Can-Challenge: Montreal, financial centre of Canada

Make Montreal retain economic supremacy over TO until the present day. POD 1955. First step: Rene Levesque dies in childbirth in 1922. The PQ would not have become a mainstream party without him. Second step: Paul Sauve lives and reforms the Unionist party into a regular conservative party, allowing a left-right spectrum in Quebec instead of OTL's Fed/Separatist one. This requires a successor other than Daniel Johnson Sr., who made the UN into a conservative PQ in the mid 60's, despite Duplessis' explicit denunciation ("criminal idea") of the clerico-fascist separatism that died in the early 1960's, led by the notorious Abbe Lionel Groulx.
 
Make Montreal retain economic supremacy over TO until the present day. POD 1955. First step: Rene Levesque dies in childbirth in 1922. The PQ would not have become a mainstream party without him. Second step: Paul Sauve lives and reforms the Unionist party into a regular conservative party, allowing a left-right spectrum in Quebec instead of OTL's Fed/Separatist one. This requires a successor other than Daniel Johnson Sr., who made the UN into a conservative PQ in the mid 60's, despite Duplessis' explicit denunciation ("criminal idea") of the clerico-fascist separatism that died in the early 1960's, led by the notorious Abbe Lionel Groulx.

Any idea on when TO overtook Montreal, OTL? I would have thought that the Toronto was already a bigger financial centre by, oh, say WWII? Certainly your thought could keep it competitive.

Of course, right now Montreal's exchange is AFAIK less important than Vancouver or Calgary (which is a bit scary).
 
In 1971, Montreal's population was still larger by 500,000 or so, but after 15/11/76 it went sharply downhill. Before WWI until the 1960's the economy was composed of multinationals with branch operations. After the language legislation came in, many were unwilling to adapt and left. St. James Street was badly hit by the deaths of their elderly patrons such as McConnell et al, and their kids were nowhere near up to par. Simply, it was manageable until 1976. The Bourassa I government was scandal-filled, with the Liberal Party alleged to have received Mafia donations for Robert Bourassa's own leadership campaign in 1970, with Pierre Laporte in heavy debt to them according to wiretaps by Montreal police, and minor insurance scandals, not to mention Loi 22. And the Olympic Stadium, whose debt was finally paid off in 2006, thirty years later. But they were not separatists, just nationalists balancing on the edge of the diving board. Hardly unpredictable.
 
Basically once the Quiet Revolution happened, Montreal started to go downhill. Talk of seperatism didn't help things either. Once that started, so many businesses moved their headquarters to Toronto out of fear of Quebec Seperatism.
 
Basically once the Quiet Revolution happened, Montreal started to go downhill. Talk of seperatism didn't help things either. Once that started, so many businesses moved their headquarters to Toronto out of fear of Quebec Seperatism.

That was part of it, but the other part was the construction of the St. Lawrence Seaway. Uptil the 1950s, ships from overseas had to offload their cargoes at Montreal because it wasn't possible for them to continue downstream. While, the Seaway didn't kill Montreal as a port, it DID serve to shift the focus away from Montreal because it was no longer neccessary to stop there. Butterfly away the St.Lawrence Seaway and Montreal remains Canada's economic engine for longer.
 
Stopping the anglophone migration out of Montreal would also undoubtedly allow it to remain an important fixture of the Canadian economy.
 
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