History
The first European to scale the mountain was Jacques Cartier, guided there in 1535 by the people of the village of Hochelega. He named it in honour of his patron, King François I of France. He wrote in his journal:
- Et au parmy d'icelles champaignes, est scituée et assise ladicte ville de Hochelaga, près et joignant une montaigne ... Nous nommasmes icelle montaigne le mont Royal.
- ("And among these fields is situated and seated the said town of Hochelaga, near to and adjoining a mountain ... We named this mountain, Mount Royal.")
The name of the Island of Montreal derives from mont Réal, as it was spelled in Middle French, (Mont Royal in present French). The name was first applied to the island and was unofficially applied to the city, formerly Ville-Marie, by the 18th century.
In 1643, De Maisonneuve made a pilgrimage to the top, in order to fulfill a vow made in the winter season on occasion of a great flood which swept up to the town palisades.
In 1876, land owner and farmer James Swail began residential subdivisions on the western slope of Mount Murray, in what is now the Cote-des-Neiges district. In 1906, a large housing development was started in the area, called Northmount Heights, with homes built along what is now Decelles Street by developer Northmount Land Company. Much of this area has been expropriated by the Université de Montréal.
In 1914-1918, a railway tunnel was dug under the mountain by the Canadian Northern Railway, a predecessor of the Canadian National. It is currently used by the AMT's Montreal/Deux-Montagnes commuter rail line.
The area was briefly considered as the site for Expo 67, before the exposition grounds were ultimately built on islands in the St. Lawrence River.
For the 1976 Summer Olympics, the park itself hosted the individual road race cycling event.
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Famous quotes containing the word history:
“You that would judge me do not judge alone
This book or that, come to this hallowed place
Where my friends’ portraits hang and look thereon;
Ireland’s history in their lineaments trace;
Think where man’s glory most begins and ends
And say my glory was I had such friends.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“No event in American history is more misunderstood than the Vietnam War. It was misreported then, and it is misremembered now.”
—Richard M. Nixon (b. 1913)
“History ... is, indeed, little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.
But what experience and history teach is this—that peoples and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)