The History of Montreal
The city of Montreal is located on the island of Montreal in Quebec, Canada, approximately 40 miles north of the U.S. border. Originally named Ville-Marie (City of Mary), Montreal was explored and settled by the French as early as 1535—the year that French explorer Jacques Cartier arrived at the confluence of the St. Lawrence and Ottawa Rivers and claimed the St. Lawrence Valley for France. At that time, Cartier recorded that St. Lawrence Iroquoians inhabited the area, and called their village Hochelaga. However, when another French explorer, Samuel de Champlain, visited the same area 70 years later, the Iroquoians had vanished. Champlain took this opportunity to set up a fur trading post, which he established in 1611 at Place Royal, the confluence of Saint-Pierre River and St. Lawrence River (currently, Montreal’s museum of archeology and history Pointe-à-Callière, stands at this spot to commemorate the city’s birthplace).
The Ville-Marie settlement initially attracted missionaries along with trappers and traders, and served as the gateway for French exploration of North America, until a conflict between the French and Iroquois (unrelated to the St. Lawrence Iroquoians) in the mid-17th century halted the new city’s growth. The population of Ville-Marie diminished due to the fear of Iroquois violence, and it wasn’t until a peace treaty was signed in 1701 that the settlement began to develop again. The city came to be known as Montreal, in reference to the three-peaked Mount Royal (Mont Rèal in Middle French) that defines the city’s landscape. Montreal was incorporated in 1832, following the successful construction of the Lachine Canal, which opened up the Port of Montreal to continental markets for the first time. Together with the construction of the Victoria Bridge, the first bridge to span the St. Lawrence River, the Lachine Canal brought an economic boom that attracted many diverse immigrants to the city. By 1860, Montreal had over 60,000 residents, and had become an economic and cultural center of Canada.
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