Montreal is the largest city in the Canadian province of Quebec and the second-largest city in Canada. Montreal was the largest city in Canada up until the 1970s, when it was surpassed in size by Toronto. Originally called Ville-Marie ('City of Mary'), some historians think the city takes its present name from Mount Royal, the three-headed hill at the heart of the city, whose name was also initially given to the island on which the city is located,or Mont Réal as it was spelled in Middle French,(Mont Royal / in present French). The official language of Montreal is French as defined by the city's charter. It is among the five largest French-speaking cities in the world (see demographics of Montreal). ...

  ... Montreal is the largest French-speaking city in North America, and second in the world after Paris when counting the number of native-language Francophones (third after Paris and Kinshasa when counting second-language speakers.)