MONTREAL. mint rd-01' ( Mount Royal).
The city in the Dominion of Canada, situated in the Province of Quebec, 150 miles ?oullm est of Quebec. and 420 miles north of New York. oil the southeast side of Montreal Island. at the confluence of the rivers Saint Lawrence and Ottawa, 620 miles from the sea by the course of the Saint Lawrence. (Map: Quebec, C 5). It occupies a low tract of land, about two miles wide, between the Saint Lawrence River and Mount Royal, a mountain rising to an elevation of 900 feet above the sea, which gives a picturesque background to every view of the city, the summit being laid out as a public park of 460 acres. Fine residential streets lie in ter races upon the slop'. Those in the lower part of the town are narrow, irregular, and dingy, but are undergoing gradual improvement. The chief business streets are Saint James, Saint Paul, Saint Lawrence, McGill, Bleary, Craig, Notro Dame, and Saint Catherine, the latter once an aristocratic centre. The French section is on the east, the dividing line being Saint Lawrence Street. Montreal is about four and one-half miles long, and contains many public squares and parks. such as Dominion, Victoria (with a fountain and a statue of Queen Victoria), Saint Louis, and the Viger Gardens, Logan and Mount Royal parks. The buildings are chiefly of gray limestone, quarried in the vicinity, and include Notre Dame, built in 1824, opposite the site of an earlier church (1672) ; it is one of the largest cathedrals in America, being 255 feet long by 145 feet wide, and can accommodate over 10.000 peo ple. Its towers are 220 feet high and have a noted clime of bells. Near it is the seminary of Saint Sulpice, the oldest building in Montreal (1684). Other important edifices and places of interest are the court house, city hall, custom house, the old Clffiteau de Ramezay (1705), for a time the official residenoe of the British Govern ors, and headquarters of the American General and Commissioners in 1775-76; the Champ-de Mars, the old parade ground of the British troops; Jacques Cartier Square. with a statue of Nelson (1808) ; the Church of Saint Gabriel, the oldest Protestant church (1792) ; Bonsecours Mar ket, 500 feet long; the Church of Notre Dame de Bon Seconrs; Saint Patrick's Church; the Cathedral of Saint .fames, known commonly but erroneously as Saint Peter's, a reproduction on a small scale of Saint Peter's in Rome (1868) ; Christ Church Cathedral, Episcopal, a fine ex ample of Gothic architecture; Saint James's Methodist Church; Church of Notre Dame de Lourdes (1874) ; the Jesuit Church, noted for its frescoes; Saint Andrew, Saint Bartholomew, Saint Paul's, Saint George, Erskine Presbyterian, and Church of the Messiah. Among other points of interest are the Fraser Institute, a public library and art gallery; the Protestant and Ro man Catholic deaf and dumb asylums; an asylum for the blind, and the great convent of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary. The most important educational institutions are McGill University (q.v.), founded in 1824 by a bequest
of James McGill. also containing the Redpath Library. an observatory, and a natural history museum; the Roman Catholic Lava] University: and the College de Montreal or Petit Sffininaire. There are Presbyterian, Wesleyan, and other col leges. aeademies, schools, and libraries; a French school of medicine and surgery; Grey Nunnery. a hospital and orphan asylum : Nazareth Asylum for blind children; the Iltdel Dieu, founded in 1644 by Mlle. Mance, an original settler of Mon treal; the Royal Victoria. the Montreal General, and the Western hospitals; and the Victoria Rifles Armory. There are publications printed in French and English, the leading one being The Gazette, founded in 1778 and continuous since •1795.
Montreal's and importance accrued from the fur, Inniber, and grain trade of the Northwest. It is now the metropolis of Canada, and the chief port of entry; its tine harbor, with quays, wharves, and docks of solid masonry ex tending for miles, lies at the head of ship navi gation, and accommodates the largest vessels afloat. The construction of canals has enabled Montreal to command the navigation of the Great Lakes. The Lachine Canal was opened in 1825, the Grand Trunk Railway in 1852; the Victoria tubular bridge, built over the Saint Lawrence in 1854-59, was reconstructed and en larged as a truss bridge in 1898-99; the Cham plain and Saint Lawrence Railway, from La prairie to Saint John's, was opened in 1886. and the Canadian Pacific the same year. Various steamships run to transatlantic ports, and many railway lines connect the city with all parts of Canada and the United States. The United States is represented by a consul-general. The exports in 1901 amounted to $59.708,154, and the imports to $64,372,300; in 1890 they were respectively $31,660,216 and $45,934,406. In 1901, 742 ocean going vessels and S450 coasting vessels with a total of 3,138.234 tons cleared the customs. The exports and manufactures include lumber, grain, flour, apples, butter. phosphates, cheese, boots, shoes, woolens, hardware, glass, carriages, sleighs, drugs. paints, steam-engines, boilers, printing-presses, sewing-machines, mu sical instruments, paper, etc. There are also saw, flour, and rolling mills, brass and iron foundries, lead works, etc.: gas and electric light plants, electric street railroads, and a costly sys tem of water-works. There are many banks, the Bank of Montreal claiming to have the largest capital of any hank in North America, and to rank as the fifth in the British Empire. The climate presents great extremes of heat and cold, the temperature reaching 90° in summer, and sometimes sinking to 20° below zero in winter. The winter carnivals attract thousands of vis itors to engage in the gay skating tournaments, the snow-shoe parades, the masquerades, the to bogganing, and the storming of the ice castle (generally erected in Dominion Square) by torch light, amid the display of gorgeous pyrotechnic devices.