For like each nation, each city has its own individuality, its own characteristic entity, its own form of life which must be made the most of by art and thoughtful love.
This is not merely true of the physical being of a city from the city planner's point of view. There is also a specific character in the spiritual, artistic, moral and practical life of every city that has grown into virility and made an impress on the world.
Every such city is unique; it has its predominant virtues and failings. You may partially eliminate the latter and enlarge the former, but the city being human—the product of the sum total of the qualities and defects of its inhabitants—it takes on a character, a personality, a mentality all its own.
Civic history then leads us to delve down into the origins of things to find out the causes and sources of that ultimate city character which we see reflected today in such a city as Montreal.
The research is fascinating and satisfactory to the citizen who would know his surroundings, and live in them intelligently with consideration for the diverse view points of those of his fellow citizens who have different national origins and divergent mental outlooks from his own.
Yet while this city character is in a way fixed, still it is not so stable but that it will be susceptible to further development in the times that are to come with new problems and new situations to grapple with.
The peculiar pleasure of the reading of the history of Montreal will be to witness the development of its present character from the earliest date of the small pioneering, religious settlement of French colonists, living simple and uneventful days, but chequered by the constant fear of the forays of Indian marauders on to the "Castle Dangerous" of Ville Marie, through its more mature periods of city formation, then onward through the difficult days of the fusion of the French and English civilization starting in 1760, to the complex life of the great and prosperous cosmopolitan city of today, the port and commercial centre of Canada—the old and new régimes making one harmonious unity, but with its component parts easily discernible. The city's motto is aptly chosen, "Concordia Salus."
Much there will be learned in the history of Montreal of the past that will explain the present and the mentality of its people. Tout savoir, c'est tout pardonner.
A clue to the future will also be afforded beforehand. Certainly it will be seen that Montreal is great and will be greater still, because great thoughts, high ideals, strenuous purposes have been born and fostered within its walls.