19 May marks the anniversary of the day in 1642 when a group of 45 French colonists founded the city of Montréal as Fort Ville-Marie. Led by the military officer Paul de Chomedey de Maisonneuve, the small outpost on an island in the Saint Lawrence River at the confluence of the Ottawa River, soon became a major fur trading center and grew into present-day Montreal in the province of Quebec, Canada.
A monument to Montréal’s founder stands in Place d'Armes facing the Notre-Dame Basilica in Vieux-Montréal. The monument was sculpted by Louis-Philippe Hebert and dedicated in 1895.
