Agence métropolitaine de transport, and extends across several municipalities.
Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR), which is now headquartered in Calgary, Alberta, was founded here in 1881. Its corporate headquarters occupied Windsor Station at 910 Peel St. until 1995. With the Port of Montreal kept open year round by icebreakers, lines to Eastern Canada became surplus, and now Montreal (St-Luc) is the railway's eastern and intermodal freight terminus. CPR connects at Montreal with the Port of Montreal, the Delaware & Hudson Railway to New York, the Quebec-Gatineau Railway to Quebec City and Buckingham, the Montreal, Maine & Atlantic to Halifax, and CN Rail. The CPR's flagship train, The Canadian, once ran daily from Windsor Station to Vancouver, all passenger services have since been transferred to VIA Rail Canada, although CPR operates certain AMT trains under contract to the Quebec government.
Canadian National Railways (CN), formed during the 1920's by the Government of Canada following a series of country-wide rail bankruptcies, is headquartered in Montreal. CN was formed from the lines of the Grand Trunk, Midland and Canadian Northern Railways, and has risen to become CPR's chief rival in freight carriage in Canada. Like the CPR, CN has divested itself of passenger services in favour of VIA Rail Canada. CN operates the electric Mont Royal AMT line under contract to the Government of Quebec.
Mass Transit
Metropolitan entrance to Square-Victoria station by Hector Guimard.
The STM bus network consists of 169 daytime and 20 night-time service routes, and provides adapted transport and limited wheelchair-accessible buses.
Each station of the Montreal Metro was designed by different architects with individual themes and features original artwork, and the trains themselves run on rubber tires, making the system quieter than most. It has 68 stations spread out along four lines. It was inaugurated in 1966 and completed in time for Expo 67. The project was initiated by Montreal Mayor Jean Drapeau, who also brought the Olympics to Montreal in 1976. The metro system has long had a station on the South Shore in Longueuil, and has recently been extended to the city of Laval, north of Montreal.
LINKING YOU TO THE WORLD
