1.
Mary, Queen of the World Cathedral
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Mary, Queen of the World Cathedral is a minor basilica in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, and the seat of the Roman Catholic archdiocese of Montreal. It is the third largest church in Quebec after St. Josephs Oratory, the building is 101 m in length,46 m in width, and a maximum height of 77 m at the cupola, the diameter of which is 23 m. The church is located at 1085 Cathedral Street at the corner of René Lévesque Boulevard and Metcalfe Street, near the Bonaventure metro station and it and the connected Archdiocese main buildings form the eastern side of Place du Canada, and occupies of dominant presences on Dorchester Square. The sacrament of baptism is celebrated in the small chapel, the marble baptismal font is surmounted by an impressive stucco crucifix sculpted by Philippe Hébert. The crucifix is one of the most important pieces of sculpture in Quebec. The construction of the cathedral was ordered by Mgr, Ignace Bourget, second bishop of Montreal, to replace the former Saint-Jacques Cathedral which had burned in 1852. The site also sparked due to its location in the western part of downtown. The first architect, Victor Bourgeau, refused the project after studying St. Peters, at the time, the Holy See and the Papal States were threatened by the nationalist troops of Victor Emmanuel II, king of Piedmont, who was attempting to assert control over all Italy. Their motto is, Love God and go your way, a painting depicting Colonel Athanase de Charette, commander of the Papal Zouaves, was made in 1885 by Lionel Royer. Joseph Michaud, the chaplain of the Papal Zouave volunteers of Montreal, was sent to Rome to secretly produce a model to work from. Work began in 1875 and the new church was consecrated in 1894 as Saint James Cathedral, after Saint James the Great, at the time it was the largest church in Quebec. It was made a basilica in 1919 by Pope Benedict XV. It was rededicated in 1955 to Mary, Queen of the World, between 1955 and 1960, several restoration works have been executed. On March 28,2000, the cathedral was designated a National Historic Site of Canada, in the last few years, the cathedrals esplanade and narthex have undergone significant reconstruction. The exterior statue of Bishop Ignace Bourget was cleaned and restored in 2005, all of the statues were sculpted by Olindo Gratton between 1892 and 1898. Patricks Church, Saint Ignatius of Antioch, Saint Charles Borromeo, patron of the parish of the Saint-Charles Church in Pointe Saint-Charles, next to the church, theres also a monument for Mgr. The aisles of the nave and the arches in the transept contain painting depicting historical events in the days of Montreal. It contains nine paintings and still three empty spaces, the paintings are, The aforementioned painting of colonel Athanase de Charette, commander of the Papal Zouaves of Montreal
2.
Montreal
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Montreal, officially Montréal, is the most populous municipality in the Canadian province of Quebec and the 2nd-most populous in Canada as a whole. Originally called Ville-Marie, or City of Mary, it is believed to be named after Mount Royal, the city has a distinct four-season continental climate, with warm-to-hot summers and cold, snowy winters. In 2016, Montreal had a population of 1,704,694, Montreals metropolitan area had a population of 4,098,927 and a population of 1,958,257 in the urban agglomeration, with all of the municipalities on the Island of Montreal included. Legally a French-speaking city,60. 5% of Montrealers speak French at home,21. 2% speak English and 19. 8% speak neither, Montreal is one of the most bilingual cities in Quebec and Canada, with 56% of the population able to speak both official languages. Montreal is the second-largest primarily French-speaking city in the world after Paris, historically the commercial capital of Canada, it was surpassed in population and economic strength by Toronto in the 1970s. It remains an important centre of commerce, aerospace, finance, pharmaceuticals, technology, design, education, culture, tourism, gaming, film, Montreal was also named a UNESCO City of Design. In 2009, Montreal was named North Americas leading host city for international events, according to the 2009 preliminary rankings of the International Congress. According to the 2015 Global Liveability Ranking by the Economist Intelligence Unit, in the 2017 edition of their Best Student Cities ranking, Quacquarelli Symonds ranked Montreal as the worlds best city to study abroad. Also, Montreal has 11 universities with 170,000 students enrolled, the Greater Montréal region has the highest number of university students per capita among all metropolitan areas in North America. It is the only Canadian city to have held the Summer Olympics, currently, the city hosts the Canadian Grand Prix of Formula One, the Montreal International Jazz Festival and the Just for Laughs festival. In 2012, Montreal was ranked as a Beta+ world city, in Kanien’kéha, or Mohawk language, the island is called Tiohtià, ke Tsi or Ka-wé-no-te. In Anishinaabemowin, or Ojibwe language, the land is called Mooniyaang, though the city was first named by French colonizers Ville Marie, or City of Mary, its current name comes from Mount Royal, the triple-peaked hill in the heart of the city. The most popular theory is that the name derives from Mont Réal, Cartiers 1535 diary entry, naming the mountain, according to the Commission de toponymie du Québec and the Geographical Names Board of Canada, Canadian place names have only one official form. Thus, Montreal is officially spelled with an accent over the e in both English and French. In practice, this is limited to governmental uses. English-speaking Montrealers, including English-language media, regularly omit the accent when writing in English, archaeological evidence demonstrates that First Nations native people occupied the island of Montreal as early as 4,000 years ago. By the year AD1000, they had started to cultivate maize, within a few hundred years, they had built fortified villages. Archeologists have found evidence of their habitation there and at locations in the valley since at least the 14th century
3.
Quebec
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Quebec is the second-most populous province of Canada and the only one to have a predominantly French-speaking population, with French as the sole provincial official language. Quebec is Canadas largest province by area and its second-largest administrative division and it also shares maritime borders with Nunavut, Prince Edward Island, and Nova Scotia. Quebec is Canadas second-most populous province, after Ontario, most inhabitants live in urban areas near the Saint Lawrence River between Montreal and Quebec City, the capital. Approximately half of Quebec residents live in the Greater Montreal Area, the Nord-du-Québec region, occupying the northern half of the province, is sparsely populated and inhabited primarily by Aboriginal peoples. Even in central Quebec at comparatively southerly latitudes winters are severe in inland areas, Quebec independence debates have played a large role in the politics of the province. Parti Québécois governments held referendums on sovereignty in 1980 and 1995, in 2006, the House of Commons of Canada passed a symbolic motion recognizing the Québécois as a nation within a united Canada. These many industries have all contributed to helping Quebec become an economically influential province within Canada, early variations in the spelling of the name included Québecq and Kébec. French explorer Samuel de Champlain chose the name Québec in 1608 for the colonial outpost he would use as the seat for the French colony of New France. The province is sometimes referred to as La belle province, the Province of Quebec was founded in the Royal Proclamation of 1763 after the Treaty of Paris formally transferred the French colony of Canada to Britain after the Seven Years War. The proclamation restricted the province to an area along the banks of the Saint Lawrence River, the Treaty of Versailles ceded territories south of the Great Lakes to the United States. After the Constitutional Act of 1791, the territory was divided between Lower Canada and Upper Canada, with each being granted an elected legislative assembly, in 1840, these become Canada East and Canada West after the British Parliament unified Upper and Lower Canada into the Province of Canada. This territory was redivided into the Provinces of Quebec and Ontario at Confederation in 1867, each became one of the first four provinces. In 1898, the Canadian Parliament passed the first Quebec Boundary Extension Act that expanded the provincial boundaries northward to include the lands of the aboriginal peoples. This was followed by the addition of the District of Ungava through the Quebec Boundaries Extension Act of 1912 that added the northernmost lands of the Inuit to create the modern Province of Quebec. In 1927, the border between Quebec and Newfoundland and Labrador was established by the British Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. Located in the part of Canada, and part of Central Canada. Its topography is very different from one region to another due to the composition of the ground, the climate. The Saint Lawrence Lowland and the Canadian Shield are the two main regions, and are radically different
4.
Canada
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Canada is a country in the northern half of North America. Canadas border with the United States is the worlds longest binational land border, the majority of the country has a cold or severely cold winter climate, but southerly areas are warm in summer. Canada is sparsely populated, the majority of its territory being dominated by forest and tundra. It is highly urbanized with 82 per cent of the 35.15 million people concentrated in large and medium-sized cities, One third of the population lives in the three largest cities, Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. Its capital is Ottawa, and other urban areas include Calgary, Edmonton, Quebec City, Winnipeg. Various aboriginal peoples had inhabited what is now Canada for thousands of years prior to European colonization. Pursuant to the British North America Act, on July 1,1867, the colonies of Canada, New Brunswick and this began an accretion of provinces and territories to the mostly self-governing Dominion to the present ten provinces and three territories forming modern Canada. With the Constitution Act 1982, Canada took over authority, removing the last remaining ties of legal dependence on the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Canada is a parliamentary democracy and a constitutional monarchy, with Queen Elizabeth II being the head of state. The country is officially bilingual at the federal level and it is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, the product of large-scale immigration from many other countries. Its advanced economy is the eleventh largest in the world, relying chiefly upon its abundant natural resources, Canadas long and complex relationship with the United States has had a significant impact on its economy and culture. Canada is a country and has the tenth highest nominal per capita income globally as well as the ninth highest ranking in the Human Development Index. It ranks among the highest in international measurements of government transparency, civil liberties, quality of life, economic freedom, Canada is an influential nation in the world, primarily due to its inclusive values, years of prosperity and stability, stable economy, and efficient military. While a variety of theories have been postulated for the origins of Canada. In 1535, indigenous inhabitants of the present-day Quebec City region used the word to direct French explorer Jacques Cartier to the village of Stadacona, from the 16th to the early 18th century Canada referred to the part of New France that lay along the St. Lawrence River. In 1791, the area became two British colonies called Upper Canada and Lower Canada collectively named The Canadas, until their union as the British Province of Canada in 1841. Upon Confederation in 1867, Canada was adopted as the name for the new country at the London Conference. The transition away from the use of Dominion was formally reflected in 1982 with the passage of the Canada Act, later that year, the name of national holiday was changed from Dominion Day to Canada Day
5.
Geographic coordinate system
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A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a two-dimensional map requires a map projection. The invention of a coordinate system is generally credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Ptolemy credited him with the adoption of longitude and latitude. Ptolemys 2nd-century Geography used the prime meridian but measured latitude from the equator instead. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes recovery of Ptolemys text a little before 1300, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while France and Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911, the latitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the equator, the north pole is 90° N, the south pole is 90° S. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the equator, the plane of all geographic coordinate systems. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the longitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle east or west of a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. All meridians are halves of great ellipses, which converge at the north and south poles, the prime meridian determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres, although maps often divide these hemispheres further west in order to keep the Old World on a single side. The antipodal meridian of Greenwich is both 180°W and 180°E, the combination of these two components specifies the position of any location on the surface of Earth, without consideration of altitude or depth. The grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude is known as a graticule, the origin/zero point of this system is located in the Gulf of Guinea about 625 km south of Tema, Ghana. To completely specify a location of a feature on, in, or above Earth. Earth is not a sphere, but a shape approximating a biaxial ellipsoid. It is nearly spherical, but has an equatorial bulge making the radius at the equator about 0. 3% larger than the radius measured through the poles, the shorter axis approximately coincides with the axis of rotation
6.
Fairmont Hotels and Resorts
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Fairmont Hotels & Resorts is a Canadian operator of luxury hotels and resorts. Many of these hotels were built by the Canadian Pacific Railway. The first hotel to bear the Fairmont name is located in the city of San Francisco, the nearly completed structure survived the earthquake of 1906. Although heavily damaged by the subsequent fires, the hotel was renovated under the eye of architect Julia Morgan and it was later acquired by Benjamin Swig in 1945. Starting in the 1960s, Fairmont began developing a chain of luxury hotels in major cities across the United States. After purchasing Fairmont in 1999, Canadian Pacific Limited split into five companies in a 2001 starburst move designed to increase the valuations of its individual divisions. The former Canadian Pacific Hotels division took on the name of the much smaller Fairmont chain to reflect the new focus of the new company. In 2004, Fairmont Hotels & Resorts Inc. paid $70 million to take control of the management company that runs its properties. Fairmont completed the acquisition of the 16.5 per cent stake in the Fairmont management company from U. S. -based Maritz Wolff & Co. for about $70 million. The management company partnership stemmed from a deal that saw Fairmonts predecessor company, Canadian Pacific Hotels and that transaction led, in 2001, to the creation and IPO of Fairmont Hotels & Resorts, a Toronto-based owner of luxury hotel properties. The new hotel management company created was 67 per cent owned by Fairmont, Kingdom disposed of its stake the partnership in return for Fairmont parent stock in 2002, leaving Maritz Wolff as the remaining partner. Two months later, the U. S. company triggered an option under the original deal that created the management company. In October 2005, Fairmont dipped to a low of $35. 53–37 cents lower than its closing price on its debut in August 2001. In early 2006, after a bidding war started by investor Carl Icahn. Icahn lost the bid and Fairmont agreed to be sold for $3.9 billion USD, to Colony Capital, LLC and Saudi Arabias Kingdom Hotels International. At the time of the purchase, FRHI also owned Canadas Delta Hotels & Resorts, however, Delta was sold on 2 October 2007 to bcIMC, the British Columbia Investment Management Corporation. In October 2008, Fairmont Hotels & Resorts was named one of Canadas Top 100 Employers by Mediacorp Canada Inc. and was featured in Macleans newsmagazine, later that month, it was also named one of Greater Torontos Top Employers, which was announced by the Toronto Star newspaper. In April 2010, Kingdom Hotels sold part of its stake in Raffles Holdings International in a deal worth about $847 million, to a group of investors, including an affiliate of Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund
7.
French language
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French is a Romance language of the Indo-European family. It descended from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire, as did all Romance languages, French has evolved from Gallo-Romance, the spoken Latin in Gaul, and more specifically in Northern Gaul. Its closest relatives are the other langues doïl—languages historically spoken in northern France and in southern Belgium, French was also influenced by native Celtic languages of Northern Roman Gaul like Gallia Belgica and by the Frankish language of the post-Roman Frankish invaders. Today, owing to Frances past overseas expansion, there are numerous French-based creole languages, a French-speaking person or nation may be referred to as Francophone in both English and French. French is a language in 29 countries, most of which are members of la francophonie. As of 2015, 40% of the population is in Europe, 35% in sub-Saharan Africa, 15% in North Africa and the Middle East, 8% in the Americas. French is the fourth-most widely spoken mother tongue in the European Union, 1/5 of Europeans who do not have French as a mother tongue speak French as a second language. As a result of French and Belgian colonialism from the 17th and 18th century onward, French was introduced to new territories in the Americas, Africa, most second-language speakers reside in Francophone Africa, in particular Gabon, Algeria, Mauritius, Senegal and Ivory Coast. In 2015, French was estimated to have 77 to 110 million native speakers, approximately 274 million people are able to speak the language. The Organisation internationale de la Francophonie estimates 700 million by 2050, in 2011, Bloomberg Businessweek ranked French the third most useful language for business, after English and Standard Mandarin Chinese. Under the Constitution of France, French has been the language of the Republic since 1992. France mandates the use of French in official government publications, public education except in specific cases, French is one of the four official languages of Switzerland and is spoken in the western part of Switzerland called Romandie, of which Geneva is the largest city. French is the language of about 23% of the Swiss population. French is also a language of Luxembourg, Monaco, and Aosta Valley, while French dialects remain spoken by minorities on the Channel Islands. A plurality of the worlds French-speaking population lives in Africa and this number does not include the people living in non-Francophone African countries who have learned French as a foreign language. Due to the rise of French in Africa, the total French-speaking population worldwide is expected to reach 700 million people in 2050, French is the fastest growing language on the continent. French is mostly a language in Africa, but it has become a first language in some urban areas, such as the region of Abidjan, Ivory Coast and in Libreville. There is not a single African French, but multiple forms that diverged through contact with various indigenous African languages, sub-Saharan Africa is the region where the French language is most likely to expand, because of the expansion of education and rapid population growth
8.
Canada's grand railway hotels
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Canada’s railway hotels are a series of five-star grand hotels across the country, each a local and national landmark, and most of which are icons of Canadian history and architecture. Each hotel was built by the Canadian railway companies, or the railways acted as a catalyst for the hotel’s construction. The hotels were designed to serve the passengers of the then expanding rail network. Many of the hotels were built in the château style. The use of towers and turrets, and other Scottish baronial and French château architectural elements, architects also used the style for important public buildings, such as the Confederation and Justice buildings in Ottawa. Canadas first grand hotel, the Windsor Hotel in Montreal. Although it was not owned by a company, it was built to serve railway visitors from nearby Windsor Station. Given its location next to Montreals main train station, the Windsor served for years as the permanent residence of executives of both the Canadian Pacific Railway and Grand Trunk Railway. The railways development role in the construction and operation of hotels was inaugurated with Canadian Pacific Railways opening of the Hotel Vancouver on May 16,1888. This was the first of three railway-owned hotels by that name in Vancouver, two weeks later, the Canadian Pacific Railway officially opened the Banff Springs Hotel on June 1,1888. CPR president William Cornelius Van Horne had personally chosen the site in the Rocky Mountains for the new hotel and he envisioned a string of grand hotels across Canada that would draw visitors from abroad to his railway. Van Horne famously remarked, “If we can’t export the scenery, we’ll import the tourists. ”The original Banff Springs Hotel, of construction, was destroyed by fire in 1926. Canadian Pacific Hotels next built the Château Frontenac in Quebec City and it was designed to rival any hotel in Europe. Place Viger followed in Montreal, followed by The Empress in Victoria, British Columbia, the largest of these hotels is the Royal York in Toronto, which opened in 1929. The CPR’s main competitor, the Grand Trunk Railway, was not prepared to leave the field solely to its rival and it also determined to build a chain of luxury hotels across the country, which it did in the château style. The GTR built the Château Laurier in Ottawa in 1912, with the Fort Garry Hotel in Winnipeg, the GTR was amalgamated into the Canadian National Railway in 1920. During the decades that followed, the CPR and the CNR continued to expand their competing hotel chains across the country, the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal, built in 1958 over that city’s Central Station, was perhaps the last true railway hotel built in Canada. Both railways continued to open new establishments in subsequent years, although none had any connection to the railways, in 1988, Canadian Pacific acquired the CNR hotels
9.
Canadian National Railway
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The Canadian National Railway Company is a Canadian Class I railway headquartered in Montreal, Quebec that serves Canada and the Midwestern and Southern United States. CNs slogan is North Americas Railroad, CN is a public company with 24,000 employees. It had a capitalization of 32 billion CAD in 2011. CN was government-owned, having been a Canadian Crown corporation from its founding to its privatization in 1995, bill Gates was, in 2011, the largest single shareholder of CN stock. Its range once reached across the island of Newfoundland until 1988, the railway was referred to as the Canadian National Railways between 1918 and 1960, and as Canadian National/Canadien National from 1960 to the present. On November 17,1995, the government privatized CN. Over the next decade, the company expanded significantly into the United States, purchasing Illinois Central Railroad and Wisconsin Central Transportation, now primarily a freight railway, CN also operated passenger services until 1978, when they were assumed by Via Rail. The Newfoundland mixed trains lasted until 1988, while the Montreal commuter trains are now operated by Montreals AMT, the absorption of the Intercolonial Railway would see CNR adopt that systems slogan The Peoples Railway. The federal governments Department of Railways and Canals took over operation of the GTPR until July 12,1920, the Canadian National Railway was organized on October 10,1922. After several years of arbitration, the GTR was absorbed into CNR on January 30,1923, Canadian National Railways was born out of both wartime and domestic urgency. Railways, until the rise of the automobile and creation of taxpayer-funded all-weather highways, were the only viable long-distance land transportation available in Canada for many years. As such, their operation consumed a great deal of public, in the early 20th century, many governments were taking a more interventionist role in the economy, foreshadowing the influence of economists like John Maynard Keynes. This political trend, combined with broader geo-political events, made nationalization an appealing choice for Canada, the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919 and allied involvement in the Russian Revolution seemed to validate the continuing process. The need for a rail system was paramount in a time of civil unrest. CN Telegraph originated as the Great North West Telegraph Company in 1880 to connect Ontario and Manitoba, in 1915, facing bankruptcy, GNWTC was acquired by the Canadian Northern Railways telegraph company. When Canadian Northern was nationalized in 1918 and amalgamated into Canadian National Railways in 1921, CN Telegraphs began co-operating with its Canadian Pacific owned rival CPR Telegraphs in the 1930s, sharing telegraph networks and co-founding a teleprinter system in 1957. In 1967 the two services were amalgamated into a joint venture CNCP Telecommunications which evolved into a telecoms company, CN sold its stake of the company to CP in 1984. This led to the creation of a network of CNR radio stations across the country, as anyone in the vicinity of a station could hear its broadcasts the networks audience extended far beyond train passengers to the public at large
