Montréal: A History

Steve Pitt is a Toronto-based freelance writer and an award-winning journalist. He has written many young adult and children's books, including Day of the Flying Fox: The True Story of World War II Pilot Charley Fox.

From the very first page it is obvious that Robert Prévost enjoys his
subject, Montreal, a city where he served as a journalist for nearly 50
years. This translation of his book is at once readable and intriguing.
Prévost traces Montreal from the first recorded description of the site
by Jacques Cartier in 1534 to the city’s 350th birthday in 1992. His
task is daunting. In just over 400 pages, he has to chronicle well over
400 years of fire, flood, plague, invasion, growth, government, church,
and Confederation. More than 150 well-chosen illustrations augment the
text. The pace, by necessity, is always brisk.

Where the author falters is in his outdated view of pre-European
settlement. The Iroquois, whose main base of power in the 16th century
included the south shore of the St. Lawrence River, are described by
Prévost as cannibals, inhuman torturers, and incessantly treacherous.
Although few historians would deny that Iroquois warriors were brutal by
modern standards, there is plenty of evidence to confirm that their
brand of warfare was little different from that practiced by their
traditional enemies—the Algonquins, the Hurons, and even their
contemporaries from Europe.

For some reason, the publisher chose to alter the title of this book
from Prévost’s original Montreal, la folle entreprise to Montreal: A
History. The book’s first title was an ironic reference to a French
bureaucrat’s dubious enthusiasm for the establishment of Montreal. An
English reader can only wonder how much more of Prévost’s humor has
been flattened in the name of translation, possibly to cater to another
outdated Quebec notion: that English Canada has a poor sense of humor.