Montreal - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "Montreal is the second-largest French-speaking city in the world after Paris and largest city in the Americas where the majority of the population is francophone. Montreal has a substantial anglophone minority and an increasing population of allophones (those whose first language is neither English nor French), including both ethnic communities with deep historical roots, and substantial numbers of recent immigrants of whom a substantial number are integrated into the French-speaking community."
The lowest temperature ever recorded is -37.8°C (-36°F) in January of 1957, and the highest temperature ever was 37.6°C (100°F) in August of 1975.
Downtown Montreal (Centre-Ville) is at the foot of Mount Royal, whose expanse forms a major urban park. Downtown contains dozens of notable skyscrapers, including 1000 de La Gauchetière, 1250 René-Lévesque, and Ieoh Ming Pei's Place Ville-Marie.
Montreal's underground city, one of the world's largest, with indoor access to over 1,600 shops, restaurants, offices, and businesses, as well as metro stations, transportation termini, and tunnels extending all over downtown
Montreal is renowned for its churches, causing Mark Twain to comment: "This is the first time I was ever in a city where you couldn't throw a brick without breaking a church window."
Montreal is home to a large gay village located downtown and known in French as le Village gai. Montreal is an epicentre of Queer life and culture in Canada...
Montreal has one of the highest per-capita populations of post-secondary students of any large city in North America, due to its four urban universities—McGill University, Université de Montréal (including the École Polytechnique de Montréal and the École des Hautes Études Commerciales de Montréal), Concordia University, and branches of the Université du Québec—Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM), the École de technologie supérieure, and the École nationale d'administration publique. Neighbouring Longueuil, on the South Shore of Montreal (across the St. Lawrence), is home to the Université de Sherbrooke à Longueuil.
According to The Canadian Style, the official style guide of the federal and provincial governments, the name of the city is to be written with an accent as Montréal in all printed materials in both English and French. However it is more common to omit the accent in English usage and keep the accent in French usage.
