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The Island of Montreal (French: Île de Montréal), in southwestern Québec, Canada, is located at the confluence of the Saint Lawrence and Ottawa rivers. It is separated from Île Jésus (the location of Laval) by the Rivière des Prairies. The island is boomerang-shaped (one end pointing roughly west, the other roughly northeast). It is the largest island in the Hochelaga Archipelago, and the second largest in the Saint Lawrence River (following Anticosti Island in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence). It is the most populous island in Canada and the 37th most populous island on earth. The St. Lawrence widens into Lake Saint-Louis south-west of the island, narrows into the Lachine Rapids, then widens again into the Bassin de La Prairie before becoming the St. Lawrence again and flowing toward Quebec City. Saint Helen's Island and Notre Dame Island are in the Saint Lawrence southeast of downtown Montreal. The Ottawa River widens as it approaches Montreal from the west and becomes Lac des Deux-Montagnes northwest of the island. The Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue Canal, between the western tip of the island and Île Perrot, connects Lac des Deux-Montagnes and Lake Saint-Louis. Another outlet of Lac des Deux-Montagnes, the Rivière des Prairies, flows along the north shore of the island and into the St. Lawrence at its northeastern tip. The island is approximately 50 km long and 16 km wide at its widest point. The area of the census division and administrative region of Montréal, which includes the Island of Montreal, Nuns' Island (Île des Sœurs), Île Bizard, Île Sainte-Hélène, Notre Dame Island,Île Dorval, and several other smaller islands, is 499 km².[4] The island of Montreal has a shoreline of 266 km. At its centre are the three peaks of Mount Royal. The southwest of the island is separated by the Lachine Canal between Lachine and Montreal's Old Port; this portion of the island is partially divided further by the Canal de l'Aqueduc, running roughly parallel to the Lachine Canal, beginning in the borough of LaSalle and continuing between the boroughs of Le Sud-Ouest and Verdun. The island of Montreal is the major component of the territory of the City of Montréal (the administrative region), along with Île Bizard, Saint Helen's Island, Notre Dame Island, Nuns' Island, and some 69 smaller islands. With a population of 1,861,900 inhabitants (22% of the population of Quebec), it is by far the most populous island in Canada. It is also the 6th most populous island of the Americas and the 37th most populated island on earth, outranking Manhattan Island in New York City. Montreal and the other municipalities on the island compose the administrative region of Montréal. The crossings which connect the island to its surroundings are some of the busiest bridges in the country and the world. The Champlain Bridge and the Jacques Cartier Bridge together accommodate 101 million vehicles a year. The Jacques Cartier federal electoral district covered the western part of Île-de-Montréal from 1867 until 1953. The City of Montreal on the eastern side was represented by five electoral districts.
[edit] Boroughs of Montreal, past and present
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[edit] French names for placesBecause French is the one official language of Québec, WeRelate employs the French names for places within the province. Many placenames will be similar to their counterparts in English, with the addition of accents and hyphens between the words. The words "Saint" and "Sainte" should be spelled out in full. Placenames should be made up of four parts: the community (or parish, or township, or canton), the historic county, Québec, Canada. You may find placenames red-linked unless you follow these conventions. [edit] Local government structureThe Province of Québec was made up of counties and territories. Counties in Québec were established gradually as the land was settled by Europeans. Each county included communities with some form of local governement (often church-based). Territories referred to the undeveloped sections under the control of the government in charge of the whole province at the time. The communities included townships and/or cantons, depending on the English/French makeup of the county concerned, and also included ecclesiastical parishes with somewhat different boundaries which could overlap with local townships or cantons. Ecclesiastical parish registers have been retained and are available to view (online through Ancestry). Since the 1980s many small townships and parishes are merging into larger "municipalities", often with the same name as one of their components. Beginning in 1979 the historic counties of Québec were replaced by administrative regions and regional county municipalities (abbreviated as RCM in English and MRC in French). Regional county municipalities are a supra-local type of regional municipality, and act as the local municipality in unorganized territories within their borders. (An unorganized area or unorganized territory is any geographic region in Canada that does not form part of a municipality or Indian reserve. There is a list in Wikipedia.) There are also 18 equivalent territories (TEs) which are not considered to be RCMs. These are mostly large cities with their suburbs, but include 4 very large geographical areas where the population is sparse. The administrative regions (above the RCMs in the hierarchy) are illustrated on a map in Wikipedia. The regions are used to organize the delivery of provincial government services and there are conferences of elected officers in each region. The regions existed before the change from historic counties to regional county municipalities. The above description is based on various articles in Wikipedia including one titled Types of municipalities in Quebec NOTE: WeRelate refers to Québec communities as being within their historic counties because this is the description which will be found in historical documents. FamilySearch and Quebec GenWeb follow the same procedure. However, it is always wise to know the current RCM as well in order to track these documents down in local repositories and also to describe events which have taken place since 1980. Because the former or historic counties and the modern regional county municipalities can have the same names but may cover a slightly different geographical area, the placenames for Regional County Municipalities or "Territories Equivalent to regional county municipalities" are distinguished by including the abbreviation "RCM" or "TE" following the name. Historic counties (which were taken out of use in about 1982) were made up of townships or cantons. The two words are equivalent in English and French. Eventually all the Québec cantons in WeRelate will be described as townships. Many townships disappeared before 1980 with the growth of urbanization. If the word parish is used, this is the local ecclesiastical parish of the Roman Catholic Church. Parish boundaries and township or canton boundaries were not always the same. The WeRelate standard form for expressing a place in Québec is township/canton/parish, historic county, Québec, Canada,
[edit] CensusesCensuses were taken throughout the 19th century in Quebec (or in Lower Canada or Canada West before 1867). Surprisingly most of them have been archived and have been placed online free of charge by the Government of Canada (both microfilmed images and transcriptions). All can be searched by name or browsed by electoral district. The contents vary. Those of 1825, 1831 and 1841 record only the householders by name, but remaining members of each household were counted by sex and by age range. From 1851 through 1921 each individual was named and described separately. The amount of information increased throughout the century, and in 1901 people were asked for their birthdate and the year of immigration to Canada. Unfortunately, enumerators were required only to record the birthplace province or country (if an immigrant). Specific birthplaces have to be discovered elsewhere. The links below are to the introductory page for the specific census year. It is wise to read through this page first to see what will be provided on a specific census, and what will be lacking. Links to the records follow from these pages.
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