Why Nobody Wants to Live in Montreal, Canada Anymore
Paul McAllister
76,160 views
Montreal was once the largest city in Canada — the financial capital, the banking center, the place where the British Empire hid its gold during World War II. The Sun Life Building on Dominion Square was the largest office building in the British Empire. The Royal Bank tower on Saint-Jacques Street was the tallest in the country. Every major insurance company, every railroad deal, every dollar of consequence in Canadian commerce passed through Montreal's downtown.
Then the city made a choice that changed everything.
Bill 101 and the rise of Quebec separatism triggered a corporate exodus that emptied Montreal's business district and handed Toronto its crown. Sun Life fled. The Royal Bank followed. Hundreds of thousands of anglophones left the province and never returned. The 1976 Olympics buried the city under $1.5 billion in debt — a stadium so over budget they called it the Big Owe, and it took thirty years to pay off. The 1995 sovereignty referendum came within 54,000 votes of turning Montreal into the largest city of a brand-new country with no trade agreements and no international recognition. The Charbonneau Commission revealed that the Mafia and construction cartels had stolen hundreds of millions from the city's own infrastructure budget. The Montreal Expos, born from the glory of Expo 67, played their last game in a nearly empty stadium and left for Washington. And now the population is declining — projected to shrink while Toronto and Vancouver keep growing.
This is the story of how Canada's greatest city lost its banks, its headquarters, its baseball team, its people, and its place at the center of a country it helped build.
Sources:
The Canadian Encyclopedia — "Sun Life Financial," "Expo 67," "Quebec Referendum (1995)," "The FLQ and the October Crisis" (thecanadianencyclopedia.ca)
CBC News Archives — Montreal Olympic debt coverage, Charbonneau Commission hearings, Expos relocation reporting (cbc.ca)
Communauté métropolitaine de Montréal (CMM) / Observatoire Grand Montréal — 2026 population projections and dependency ratio data (cmm.qc.ca)
Institut de la statistique du Québec — Quebec provincial population estimates and 2030 decline projections, July 2025
The Globe and Mail — "The pothole season in 'Moontreal' is so bad, not even the mayor can escape," February 2026; "Summer Olympics: 40 years on, Quebeckers are still footing the bill," August 2016
Charbonneau Commission Final Report (Commission d'enquête sur l'octroi et la gestion des contrats publics dans l'industrie de la construction), November 2015 — 1,741 pages, 60 recommendations
20 Comments
Growing up in Montreal in such a diverse, multicultural environment and speaking three languages gave me something that I consider invaluable: the strength, resilience and adaptability to find my place wherever life takes me. 🌎
Montreal taught me to embrace different cultures, perspectives and ways of life, and those experiences have helped me adjust and thrive in Australia. I may have left Montreal, but a part of the city and its rich cultural heritage will always be part of who I am. ❤️
Plusieurs aspects très positifs de Montréal sont passés sous silence dans le documentaire, mais le contenu de celui-ci, bien que majoritairement négatif, peut être un grand facteur de motivation apte à générer des changements positifs non seulement pour la ville, mais pour le Québec et même pour le Canada.
Merci beaucoup pour l'avoir produit.
Why Nobody Wants to Live in Montreal, Canada Anymore
Paul McAllister
76,160 views
Montreal was once the largest city in Canada — the financial capital, the banking center, the place where the British Empire hid its gold during World War II. The Sun Life Building on Dominion Square was the largest office building in the British Empire. The Royal Bank tower on Saint-Jacques Street was the tallest in the country. Every major insurance company, every railroad deal, every dollar of consequence in Canadian commerce passed through Montreal's downtown.
Then the city made a choice that changed everything.
Bill 101 and the rise of Quebec separatism triggered a corporate exodus that emptied Montreal's business district and handed Toronto its crown. Sun Life fled. The Royal Bank followed. Hundreds of thousands of anglophones left the province and never returned. The 1976 Olympics buried the city under $1.5 billion in debt — a stadium so over budget they called it the Big Owe, and it took thirty years to pay off. The 1995 sovereignty referendum came within 54,000 votes of turning Montreal into the largest city of a brand-new country with no trade agreements and no international recognition. The Charbonneau Commission revealed that the Mafia and construction cartels had stolen hundreds of millions from the city's own infrastructure budget. The Montreal Expos, born from the glory of Expo 67, played their last game in a nearly empty stadium and left for Washington. And now the population is declining — projected to shrink while Toronto and Vancouver keep growing.
This is the story of how Canada's greatest city lost its banks, its headquarters, its baseball team, its people, and its place at the center of a country it helped build.
Sources:
The Canadian Encyclopedia — "Sun Life Financial," "Expo 67," "Quebec Referendum (1995)," "The FLQ and the October Crisis" (thecanadianencyclopedia.ca)
CBC News Archives — Montreal Olympic debt coverage, Charbonneau Commission hearings, Expos relocation reporting (cbc.ca)
Communauté métropolitaine de Montréal (CMM) / Observatoire Grand Montréal — 2026 population projections and dependency ratio data (cmm.qc.ca)
Institut de la statistique du Québec — Quebec provincial population estimates and 2030 decline projections, July 2025
The Globe and Mail — "The pothole season in 'Moontreal' is so bad, not even the mayor can escape," February 2026; "Summer Olympics: 40 years on, Quebeckers are still footing the bill," August 2016
Charbonneau Commission Final Report (Commission d'enquête sur l'octroi et la gestion des contrats publics dans l'industrie de la construction), November 2015 — 1,741 pages, 60 recommendations
I eventually made a conscious decision to leave Montreal and build my life in Japan, where I have now lived and worked for the past 20+ years.
What this video misses for me is something much harder to measure than corporate headquarters, population flows, infrastructure, or political instability: what growing up in Montreal actually gives you.
Montreal taught me how to live with difference — different languages, cultures, religions, social classes, and ways of seeing the world. It taught me adaptability, independence, resilience, and how to navigate complexity without being intimidated by it. Those qualities have served me throughout my adult life and made it possible for me to leave Canada, establish myself on the other side of the world, and build a career and a life in a culture very different from the one in which I was raised.
So yes, Montreal lost much of its former economic dominance, and many people, including me, chose to leave. But leaving is not necessarily an indictment of the city that raised you. In my case, quite the opposite. Much of what allowed me to survive and succeed abroad is a direct tribute to my Montreal upbringing.
That dimension of the city — its ability to produce people who are culturally flexible, linguistically adaptable, and able to function almost anywhere — is completely absent from this video, and to me it is one of the most important parts of Montreal’s story.