Montreal (population 1,649,519) is a city in Quebec, Canada. It is the second-largest city in Canada and has the largest concentration of French speakers within the nation. Montreal is located on an island known as Mont Real after the triple-peaked hill. The city's original name was "City of Mary", or Ville-Marie in French.
The Metro Montreal area is the 2nd largest in the country with more than 3,825,000 residents. The "agglomeration" of Montreal encompasses all of the municipalities on the island and has a population of 1,886,481.
The official language of Montreal is French, though French is spoken by roughly 60 percent of the city's people. English is the spoken language at home in just over 21% of homes. Approximately 23% of the population speaks other languages. In the bigger Montreal Census Metropolitan Area, there are an even higher number of primarily French speakers. More than 50 percent of the population can speak both French and English. After Paris, the city is the second biggest French-speaking city within the western world.
Monacle Magazine has dubbed the city of Montreal, "Canada's Cultural Capital". It was also named a UNESCO City of Design in the year 2006. The city of Montreal has been the nation's leading commercial city, throughout a lot of the country's history. During the late 1970s, Toronto surpassed Montreal with regards to both population and economic strength. The city's economy is the 2nd biggest in the nation based on GDP and is the largest within the province of Quebec. Today the city is considered an extremely livable city. It is a centre of aerospace, commerce, finance, pharmaceuticals, technology, and global affairs and is the head office of the Montreal Exchange. It is a leader in culture, film and design. Tourism is an important industry.
2thinknow ranked the city of Montreal during 2010, 34th place globally for innovation in its annual Innovation Cities Index. They ranked ahead of Quebec City, Calgary, Vancouver and Edmonton. The city of Toronto ranked 12th. Montreal has also been named North America's number one city by the International Congress and Convention Association (ICCA).
Montreal is one of the biggest providers of aerospace jobs within North America. Major industries consist of engineering, aerospace, pharmaceuticals, electronic goods, textile and apparel manufacturing, printed goods, software telecommunications, tobacco and transportation. Finance, research and development and the higher education sectors also contribute a lot to the local economy.