Montreal Restaurants
Montreal is the cultural capital of Quebec and the main entry point to the province. The second largest city in Canada, it is a city rich in culture and history, has an inordinate number of attractive, fashionably dressed people, and a well-deserved reputation as one of the liveliest cities in North America.
Montreal is the third-largest Francophone metro area in the world, after Paris and Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Situated on an island in the St. Lawrence River just at its highest navigable point, Montreal has been a strategic location since before the arrival of Europeans in Canada. A thriving First Nations Mohawk community called Hochelaga was on the site of present-day Montreal when explorer Jacques Cartier first visited in 1535. A hundred years later, in 1642, the tiny town of Ville-Marie was founded as a Sulpician mission, but soon became a center of the fur trade. After its capture by the English in 1762, Montreal remained the most important city in Francophone Canada, and was briefly capital of the province in the 1840s.
Prohibition on sales of alcohol in the United States during the 1920s and '30s made Montreal a mecca for cross-border fun seekers from nearby New England and New York. The city built up a seedy yet playful industry in alcohol, burlesque, and other vices. In the 1960s, an urban renewal drive centered around Expo 67. The World's Fair in Montreal brought a subway system and a number of attractive urban parks, and is considered to be one of the most successful World Fairs. The 1976 Olympics left a strikingly idiosyncratic stadium and many other urban improvements.
The opening of the Saint Lawrence Seaway in 1959, though much lauded as an economic boon, spelled the beginning of the end for Montreal's economic dominance in Canada. Once the transition point between western railroads and eastern sea carriers, Montreal watched helplessly as some of this business moved farther west, up the now navigable Seaway, to ports in Ontario and on Lake Superior. The Quebec sovereignty movement, which began to pick up steam in the 1960s, further chilled the atmosphere for Canada-wide businesses, many of which moved their headquarters to Toronto.
After an economic depression in the 1980s and 1990s - due to automotive and aerospace plant closures in the surrounding area - Montreal today has become more secure in its place in North America and the world. It remains a center of culture, arts, computer technology, the biotech industry and media for all of Canada and for the French-speaking world.
Montreal makes an excellent entryway for visiting other cities and destinations in Quebec. Quebec City, about 3 hours to the north east on Highway 40, is almost but not quite a day trip - you'll want to stay over, anyway. Mont Tremblant lies less than 2 hours north in the Laurentides, while the Eastern Townships are about the same distance straight east. If you're continuing to Ontario, Ottawa is 2 hours west by car, and Toronto is more distant, but still doable, 6 hour drive. Boston is a five and a half hour drive to the southeast. A really nice resort is located 1.5-2 hours west in the countryside of Quebec, known as Chateau Montebello, located in Montebello. Between December and March there is good downhill skiing in the Laurentians and in the Eastern Townships. There are some very good night-skiing centers such as Ski Bromont and Mont-St-Sauveur.
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