Montreal (French: Montréal) is the largest city in the Quebec province. While Quebec City is the capital, Montreal is the cultural and economic centre, and the main entry point to the province. With 1.7 million citizens in the city proper and 4 million in the urban area, Montreal is Canada's second largest city, and the second-largest French-speaking (as a mother language) city in the world, behind Paris. Still, a quarter of the population speak English as a mother language, and most Francophones are conversant in English. Old Montreal has a heritage of colonial times. Though a large city, Montreal gives opportunities for outdoor life, as well as watching the legendary Montreal Canadiens ice hockey team.

Neighbourhoods from west to east:

On an island in the St. Lawrence River at the historically highest navigable point, Montreal has been a strategic location since before the arrival of Europeans in Canada. A thriving Iroquoian town 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 Catholic mission by Paul Chomedey, sieur de Maisonneuve. It soon became a centre of the fur trade. After its capture by the English in 1762, Montreal remained (until the 1970s) the most important city in Canada and was briefly capital of the province in the 1840s.