One asked the other what he was up to these days. His companion replied that he lived in Toronto now.

The response was immediate. “You exist in Toronto,” his friend replied in scathing tones. “You live in Montreal.”
It’s a true story, and one that captures the way Montrealers feel about their city: immensely proud of the unique culture of one of North America’s most vibrant metropolises.

“Work is important [to Montrealers], but having fun is important as well,” explains Jacques Girard, president and CEO of Montreal International, a private-sector, nonprofit organization that works to attract business to the city. “People are probably more exuberant than they are in other North American cities.”

The first clue to this unique mind-set is the way Montrealers greet each other. When a woman meets an acquaintance, male or female, it’s de rigueur to kiss on each cheek (pairs of men make do with a strong handshake).

The second clue is the amount of chat that precedes most meetings. Before people get down to work, there’s always time to discuss personal news, the weather and the current fate of the Habs (local slang for the Montreal Canadiens of the National Hockey League—it’s short for habitants, the colonists who settled the vast province of Quebec four centuries ago).

And the third clue to Montreal’s personality is the sense of style that pervades the city. From tots to titans, Montrealers love clothes. In a business environment, the suits are usually well made and on the leading edge of fashion. Nearly half of all clothing made in Canada is produced in Montreal, from the tame to the trendy.

But for all their joie de vivre, Montrealers are no slouches when it comes to business. The city is in the midst of an economic revival. A decade ago, a drive down Ste. Catherine or Sherbrooke Street would have revealed a parade of empty storefronts and rental signs. No longer—the class-A office space vacancy rate in downtown Montreal is 6 percent, and retail rents along Ste. Catherine are now nudging US$80 per square foot.

Much of this growth has been fueled by the high technology sector—Montreal is home to a wide variety of software, telecommunications, biotechnology and nanotechnology companies. And despite the industry’s twists and turns, Montrealers are confident that technology is the right track for the long term. “Montreal has made a remarkable shift toward the knowledge-based economy [in the last 15 years],” says Benoit Labonté, president of the Metropolitan Montreal Board of Trade. “That, clearly, will be its future.”

However, tech is far from the only game in town. Conventions and tourism, for instance, are big business. Montreal attracts more international conventions than any other Canadian city. The main convention center, the Palais des Congrès, completed a $240 million expansion in late 2002 that doubled its exhibition space to 200,000 square feet.

The city also has the fifth-largest aerospace sector in North America—a sector that includes designers, technicians, small suppliers, huge manufacturers and other specialists needed to take an aircraft from the drawing board to the hangar. “Montreal is the only city in the world where you can build an airplane completely, within a radius of 30 miles,” Labonté boasts.

Two major airports serve Montreal: Dorval International Airport for commercial flights and far-flung Mirabel International Airport for charters. Dorval is in the midst of a $716 million expansion that will take place in three phases between 2000 and 2009. The first phase will expand the main terminal by 495,000 square feet, adding 20 gates and 36 check-in counters. The airport currently handles some 200 flights daily and serves more than 70 destinations.

And Montreal moves more than people. Mirabel and Dorval combined handle over 200,000 metric tons of cargo a year. Meanwhile, 100 times that amount moves through Montreal’s port on the St. Lawrence River, which handles more cargo than any other port in eastern North America.

The city’s outlook is decidedly worldly. Girard points out that some 15,000 foreign students study in Montreal, and that almost 70 international organizations—including the International Civil Aviation Organization and the World Anti-Doping Agency—are headquartered there.

One of many draws for these organizations is Montrealers’ language flexibility. It’s rare to have a conversation in Montreal where people don’t flip back and forth between French and English, often within the same sentence. Eighty-five percent of Montreal’s workforce speaks both English and French, and one in three Montreal workers is trilingual.

To make a good impression among these linguistic gymnasts, visiting businesspeople should try to use at least a little French when they can—even if it’s something as rudimentary as saying merci to the waiter who brings their menu. Making the effort will make a strong impression on most Montrealers.

But hasn’t language often been a flash point in Montreal? What about those occasional murmurs about separation from Canada—murmurs that became a full-blown roar during a provincial referendum in 1995, when Quebeckers came within a percentage point of voting to secede? These days, such concerns are very much on the back burner.

Ask any Montrealer about politics, and you’ll be more likely to hear grumbles about the lingering aftereffects of the civic amalgamation that took place on January 1, 2002, when 29 municipalities were merged into one mega-city. The resulting streamlining of city halls and municipal services is still experiencing a few bureaucratic hiccups, and those are brighter on the local radar than dreams of self-determination.

Today, if you mention separatist agitation to internationally minded Montreal businesspeople, you’ll likely get a slight Gallic shrug and a quick change of subject. “Sheer exhaustion … set in after the last referendum,” explains Gina Roitman, a public relations professional and lifelong Montrealer. “Young Quebeckers who had grown up in a province that they felt was very much their own could not understand what the older generation was complaining about.”

That political fatigue, coupled with Quebeckers’ tendency to vote any government out after a maximum of two terms, may have led to the resounding victory of the federalist Liberal party in the April 2003 provincial election over the incumbent party, the separatist Parti Québécois.

Worry about the survival of the French language in Quebec used to drive dreams of separation. Previous Parti Québécois governments passed stringent language laws, which regulate the size of non-French words on signs, for example. More than two decades after the laws came into effect, complaints about the legislation occasionally resurface and some animosity remains. But the widespread use of French seems to have quelled at least some talk of independence. “French is prevalent everywhere,” Roitman says. “The young are [more] concerned with jobs and quality of life.”