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The Montreal Region
The geographic pattern of Quebec is dominated by its division into three great physiographic regions: the Laurentian Uplands, the St. Lawrence Lowlands and the Appalachian Highlands. Within the larger framework, the position of rivers, lakes and ridges, the choice of original settlement sites, the economic development of areas and routes, and last, but not necessarily the least influence, is the location of administrative boundaries. Cities often provide a useful regional nucleus, as is the case in several Quebec regions. In other regions, however, there may be no cities and this also makes a good regional characteristic.
Surrounding the city of Montreal, the flat lands of the extreme southwestern part of Quebec constitute the Montreal Plain or Montreal Region. Extending from the borders of Ontario and New York to Lake St. Peter and from the edge of the Laurentians to the first slopes of the Appalachians, it has an area of slightly over 4,700 square miles. This territory is fully occupied, being carved into an intricate pattern of urban and rural municipalities inhabited by more than 3,635,000 people. Only 14% of the population is rural. The city of Montreal itself contains 1,854,442, Greater Montreal 1,400,000, and there are six other cities and towns on the plain.
Montreal is a modern complex metropolis of more than 1,850,000 people according to the census taken in 2006.
Geographical Setting
Montreal is located at 73°30' west longitude and 45°30' north latitude, approximately the same latitude as Portland, Oregon; Lyons, France; Milan, Italy, and Odessa.
Montreal arose at the head of navigation on the St. Lawrence where further progress inland is blocked by the Lachine Rapids. It is also strategically located with respect to the natural routes radiating north, west and south by way of the Ottawa, the upper St. Lawrence and the Richelieu.
The site of the original settlement was a terrace on the left bank of the St. Lawrence, at the foot of the Lachine rapids. Behind it rose Mount Royal, 769 feet in height, dominating the whole countryside. The city has grown up the slopes of the mountain, around it on all sides, clear to the Back River (Rivière-des-Prairies) on the other side of the island. The site has an interesting geological history. The underlying rocks were laid down in the Ordovician period.
In the quarry on Fleurimont Street may be seen a 75-foot face revealing the three main formations of the island: Chazy limestone at the bottom, Black River limestone above it and Trenton limestone on top. The strata are still almost horizontal but have been faulted. At the end of Devonian time eruptive rocks broke through to form the volcanic neck which constitutes Mount Royal. Being made of harder rocks it withstood erosion better than the surrounding sedimentary strata and now stands as a monadnock above the plain. All around it the surface land forms are Pleistocene terraces, sloping from the sides of "the mountain" to the water level.
The upper terraces are more than 200 feet above sea level. The largest of these (200-225 feet) extends to the north of Mount Royal, through Outremont from the corner of Park and Mount Royal Avenues to the Jean Talon station of the C.P.R. and Côte Visitation. A narrower terrace at the same level is found in the Notre Dame de Grâce section of the city. The fine residential district of Westmount is built on terraces between 200 and 500 feet in elevation. Fairly level streets follow each terrace, but the cross streets between them climb at difficult angles.
The middle terrace, between 125 and 200 feet in elevation, is the most extensive underlying a large part of the city. Sherbrooke Street runs along its lower limit from Bleury Street to Pie IX Boulevard and Upper Lachine Road follows it southwestward. Cross streets, such as Bleury, St. Lawrence and St. Denis, mount it by the "Sherbrooke street hill", an old shoreline of the Champlain Sea.
The lower terrace, 50 to 75 feet in elevation, is found in the downtown district. Ontario, St. Catherine and Dorchester Streets are built upon it. Near the river a ridge was isolated by the valley of the small creek which ran along Craig street before it was buried under the modern pavements. The old townsite, located on this ridge in order to be safe from spring floods is now the business section about St. James and Notre Dame streets.
The city developed from a riverside nucleus overlooking the main part of the harbour. In colonial days it was surrounded by a stockade. From this early site it has grown in three main directions: down the river to Montreal East, up the river and along the Lachine Canal to Lake St. Louis and across the island to Cartierville, Ahuntsic and Montreal North on the Back River. Before the days of rapid transit the city was small and overcrowded. The wealthy who could afford to come to work in private coaches established their residences in Westmount and Outremont on the slopes of the mountain. These remain as independent cities but now completely surrounded by the working class districts of Greater Montreal. Since the building of bridges across the St. Lawrence, suburbs have developed On the south bank, among them being Longueuil, St. Lambert, Montreal South and Greenfield Park.
The harbour front and the banks of the Lachine Canal are favoured sites for heavy industries where large amounts of material are imported by ship. The railway belt around the city and its suburbs has also attracted many industries. Lighter industries such as the clothing trades are scattered in hundreds of small factories throughout the city, thus being close to the homes of their employees. Even so, the problem of transportation to and from work has become acute. Street cars and buses are overcrowded and long lines of motor vehicles jam the intersections.
The importance of Montreal as a market place is shown by the development of its harbour and by the concentration of other means of transport. This function is older than the manufacturing industry and was one of the chief causes for the development of the city. The harbour setting and equipment are those of a great world port. Lying one thousand miles inland from the Strait of Belle Isle, it is tideless, but closed by freezing from December to April.
Wholesalers and manufacturers have stores and warehouses in the harbour area. The nearby streets swarm with motor trucks and heavy horse drawn vehicles. Many types of vessels are to be seen in the harbour: great liners, freighters, the shorter canal and Great Lakes' boats, palatial river cruise boats, schooners, tugs, barges and various small craft.
The commercial function of Montreal is national and even world wide. The focused transportation systems bring floods of goods and crowds of travellers. But within the city itself, retail trade must provide for more than a million citizens and hundreds of thousands of transients. There are large stores in specialized shopping districts like those of St. Catherine Street, East and West, where every shop attendant seems to be perfectly bilingual, and there are multitudes of more modest shops in smaller commercial districts throughout the city. There are, moreover, the banks, trust companies, insurance companies and other financial institutions of the downtown business district where, within the last three decades, the first skyscrapers of the city have been erected. Finance is not merely the servant of the local commerce, it is the mainspring of Canadian business.
A century ago sociologists of Cobbett's stamp vituperated that "wen" whose bulk seemed a danger to national health; and by the end of the century the tumour was swollen five times as great. Not that it has grown so much out of proportion to the general body, if we may accept Mr. Matthew Bramble's indignant calculation, made several generations back, that "one-sixth part of this whole extensive kingdom is crowded within the bills of mortality." That is much the same ratio as London proper now bears to England, its own thicker outskirts and the rest of the United Kingdom being eliminated, which, if brought into the sum, would make it work out in favour of the capital's increase.

When we come to boundaries and definitions, we are met by the truly British want of system, symmetry, regularity, through which London was allowed to straggle and struggle up into a confused rough-cast conglomeration of materials stuck together by chance or by rule of thumb, cross-divided for different purposes, to be managed by divers and sometimes overlapping authorities. There are citizens who, till the consideration be brought home to them by rate-collectors or other call to civic duty, do not care to know in what parish, borough, Poor-Law union, Parliamentary division, or what, they have their home; and on the edge of London some may be hardly clear what right they have to call themselves Londoners. The City, as it is styled, honoris causâ, forms an independent core, round which strangers must be taught to distinguish between the County of London, by law established, and the wider circle that has come to be known as Greater London.

At the end of 19th century a new organization was brought about by the London Government Act, dividing the County of London into twenty-eight boroughs, exclusive of the City, which clings to its time-honoured jurisdiction and privileges, keeping good order within its bounds by a police of its own, and having its own learned judges to supplement the rough-and-ready justice administered by Lord Mayor and Aldermen. Each of the boroughs has now its corporation, wanting nothing of dignity but age; each of them is divided into wards, electing their quota of representatives on borough councils that replaced a huggermugger administration of vestries and local boards; and an these are knit together under the municipal parliament of the London County Council.

The new boroughs usually take their titles from some parish of note--Kensington, Paddington, St. Pancras, Shoreditch, and so on--while certain familiar quarters of London have had their fame slighted in this division, as Brixton swallowed up in Lambeth, Sydenham invisibly rent between Lewisham and Camberwell, and half a dozen smaller names lost in that of Wandsworth. Something was then done to round off the county area, as by dragging in South Hornsey, and turning out into Kent the "hamlet" of Penge, with its 23,000 people; but, after all such adjustments, the boundary seems a most zigzag one, which leaves Ealing and Edmonton outside of London, but takes in Woolwich and Hampstead. When one goes out the Edgware Road, beyond Maida Vale he has on his right hand the London borough of Hampstead, stretching on to the "Spaniards" at the farther end of its Heath; but the left side of the road is mere Middlesex, where Willesden would fain change its humble style of urban district for the title of borough, being, indeed, populous as half a dozen boroughs.

On the Finchley Road the frontier is at present marked by a loose end of tramway, which haughty London will not admit into her bosom. In less genteel quarters the limit may be betrayed at night by a rush across it of thirsty suburbans, whose public-houses shut earlier than those of the roistering County. On the east side, its manifest boundary is the Lea, beyond which some half-million of people live in Essex boroughs that belong to London as Salford does to Manchester. For certain purposes, indeed, these outskirts may dovetail into London, or be cleft within themselves; thus the south part of Willesden, above mentioned, holds fellowship with the London drainage system, while the north side of the parish has the more expensive lot of discharging its refuse from the Brent watershed.

Beyond the invisible border-line of the County come more or less thickly clustered the county boroughs, municipal boroughs, urban districts, and rural districts, that go to make up Greater London. The boundaries of this area, indeed, are well marked only to official spectacles. The London Postal District has a radius of several miles, stretching beyond the County limits, while excluding its south-eastern corner. A wider sweep is that of the Metropolitan Police District, taking in all parishes within fifteen miles of Charing Cross, among them independent towns like Bromley, Croydon, Epsom, Kingston, Barnet, and Barking, in a province not far short of 700 square miles.

A ring of old towns now etuds the girdle of the Metropolis, that makes up to them in prosperity what they lose in dignity by their dependence--Romford, Brentwood, Epping, Hertford, St. Albans, Watford, Uxbridge, Staines, Woking, Guildford, Dorking, Sevenoaks, Gravesend; and still further afield appear fringes and tassels of this still growing capital.

It will be seen, then, how various measurements might be taken of London's bulk, imposing by any definition. One visible boundary, that seems novel and practical, is suggested by Mr. Ford Madox Hueffer ( The Soul of London).

We may say that London begins where tree-trunks commence to be black, otherwise there is very little to distinguish Regent's Park from Penshurst, or Wimbledon from Norwich. This tree-trunk boundary is, however, defective enough; in many parts of Epping the wood is so dense that boughs and boulders are as green, as brown, as mossy, or as lichened as at Fontainebleau. The prevailing winds being from the south and from the westwards, again, the zone of blackened trunks extends farther than is fair towards the north and the east. But Judged by this standard, London, as far as I have been able to observe, is bounded by a line drawn from Leigh in Essex, half-way through the Epping Forest, to the north of Hendon, to the west of Brentford, the south-west of Barnes, well to the south of Sydenham, well to the east of Bromley, and so up to Leigh again.

Other observers will no doubt find this tree-trunk limitation a little faulty; but it takes in at least nearly all the looser elements of the sphere of London influence. And, as the invariable and bewildering exception to this, as to all rules, it may as well be set down that the most "Londony" of all London trees has a bark that is never uniformly black. The plane-tree grows best of all in London, because it sheds its bark continually; getting rid of its soot, it clears the pores of its skin and flourishes--if I may be allowed an image that appears frivolous but that is sober enough--a perpetual emblem to the city of the morning tub.

In the suburbs the plane yields first place to the flowering almond, in the parks to the thorn, but it is the tree of intimate London. Elms, however, are the trees most noticeable on the roads into London, and their trunks blacken perhaps soonest of all. Nine Elms, Barn Elms, and how many other "Elms"? greet us on the run into town; and the feathery outlines of how many of these trees close the vistas of those new suburban streets that are for ever drilling little pathways into the ancient "estates" of the home counties!


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