MONTREAL - CITY ALL SAINTSRN

The largest city in Canada - Montreal - is the industrial center of the country. It is situated on the banks of the St. Lawrence River at the foot of the hill Royal - Mont-Royal, from which there was a name of the city. At the location of Montreal crossed the St. Lawrence River, Ottawa and Richelieu, so the city is also a major river port, it is suitable also for several channels. The railways are in Montreal, Quebec, Portland, Boston, New York and many other cities.

Montreal is often called the "Paris of North America, and in spite of the conventionality of such comparisons, the name is given not by accident. City laid the French settlers about 360 years ago, and today the French as their mother tongue for most of its inhabitants.

French colonists first Europeans settled on the banks of the St. Lawrence River, and on lands confiscated from the Indians, the colony of New France appeared.

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However, it soon established its colonies in Canada and the British, eventually became rivals jostle. By force of arms they had forced the French in 1763 to abandon their possessions in North America: both the French settlers were under the authority of the British Governor-General.

Current Montreal is the largest city not only Quebec but across Canada. A Quebec - the largest of the ten provinces of Canada: Nearly three of France could be accommodated on its territory. In Montreal, home to more than 3000000 people, each with their concerns, aspirations, hopes, joys, sorrows and dreams.

Montreal is also one of the oldest cities in Canada, and because it preserved many historical monuments and buildings of ancient architecture. For example, the station′s largest railway station Windsor - the building is cut into the steep hill, and because it resembles a medieval castle. The first floor of the south side of the station is at the level of the sidewalk, but to get on this floor on the north side, the passengers rise on the elevator.

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Montreal is different from U. S. cities: sometimes instead of randomly spaced rectangular boxes of commercial and administrative buildings, which is typical of American cities, downtown tower solid stone buildings with porticos, beautiful moldings and colonnades. Narrow bumpy streets, countless souvenir shops, dark times of the wall, completely hung with paintings and pictures, which depicted these very streets, monuments, old churches . . .

In Montreal, many buildings of European style, there are reduced copies of famous architectural monuments of the world. One has only to cross the square in downtown marketplace, as it turns out the entrance to the gloomy, imposing building of the cathedral of Notre-Dame de Bon Sekyur - Cathedral of the Protecting the Madonna of Mercy. This replica of Notre Dame was built in 1824 and is considered the most ancient buildings of Montreal. Today the cathedral is updated on the donations of people whose fathers and brothers, husbands and sons were killed in the waters of the Atlantic.

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Gray granite blocks of the cathedral seemed to have absorbed habitual bitterness of loss, and cements these blocks of cement as if involved in the tears of widows and orphans.

Inside the walls of the cathedral watching images of the saints - the patron of all swimming and traveling. In the niches of Notre-Dame de Bon Sekyur are miniature versions of a variety of vessels: sailboats from the XV century and modest fishing boats to the modern ocean liners. The edges of the altar placed battered admiralty anchor with traces of rust, things nautically appliances, impregnated by the winds and the salt of different seas, and the porch is decorated with garlands of fishing kuhtyley.

However, the time and the powers that were not particularly favorable to the ancient monuments. For example, the Cathedral of St. James, built in 1870 in the image of the Roman Cathedral of St. Peter′s, located next to the concrete leviathan (in particular, with the hotel "Queen Elizabeth"), proudly raised their floors above the dome of the temple.

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St. James, the height of 8-storey house, crowned with a huge dome, which is the height of its three times higher than the building itself. Above the portico with Corinthian columns across the facade of the cathedral are the statues of saints.

The close proximity to modern skyscrapers did not go to the benefit of the cathedral. Even less fortunate Protecting the Madonna of Mercy Church, which is simply lost in the shadow of a grim building, the Bank of Montreal, unceremoniously invaded range of old buildings on the Place Dharma. But warmed by the breath of many generations of the stones of the old Montreal attract more visitors than mirrored glass and concrete downtown - although very formidable, but a cold and monotonous, as in most cities in the world.

For the same reason, the trade St. Catherine, is not the most beautiful street in Montreal, remains the most lively and friendly. Under her rouge advertising save face with unique wrinkles of time.

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Hundreds of streets scatter in different directions from the low of the Royal Mountains, a half dozen bridges hanging over the St. Lawrence River, thousands of homes, over 300 churches (the Church of St. George Church medievalists, etc. ) and countless chapels and chapels are drawn to the sky. The names of the saints are assigned in Montreal streets and boulevards, squares and bridges, schools and hospitals, so the Canadians themselves and say that "Montreal - a city of saints. "