Montreal
Fur trade chokepoint at the Lachine Rapids that became Canada's economic capital until language politics drove English business to Toronto. Bill 101 triggered 300,000 anglophone departures. Now pivoting to AI, aerospace, and gaming.
Montréal is the only major city in the Americas that nearly seceded from its country—not once but twice—and the narrow margin of the second attempt (50.58% to 49.42% in 1995) altered Canada's constitutional architecture permanently. The city exists because of a geographic chokepoint: the Lachine Rapids block navigation on the St. Lawrence River, forcing all cargo to be portaged around them. Whoever controlled the portage controlled the fur trade, and the fur trade built New France.
Jacques Cartier reached Mont Royal in 1535, finding a fortified Iroquoian village called Hochelaga on the mountain. By 1642, Paul de Chomedey de Maisonneuve founded Ville-Marie as a Roman Catholic mission. The religious colony quickly became a fur trading post—the economic logic of the rapids overwhelmed the spiritual ambitions of the founders. The North West Company and later the Hudson's Bay Company made Montréal the hub of a continental fur network stretching to the Pacific. The Lachine Canal (1825) bypassed the rapids and inaugurated the city's industrial era: factories lined the canal, processing grain, lumber, and textiles. By Confederation in 1867, Montréal was Canada's largest city and unchallenged economic capital.
The Quiet Revolution of the 1960s transformed Quebec from a Church-dominated society to a secular, nationalist one. Expo 67 and the 1976 Olympics showcased Montréal to the world, but language politics reshaped the city's demographics. Bill 101 (1977), requiring French as the language of business, drove English-speaking corporate headquarters to Toronto. Sun Life, Bank of Montreal's executive offices, and dozens of financial institutions relocated. Between 1976 and 1986, an estimated 300,000 anglophones left Quebec. Toronto surpassed Montréal as Canada's financial capital—a shift that has never reversed.
Montréal's population of 1.8 million (4.3 million metro) makes it Canada's second-largest city. The economy pivoted to aerospace (Bombardier, Pratt & Whitney, CAE), artificial intelligence (Mila, founded by Yoshua Bengio, a Turing Award winner), gaming (Ubisoft's largest studio), and biotechnology. The city hosts more international organizations than any Canadian city after Ottawa. Rents remain 40–50% below Toronto's, creating a talent arbitrage that attracts startups and researchers priced out of English Canada. The language divide that once drove capital away now functions as a competitive moat: cheap enough to attract global talent, French enough to maintain a cultural identity that resists homogenization.