Montréal: My Love, My Story

In May 1642 the French officer Paul de Chomedey, sieur de Maisonneuve, founds, with Jeanne Mance, one of the great port cities of North America. Following the collapse of New France, waves of immigrants arrive from the British Isles. John Molson brews beer and develops the steamboat. After a golden age as a cereal exporter, the great port and its city slide into a long decline.

At the dawn of the 20th Century, industrialists and real estate developers attract a vast working class to the east side of the island of Montreal by offering cheap housing and industrial jobs. Mostly French Canadian laborers make trains, airplanes, tanks and even submarines. The brothers Oscar and Marius Dufresne, enriched by the immense shoe-manufacturing business founded by their parents.

Around the Mountain. Indignant over the cutting of trees on Mount Royal, the city's English and French notables transform it into a park designed by the creator of New York's Central Park, Frederick Law Olmsted. Anglophones and Francophones build, around the mountain, their key institutions - universities, hospitals and a massive Oratory.

Jewish, Chinese and Italian immigrants settle along Saint Lawrence Boulevard, also known as Montréal's Main Street, or "la Main." But Canada is not always welcoming, particularly in times of war. Racist government policies exclude, marginalize and unjustly imprison many. Following World War II, more enlightened policies permit inclusion and integration.

Electric lighting and American culture give Saint Catherine Street a vibrant nightlife filled with exotic cabarets. Tourists gamble, prostitution is rife, police are on the take. But a whistleblower, Pacifique Plante, exposes the system and triggers a public inquiry. The star prosecutor, Jean Drapeau, becomes mayor of Montreal and reshapes the city into a modern metropolis.