Montréal: The Quest for a Metropolis

Authors: Annick Germain and Damaris Rose (John Wiley & Sons, 2000)

In the livability Olympics for world cities, the Canadian gold and silver medals usually go to Vancouver and Montréal. Vancouver has benefited greatly from its geography, a world-class transit system during its initial growth, the absence of an urban freeway system, and some smart planning decisions made in the 1970s. But how has Montréal developed into such a great place to live? This is the question that writers Annick Germain and Damaris Rose address in Montréal: The Quest for a Metropolis.

Montréal is the first, and so far only, Canadian city in the World Cities geography series published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Separate chapters cover the history of Montréal, its built form, its governing structure, economy, inner city population, and the history of its ethnic and language makeup. It is an absorbing story: founded in 1642 as a French missionary colony, Montréal grew prosperous as the fur trading capital of North America before becoming a major industrial and port city, second only to New York on the east coast. At the turn of the century, Montréal’s “mercantile and industrial bourgeoisie” controlled 70 percent of Canada’s wealth.

But Montréal had already begun its slow decline as Canada’s major city and industrial hub as far back as the 1920s, as substantial American investments were made in Ontario, due to its closeness to the Great Lakes Industrial heartland and the fact that its workers spoke English. Toronto already had more people employed in finance than Montréal by 1911 and more transactions on its stock market by 1932. It then went on to overtake Montréal in number of corporate headquarters by the mid-1960s. However, as Montréal gave up its status as Canada’s largest city in the late 1970s, it took on a new role as the regional base of growth for the francophone middle-class and business elite. Montreal’s industrial makeup changed, with aeronautics and aerospace, telecommunications, pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, and microelectronics becoming more important.

Social unrest and crime have been minimized due to a good social safety net, active non-profit community organizations, the low cost of necessities, and the absence of ghettoization of low-income people and minorities. And Montréal has that unique mix of European style - with local commercial streets and low-rise medium-density housing - set in a North American context. Although some damage was inflicted by typical urban renewal policies of the 1960s and early 1970s, its human-scaled streetscapes and neighbourhood cultures have survived and flourished. It is both the third largest French-speaking city in the world and still one of the largest English-speaking cities in Canada. With over one million bilingual residents, Montréal is one of the few truly bilingual cities in the world. And of course there is the international immigration that has made Montréal increasingly multiethnic and multicultural.

In Monocle’s World Top 25 Most Livable Cities ranking for 2008 , Vancouver ranked #8 while Montréal was #16. However, the previous year Montréal was #12 and Vancouver #15. So it’s basically a toss-up. Ironically, although civic leaders would prefer Montréal to be an international rather than a regional centre, it is precisely the “lack of a true ‘global city’ status in economic terms and a relative lack of extremes of wealth and poverty” that allows it to be so livable. Perhaps Vancouver should not be striving too hard for global city status, as it now takes increasing amounts of money to afford Vancouver’s version of livabililty.

While Montréal was an excellent read overall, a few changes would make it even better. One annoyance is that place names and area names are often provided only in English, without the corresponding French name. This omission is quite glaring when names like “St. Lawrence Boulevard” are used instead of Boulevard St. Laurent, as even native English speakers don’t refer to it by its English name nowadays. As well, the book quite often assumes a good knowledge of the city’s geography and area names. A few additional maps would have helped immensely for the reader not familiar with the city. Finally, as Montréal was published in 2000, Chapter 4 on the shifting boundaries of Montréal is missing a couple of major events. Not covered is either the merger in 2002 of the 27 independent municipalities on the island of Montréal launched by the Parti Québécois, nor the demerger that took place in April, 2003 that saw 15 predominantly English-speaking municipalities become independent again. This occurred when the Liberal Party of Quebec took power and fulfilled a promise to allow referendums on the issue. I would have appreciated an expanded epilogue to this edition to bring it up to date with recent events.

Due to its high price ($185), it is doubtful that Montréal will be picked up by anyone not in the academic world, which is a shame. Print-on-demand titles like this one are very expensive, which is what makes the spread of e-books so promising. If books like this can be downloaded onto E-book readers like Amazon’s Kindle rather than printed, it will surely make them cheaper and more widely available. Hopefully Montréal: Quest for a Metropolis and the other books in the World Cities series will soon be made available as e-books, so that more urbanists can learn from them.

John Calimente is enrolled in the Master of Urban Studies Program at Simon Fraser University completing his graduate thesis on rail-oriented developments in Tokyo.