Mount Royal, Quebec

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Mount Royal within the Island of Montreal.

Town of Mount Royal is a town located on the northwest side of Mount Royal, north of downtown Montreal, on the Island of Montreal in southwestern Quebec, Canada. pop. 18,671 (Statistics Canada, 1996).

The community is commonly referred to as the Town of Mount Royal (in French, Ville Mont-Royal), or by the abbreviation TMR (VMR in French).

1 History
2 Geography
3 Government
- 3.1 Municipal
  - 3.1.1 2005 Municipal Elections
- 3.2 Federal and Provincial
4 Demographics
5 See also

[edit] History

Plan of “Model City” and of the railroad tunnel

The town was founded in 1912. It was created at the initiative of the Canadian Northern Railway. Its plan was to build a new town (or "model city" as it was called) at the foot of the mountain. The company bought 4,800 acres (19 km²) of farmland, and then built a rail tunnel under Mount Royal connecting their land to downtown Montreal. The profits from the venture helped finance the development of Canadian Northern's transcontinental railroad, which eventually became a significant constituent of the Canadian National Railway system. The town was designed by Canadian Northern's chief engineer, Henry Wicksteed, based loosely on Washington, DC.

Mount Royal has always been an upper-class community, and until the 1960s its population was almost exclusively anglophone and largely of English or Scottish ancestry. This began to change after Quiet Revolution, as francophones gained access to the well-paying careers. Mount Royal became popular with these "nouveau riche", and today the community is 46% francophone.

The town was merged with the city of Montreal on January 1, 2002. On June 20, 2004 the residents of the town voted to demerge from Montreal following the calls for de-amalgamation. Mount Royal was re-established as a town on January 1, 2006.

In June 2006, the town painted over the English-language designations on their bilingual street signs after repeated requests from the Quebec French-language office, a provincial agency aimed at promoting French in the province of Quebec, and eliminating the use of other languages. Many residents complained and the town agreed to reinstate the English lettering on the signs. The new English designations are much smaller than before, this is to comply with Bill 101. For unknown reasons, there are street signs for several major boulevards for which the lettering has not been changed back to bi-lingual.

[edit] Geography

Two main thoroughfares, Laird Boulevard and Graham Boulevard, cut across the borough diagonally and meet at Connaught Park, a green space located in the centre. Mount Royal Train Station (Gare Mont-Royal) is located adjacent to this park, a commuter train station on the AMT Deux-Montagnes Line. Trains going through the Mount Royal Tunnel link the station to downtown Montreal in 9 minutes.

Mount Royal is surrounded on three sides by a highway, a rail line and a fence.

The highway is Metropolitan Boulevard, a major constituent of Autoroute 40. It was built as an elevated highway throughout, except when it passes through Mount Royal (between Sainte Croix Avenue and l'Acadie Boulevard), since the town council requested that it be built on the ground, in order to separate the town from the industrial area to the north.

The rail line is the last portion of Canadian Pacific's Adirondack subdivision. It originally ran through the northern part of the district of Côte des Neiges. However when the town became part of the City of Montreal in 2002, the part of Côte des Neiges north of rail line was incorporated into the Mount Royal borough.

The fence is erected on the eastern border with Park Extension along l'Acadie Boulevard. The stated purpose of the fence is to prevent children and house pets from running into the busy thoroughfare, but many contend that it was built to keep residents of the working-class Park Extension neighbourhood out of the town. This fence originally had several gates built into it, which the became a subject of controversy when they were locked one year at Halloween, preventing children from Park Extension from trick-or-treating in the town. The town council responded by removing the gates so that the fence could be crossed at any time at any of the six crosswalks along the 1.2 km boulevard.

[edit] Government

[edit] Municipal

The current borough mayor is Vera Danyluk.

The borough is divided into two districts, each of which elect one councillor who, with the borough mayor, form the borough council. Only the borough mayor sits on city council.

[edit] 2005 Municipal Elections

The 2005 election, which took place on November 6, involved a three-way race for mayor between incumbent borough mayor Suzanne Caron, former mayor Vera Danyluk, and Brigitte Mack-Arsenault, president of a municipal watchdog association. The election also involved municipal political parties for the first time. Both Danyluk and Mack-Arsenault formed parties, and Caron, although officially running as an independent, affiliated herself with a group of independent candidates for town council.

Danyluk won the election.

[edit] Federal and Provincial

The entire borough is located within the federal riding of Mount Royal, and within the smaller provincial electoral district of Mount Royal.

[edit] Demographics

As of the census of 2001, there were 18,682 people, 7,065 households, and 5,215 families residing in the city. The population density was 2,438.90/km² . There were 7,267 housing units at an average density of 948.69/km². The racial makeup of the city was 84.51% White, 1.71% Black Canadian, 0.08% Aboriginal, 6.66% Asian Canadian, and 0.84% Latin American.

The linguistic makeup of the city was English as the first language of 25.6% of the population, French the first of 45.4%, 1.2% of the population learnt both English and French, and 27.9% first learnt other languages. 11.6% of the population can speak only English, 10.1% can speak only French, 76.9% can speak both English and French, and 1.4% cannot speak English nor French.

In the city the population was spread out with 18.7% under the age of 15, 11.6% from 15 to 24, 24.8% from 25 to 44, 26.0% from 45 to 64, and 19.0% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 41 years. For every 100 females there were 89.2 males. For every 100 females age 15 and over, there were 85.9 males.

There were 7,065 households out of which 33.7% had children living with them, 57.6% were married couples living together, 7.2% had a female lone-parent as a householder, and 25.8% of all households were made up of individuals. The average married-couple family size was 3.2.

Christians made up 71.9% of the population, or 53.2% Catholic, 6.0% Protestant, 10.9% Orthodox, and 1.8% other Christian. Other religions in the city include 5.5% Muslim, 12.0% Jewish, 2.9% Eastern religions, and 0.0% other religions. 7.6% of the population claimed to have no religious affiliation.

The median income for a household in the city was $75,473 CAD, and the median income for a family was $98,657 CAD. Males had an average income of $86,428 CAD versus $41,883 CAD for females. About 4.5% of the labour force was unemployed. The largest occupation categories were 24.1% employed in management occupations, 19.4% business, finance, and administration occupations, and 14.7% in sales and service occupations.

Note: Percentages may not add up to 100 percent due to rounding of data samples.