The History of Montreal

by Paul-Andre Linteau

  Building the Montreal of the future

  Throughout the Western world, the 1960s were abuzz with excitement, and Montreal was naturally no exception. Young people around the world began to stand up for themselves, traditional models were thrown into question, and new-found freedoms were exploited to the hilt. The age-old battle between old and new again reared its head, this time with modernity coming out on top.

  In Quebec, the phenomenon was magnified by the Quiet Revolution, which began in 1960. Swept in by winds of liberation and national affirmation, the Quiet Revolution sought to make up for lost time in a number of clearly identified areas. In Montreal, the resurgence of French Canadians sparked the political and cultural upheavals we will examine below.

  Increased government intervention born of the Quiet Revolution played a major role in modernizing the economy and life in general in Montreal. The Quebec government, supported by Ottawa, launched the construction of a vast network of highways and bridges that would be completed over the following decade. It invested in new administrative buildings (including a new courthouse), along with new schools, university buildings, and other public buildings. For its part, the federal government planned to build the administrative building that became the Complexe Guy-Favreau and the CBC/Radio-Canada tower.

  The modernization of Montreal owed much to Jean Drapeau, mayor throughout the sixties and seventies. A man of vision and ambitious projects, Drapeau had big plans for Montreal and its role and influence abroad. He started work on the Métro, which was inaugurated in 1966. He supported the promoters who wanted to develop the new downtown along recently widened Dorchester boulevard (now René-Lévesque). Place Ville-Marie, an imposing skyscraper opened in 1962, was the jewel in the crown—and the starting point for the underground city—but many more complexes were added in the space of a few years. They had an equally modern shine and completely transformed the cityscape around them.

  All this construction work did away with thousands of homes and shifted their occupants elsewhere, putting the spotlight on housing and leading to political repercussions. Part of Montreal’s history fell at the hands of the demolition experts, as thoughts had not yet turned to preserving the city’s heritage.

  Montreal’s mayor nevertheless had very little control over another aspect of the city’s transformation: urban sprawl. In 1961, “his” city was home to 56 percent of the Montreal area population, a figure that had shrunk to 39 percent 15 years later. Cars were quite clearly the driving force behind the new suburbs, which were given a boost as new bridges went up and more highways were built. The suburbs were increasingly expanding off the island of Montreal and were home to almost one million people in 1976.

  But Jean Drapeau’s greatest success was bringing the 1967 International and Universal Exposition to Montreal. It was a moment to remember for all Montrealers who, for six months, were able to discover the world around them in all its glory. Expo 67 also sped up construction work on the Métro and highways, and Mayor Drapeau was keen to repeat the feat by organizing the 1976 Olympic Games. This time, however, the event was a sporting success, but had very little impact on urban development. Worse, it had a negative effect: the sky-high costs of building the Olympic Stadium bled the city’s finances dry and put an end to Mayor Drapeau’s out-of-the-box thinking.

  Expo 67 gave Montrealers illusions of grandeur just as their city was beginning to slide. Experts predicted close to five million people would be living in Montreal and the surrounding area by 1981, but in reality there were less than three million. So what happened?

  Reorganizing the economy

  Throughout the 1960s, the model Montreal’s economic development had been built on for more than a century began to crumble.

  It was largely based on making the most of Montreal’s ideal positioning as a crossroads for trade between Canada and the United Kingdom. But for decades trade between the two countries had been declining, as Canada focused more on the United States market. The coup de grâce came in 1973, when the U.K. joined the European Common Market.

  The model was also built around impressive manufacturing output destined for the Canadian market and protected from competition abroad by high customs duties. But international agreements whittled away at this protection and enabled emerging countries to supplant Canadian production in low-paying industries. Businesses that made consumer goods—so important to Montreal—felt the pinch. Moreover, Montreal factories were old and companies that chose to modernize and concentrate production often moved to Ontario.

  Montreal was further disadvantaged by losing its status as Canada’s largest city. By around 1960, Toronto had crept ahead of Montreal by most measures, apart from number of inhabitants (which would come about in 1976), with the gap between the two cities continuing to widen throughout the sixties and seventies. The rise of a new form of Quebec nationalism came at a time when Montreal’s economy was well on its way to unravelling and, although it accelerated the process, it was not the underlying cause. Several big businesses moved their headquarters to Toronto, which was quickly becoming the country’s undisputed leader and was now at the very heart of its financial system. This came as a severe blow to Montreal, which lost tens of thousands of residents and well-paid jobs.

  The pace of growth was feeling the effects by 1967: private investment was running out of steam, and there were fewer immigrants just when Quebec’s birth rate plummeted. The city’s population reached new heights with 1,214,352 inhabitants in 1966, before, for the first time in the history of Montreal, falling back, to 1,080,546 in 1976. The suburbs did continue to grow, but at a slower pace than before, and the entire Montreal census metropolitan area attracted scarcely more than 50,000 newcomers between 1971 and 1976, settling at 2,802,485.

  Despite the slowdown, it was still a time of prosperity for most Montrealers as the postwar rise in living standards continued throughout the sixties and seventies.

  One reason for this improvement was a jump in the number of skilled workers, who commanded better wages as a result. Education levels were on the rise in general, and vocational training became more comprehensive. A second factor was the growing number of women taking to the workforce, which boosted the number of two-income households.

  The Quiet Revolution and the development of the welfare state in general also helped raise living standards. Putting in place an extensive network of social and medical services and expanding education services also saw the quality of the services improve in leaps and bounds compared to the 1950s. Government intervention was also noticeable in terms of increased public investment.

  French-speaking Montrealers take control of the city

  One of the most significant aspects of Montreal’s development after 1960 was without a doubt what became known as the “reconquest of Montreal.” This reconquest was fuelled by the Quiet Revolution and by a new Quebec nationalism that questioned the power wielded by an English Canadian minority over many facets of life in Quebec, especially in Montreal.

  Montreal was a focal point for the rise of nationalism in Quebec, both strategically and symbolically, since the English language was more visible, and audible, and the fault lines between those who spoke French and English were more clearly drawn than elsewhere: while many of Quebec’s regions were almost exclusively French speaking, French was the mother tongue of only 65 percent of people in the Montreal area. It was therefore no great surprise to see Montrealers actively involved in the struggles of the nationalist movement and playing a key role first in the rise of the independence movement with the Rassemblement pour l’indépendance nationale (1960–1968), then in the rise of the sovereignty movement with the Parti québécois, founded in 1968. General de Gaulle chose none other than the balcony of Montreal’s City Hall to cry “Vive le Québec libre!” in 1967, and throughout the sixties and seventies, various nationalist demonstrations were held in the city. Some—notably the Saint-Jean-Baptiste celebrations in 1968 and the protests for a “McGill français”—turned viole
nt.

  It was in Montreal that the terrorist activities of the Front de libération du Québec were concentrated, there that bombs were planted between 1963 and 1970, there that the October Crisis of 1970 took place, as British diplomat James Richard Cross and Quebec labour minister Pierre Laporte were kidnapped (the latter losing his life). The October Crisis was significant for the reactions it provoked, at the municipal level, where Mayor Drapeau made one alarmist statement after the other, and also at the provincial and, especially, federal levels. Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s government proclaimed the War Measures Act and sent the army to Montreal, which quickly looked like a city under siege. The hundreds of arrests made in the city looked beyond the FLQ and aimed to crush both the nationalist movement and left-wing groups. The strategy ultimately ended in failure, however, as trade unions and the sovereignty movement grew stronger in the seventies. For both, Montreal remained a hotbed of social and political change, and French-speaking masses in the city played an important role in bringing the Parti québécois to power in 1976.

  Most of the linguistic battles of the sixties played out in Montreal. Until then, public signage in Montreal had been, at best, bilingual and most often in English only. The tendency for minority ethnic groups and immigrants to adopt English had also made great headway. The nationalist reaction was triggered in particular by the Saint-Léonard schools crisis, which pitted Italian immigrants opposed to a requirement to study in French against French Canadians, eventually leading successive Quebec governments to pass a series of language laws (Bills 63, 22, and 101) to reinforce the status of the French language in Quebec. The effects would be felt for years to come.

  One of the goals of the Quiet Revolution was to ensure that French Canadians could access key posts in Quebec’s economy and society as a whole. The goal was first met as the state apparatus grew in size, before attention focused on the private sector. Businesses run by English Canadians and foreign companies made room for French-speaking executives among their Quebec management from the 1970s on, bringing an end to decades of discrimination. More remarkable still was the rise of a new French-speaking business elite that reached leading positions in Montreal’s economy.

  As the city was becoming even more French, women were also involved in another important struggle of their own. The rebirth of the feminist movement in the sixties was not unique to Montreal—it was sweeping across the West—but the battle for equality and independence affected many areas of life in Montreal: legal status, access to political power, the workforce and trade unions, financial independence, and the right to contraception and abortion, among others. Montreal felt the full force of this phenomenon more than anywhere else in Quebec: it was there that the more militant groups met, there that the biggest demonstrations were held. In this respect, as in so many others, Montreal was Quebec’s social laboratory, the place where the bells of change were being rung the hardest.

  The period that began in 1960 was characterized by profound social change, fostered by the peculiar climate of the Quiet Revolution and postwar prosperity. These transformations took on an international dimension that was visible in the new values emerging and were powered by a “youth phenomenon” as the baby-boom generation reached adulthood. Across Quebec and in Montreal, one of the most striking aspects of these changes was the rewriting of the Church’s role in the wake of Vatican II and the clergy’s withdrawal from society, the result of the Quiet Revolution. Cardinal Léger’s stepping down in 1967 as archbishop of Montreal and subsequent departure for Cameroon well and truly marked the end of an era.

  A cultural revival

  All this social and political change was set against a backdrop of cultural vitality. Quebec culture had been revived. Reso­lutely modern and outward looking, it shouted its intentions from the rooftops in the sixties. Authors—like Hubert Aquin, Jacques Godbout, Gaston Miron, and Michel Tremblay—movie directors, singers, actors, musicians, painters, and sculptors worked for the most part out of Montreal, helping shape its new identity. Concert halls (particularly the Place des Arts complex), bigger and better museums, bookstores, and galleries made it all available to the public.

  Most of note here is the pivotal role that Montreal played as the hotbed of Quebec culture, both in terms of creativity and showcasing this cultural revival. The city was home to the major French-language television networks, along with the performing arts companies and publishing houses. Artists from all over Quebec were working in Montreal. With its four universities (Université de Montréal, McGill, Université du Québec à Montréal, and Concordia) and its research centres, the city was abuzz with creativity and scientific discovery.

  Montreal intellectuals fuelled the fire of ideas raging across the whole province with comments and essays, while magazines like Liberté and Parti pris had considerable influence in their respective milieux, as did The Last Post in English.

  And the city lit up the imaginations of its artists. With Les Belles-Sœurs (1968), Michel Tremblay brought joual, the language of working-class Montrealers, to the stage with a bang. Beau Dommage sang about the Montreal experience to great success, and huge numbers of novelists, movie directors, photographers, painters, and sculptors drew on the city for inspiration.

  Montreal was also a crossroads where Quebec creations met foreign influences, especially ones from south of the border. Robert Charlebois, for instance, put words straight from the mouth of many a Montrealer to a very American style of music, and took his message and style all the way to France. And cultural productions from all around the world were given a warm welcome on the Montreal market.

  Montreal’s English-language cultural scene also remained lively during the 1960s, despite the fact that Toronto had come to dominate English-Canadian culture. Montrealers such as singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen, poet Irving Layton, and author Mordecai Richler found in their city a powerful inspiration.

  Modernizing politics

  In municipal politics, 1960 marked a real break with the politics of the fifties. This new political scene was dominated by the personality of Jean Drapeau, mayor from 1960 to 1986, and by the Parti civique that he led. A new regime and a new style of government came to City Hall. The Parti civique had a majority on the council and could govern the city by holding all the seats on the executive committee. Drapeau was very popular indeed in the 1960s. He and executive committee chairman Lucien Saulnier formed one of the strongest teams in the city’s history, and he was able to reform the way the city was governed and to find solutions to problems posed by issues like traffic, parking, and inadequate public facilities.

  The Drapeau administration encouraged projects to modernize the city, but it was severely criticized for turning a blind eye to the people forced to move out of their homes by demolition and its limited efforts to build new housing. It also had scant regard for what the decline of industry was doing to Montreal.

  Starting in the late 1960s, the Parti civique came up against stiff opposition, mainly from citizens’ groups in poor neighbourhoods and from trade union organizers. Its opponents leaned left, covering the spectrum between social democracy and Marxism-Leninism, and called for radical changes to how the city was governed and how it dealt with its citizens. First grouped together in 1970 under the banner of the short-lived Front d’action politique (FRAP), the administration’s opponents set up the RCM, the Rassemblement des citoyens de Montréal (Montreal Citizens’ Movement) in 1974.

  Another aspect of a more modern political scene in Montreal was the emergence of a metropolitan level of government, an issue that had divided representatives of the city and its suburbs for years. A solution was at last found in 1970, with the creation of the Communauté urbaine de Montréal, or the Montreal Urban Community (CUM). The CUM took charge of various municipal services, notably policing, public transit, realty assessments, urban development plans, and cleaning up the city’s air and water. Its creation spread the financial burden of these services more evenly.

  So were Expo 67 and th
e 1976 Olympics nothing more than an impressive fireworks display? The changes made to Montreal after 1960 were all in the spirit of modernization, but they led to major upheavals and the city had a hard time adjusting. Montreal lost ground to other cities in Canada and was further weakened by departures for Toronto. Revitalized by a new French-speaking elite, Montreal remained a vibrant place to live and work, but its future didn’t look so bright in 1976.

  CHAPTER 13

  Difficult Days

  1976–1994

  In the 1970s, Montreal entered a long period of weak growth and economic restructuring. Dark, gloomy clouds settled over the city. But, in spite of everything, it continued to be renowned around the world for its cultural vitality. Montrealers and their leaders relaunched Quebec’s leading city, building on its inner strengths and heritage.

  A long adjustment

  The years 1976 to 1994 were testing times for the city’s economy. The city was shaken by recessions in 1981–1982 and 1990–1992. Unemployment rates were the highest in decades. Things were particularly bad in the older parts of town, where most welfare recipients lived, and better in the suburbs. But the problems weren’t due to the whims of the economy alone: they were worsened by major changes to Montreal’s economy.

  Rethinking the economic structure that had characterized Montreal since the mid-nineteenth century had a huge impact on the city in the seventies and eighties. Many manufacturing industries that had once been a big part of life in the city—the shoe, textile, and garment industries—were in decline, and a large number of companies were having to shut down or slash employee numbers because production was shifting towards developing countries, where wages were much lower. Heavy industry also met with stiff competition from abroad, and advances in technology worked against Montreal too, since its factories were old and sometimes outdated. Production of rolling stock—a victim of the decline of the railways—was a shadow of its former self, while refineries and many other factories were dismantled.