Boutique hotels have been popping up in its historic neighbourhoods the Old Port has

Boutique hotels have been popping up in its historic neighbourhoods, the Old Port has received a makeover and the Lachine Canal has been spruced up and reopened for summer pleasure-boating.Set on an island in the mighty St Lawrence River, the city is a vibrant blend of North American and European styles with high-rise buildings, a green "mountain" (Mount Royal, from which the city's name derives), and lovely old residential quarters. Since then the issue has been played down, but it remains a cloud on the horizon.I'D LIKE SOME URBAN COOLRomantic, colourful Montr? is busily becoming ever more chic. This cultural polarisation in turn brought about the vexed issue of Qu?cois separation from the rest of Canada. The last referendum on the matter took place in 1995, with the result that just 50.6 per cent of the Qu?cois voted to remain in Canada. Fast forward to the 1960s: with increased urbanisation the French Qu?cois became wealthy, and the resulting power they wielded gave rise to La R?lution Silencieuse (Quiet Revolution), so-called because society was fundamentally altered with a minimum of violence.As the French Qu?cois asserted themselves, many Anglophones left the province.

To keep them loyal during the American revolution, the British government allowed the settlers to retain their language and Catholic faith; however, the French Qu?cois rapidly became the underdogs of an English-French province. The French had established a sizeable community beside the St Lawrence River and the settlers were forced to become British citizens. A Frenchman or woman, bemused by that accent and baffled by some of the vocabulary, might not agree that the language uttered corresponds to his or her native tongue.CANADA IS IN THE COMMONWEALTH - SO WHY SPEAK FRENCH AT ALL?At the risk of oversimplifying a highly charged passage of history, in 1759 British forces defeated the French army at the Plains of Abraham above the settlement of Qu?c (an Algonkian word meaning "where the river narrows"). The maritime province of New Brunswick has a significant Acadian population, who speak a plausible version of French, but Qu?c is Canada's only thoroughly French-speaking province In rural areas it is the only language spoken.

Yet where the Qu?cois people do have some common ground with the French is in language - well, sort of.FRANGLAIS?According to Canada's Official Languages Act, the entire country is bilingual, with French and English accorded equal status. In practice, you could expect blank looks if you attempted to talk French with a shopkeeper anywhere from Ontario to British Columbia. Only about a tenth of the 500,000 lakes have official names, while roughly 3,000 rivers and 11,000 streams have been identified. Around a quarter of the terrain is covered with water - at this time of year gently thawing ice. Most Qu?cois live in and around towns in the south, so there are vast, untamed tracts. Covering more than 1,500,000sq km, it is Canada's largest province and seven times bigger than Britain. Visually, Qu?c is startlingly different from France, with bear- and moose-filled forests, whales swimming into its largest river, and three coastlines (along the Gulf of St Lawrence, the Labrador Sea and Hudson Bay) that remain frozen for several months. LITTLE FRANCE? Yes and no.