About the town » Montréal, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Montreal is a city in the Canadian province of Quebec. It is the largest city in the province, the second-largest in the country and the fifteenth-largest in North America. Originally called Ville-Marie, or "City of Mary", named after Mount Royal, the triple-peaked hill located in the heart of the city, or Mont Réal as it was spelled in Middle French (Mont Royal in modern French). The city is located on the Island of Montreal, which took its name from the same source as the city, and a few much smaller peripheral islands, the largest of which is Île Bizard. As of 2011, the city of Montreal had a population of 1,649,519. Montreal's metropolitan area (CMA) (land area 4,259 square kilometres) had a population of 3,824,221 and a population of 1,886,481 in the urban agglomeration of Montreal, all of the municipalities on the Island of Montreal included. French is the city's official language and is also the language spoken at home by 56.9% of the population in the city of Montreal proper, followed by English at 18.6% and 19.8% other languages (as of 2006 census). In the larger Montreal Census Metropolitan Area, 67.9% of the population speaks French at home, compared to 16.5% who speak English. 56% of the population are able to speak both English and French. Montreal is the second largest primarily French-speaking city in the world, after Paris. Montreal was called "Canada's Cultural Capital" by Monocle and recently was named a UNESCO City of Design. Historically the commercial capital of Canada, it was surpassed in population and economic strength by Toronto in the 1970s. Today it remains an important centre of commerce, aerospace, finance, pharmaceuticals, technology, design, culture, tourism, film and world affairs. In 2010, Montreal was named a hub city, ranked 34th globally out of 289 cities for innovation across multiple sectors of the urban economy, in the Innovation Cities Index by 2thinknow. In 2009, Montreal was named North America's number one host city for international association events, according to the 2009 preliminary rankings of the International Congress and Convention Association (ICCA). In 2012, QS World University Rankings ranked Montreal the 10th-best place in world to be a university student.