Montreal Trivia
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50 free Montreal trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Montreal was founded in 1642 as Ville-Marie by colonists from the Loire, fell to the British in 1760, was capital of Canada until a Tory mob burned down parliament in 1849, and spent the 20th century as the country's commercial capital until Toronto overtook it. This quiz covers that history: Cartier at Hochelaga, Maisonneuve's cross on the mountain, the Lachine massacre, the Underground City, the 2002 merger and 2006 demerger, and the language law that made French official. It also does the Montreal people visit and eat: Mount Royal's three peaks and Olmsted's park, Old Montreal and Notre-Dame Basilica, the Oratory's dome, Habitat 67 and Buckminster Fuller's Biosphere left over from Expo 67, the rubber-tyred Metro, the Olympic Stadium that took 30 years to pay off, the Canadiens' 24 Stanley Cups, the Expos, the Grand Prix on a man-made island, the world's largest jazz and comedy festivals, Cirque du Soleil, McGill, Leonard Cohen, Schwartz's smoked meat, wood-fired bagels and poutine. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on Montreal and its landmarks, teams and events, and each question shows the sentence that supports it. Our Canada quiz covers the rest of the country.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Montreal was founded in 1642 under what name?
Ville-Marie
The settlement was founded as Ville-Marie, 'City of Mary', in honour of the Virgin; the name Montreal did not appear in official documents until 1705.
Q 02Which French explorer visited the Iroquoian village of Hochelaga at the foot of Mount Royal in 1535?
Jacques Cartier
Jacques Cartier reached Hochelaga in October 1535 and named the mountain behind it Mont Royal; by Champlain's 1603 visit the St Lawrence Iroquoians had vanished.
Q 03Who was the first governor of the settlement founded on 17 May 1642?
Paul Chomedey de Maisonneuve
Paul Chomedey de Maisonneuve led the founding colonists and governed Ville-Marie; in January 1643 he carried a cross up Mount Royal after a flood spared the settlement.
Q 04Mount Royal, which gives the city its name, has how many peaks?
Three
Mount Royal has three peaks: the main summit at 233 m, Outremont summit at 211 m and Westmount summit at 201 m; the illuminated cross on the main peak dates from 1924.
Q 05Mount Royal Park, opened in 1876, was designed by which landscape architect?
Frederick Law Olmsted
Frederick Law Olmsted, co-designer of New York's Central Park, planned Mount Royal Park; his design was only partly carried out when the park opened in 1876.
Q 06Montreal fell to the British in 1760 during which conflict?
The Seven Years' War
Montreal capitulated to Jeffery Amherst in September 1760, ending the Seven Years' War in North America; the 1763 Treaty of Paris then ceded New France to Britain.
Q 07Montreal lost its status as capital of the Province of Canada in 1849 when a mob did what?
Burned down the Parliament building
A Tory mob burned down the Parliament building on 25 April 1849 in protest at the Rebellion Losses Bill; the capital then alternated between Toronto and Quebec City until Ottawa was chosen.
Q 08The 1689 Iroquois attack, New France's worst massacre, struck which part of Montreal island?
Lachine
About 1,500 Mohawk warriors attacked Lachine on 5 August 1689, burning the village and killing or capturing dozens of settlers; the Lachine Rapids later gave the Lachine Canal its name.
Q 09Which emblem was added to the centre of Montreal's flag in 2017?
A white pine
A white pine, a symbol of peace for Indigenous nations, was added to the centre of Montreal's flag in September 2017, joining the fleur-de-lis, rose, thistle and shamrock.
Q 10Quebec's Charter of the French Language, known as Bill 101, became law in which year?
1977
Bill 101 was adopted on 26 August 1977 under René Lévesque's first Parti Québécois government, sponsored by Camille Laurin; several corporate head offices left Quebec afterwards.
Q 11Which city overtook Montreal as Canada's largest and richest in the 1970s?
Toronto
Toronto overtook it as the October Crisis and the 1976 election of the sovereigntist Parti Québécois hastened the exodus of head offices.
Q 12Expo 67 drew more than 50m visitors at a time when Canada's whole population was what?
Only 20m
The per-capita attendance record still stands; the third day alone drew 569,500 people.
Q 13Expo 67's theme, 'Man and His World', came from a book by which author?
Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Antoine de Saint-Exupery's 1939 book Terre des Hommes, published in English as Wind, Sand and Stars, gave Expo 67 its theme; the fair was built largely on Saint Helen's Island.
Q 21Montreal's Underground City, or RESO, has roughly how many kilometres of tunnels?
32 km
RESO's roughly 32 km of tunnels link shops, universities, hotels and metro stations beneath about 12 square kilometres of downtown, making it the largest such network in the world.
Q 22Saint Joseph's Oratory grew from a chapel built on Mount Royal in 1904 by whom?
Brother André
Brother André, a Holy Cross lay brother famed as a healer, built a small chapel to Saint Joseph on Mount Royal in 1904; it grew into the Oratory, and he was canonised in 2010.
Q 23Which singer married René Angélil at Montreal's Notre-Dame Basilica in December 1994?
Celine Dion
Q 14Habitat 67, the stacked-cube housing complex, began as whose master's thesis at McGill?
Moshe Safdie
Moshe Safdie developed Habitat 67 from his 1961 McGill master's thesis and built it for Expo 67 at Cité du Havre; 354 prefabricated concrete units are stacked into terraced homes.
Q 15The Montreal Biosphere's dome, the former US pavilion at Expo 67, was designed by whom?
Buckminster Fuller
Buckminster Fuller's geodesic dome housed the US pavilion; its acrylic skin burned off in a 1976 fire, leaving the steel frame, which reopened as the Biosphère environment museum in 1995.
Q 16Montreal is the only Canadian city ever to have hosted which international event?
The Summer Olympics
Montreal hosted the Summer Olympics in July 1976, the only Summer Games ever held in Canada; Calgary (1988) and Vancouver (2010) hosted Winter Games.
Q 17At the 1976 Montreal Olympics, 14-year-old Nadia Comaneci became the first to do what?
Score a perfect 10
Nadia Comaneci scored the first perfect 10 in Olympic gymnastics on the uneven bars on 18 July 1976, then recorded six more; she won three golds in Montreal.
Q 18Montreal's Olympic Stadium has the nickname 'The Big Owe', which refers to what?
The huge cost of building it and the Games
The huge cost of building it and the Games as a whole earned the nickname; the 'Big O' comes from its doughnut-shaped roof, and the bill was finally paid off in November 2006.
Q 19The Olympic Stadium's 165 m mast holds what record?
World's tallest inclined tower
At 165 m and leaning 45 degrees, the Montreal Tower is the world's tallest inclined tower; Roger Taillibert designed it to haul open a retractable roof by cables, which never worked properly.
Q 20The Montreal Metro, opened in 1966, is unusual among North American subways for running on what?
Rubber tyres
The Metro runs on rubber tyres, a system imported from Paris; partly because such trains cannot cope with snow it is entirely underground. It opened in October 1966.
Celine Dion married there on December 17, 1994; the basilica also hosted state funerals for Maurice 'Rocket' Richard and Pierre Trudeau in 2000.
Q 24Notre-Dame Basilica's Gothic Revival architect James O'Donnell did what on his deathbed?
Converted to Catholicism
James O'Donnell, an Irish-born Protestant from New York, converted to Catholicism on his deathbed in 1830 and is the only person buried in the crypt of the church he built from 1824 to 1829.
Q 25How many Stanley Cups did the Montreal Canadiens win during the 20th century?
24
The Canadiens won 24 Stanley Cups between 1916 and 1993, more than any other club; Patrick Roy was in goal for the 1993 win over the Los Angeles Kings.
Q 26The Canadiens were founded in which year, before the NHL itself existed?
1909
The Club de hockey Canadien was founded on 4 December 1909 as a National Hockey Association team; it joined the new NHL in 1917 and won its first NHL-era Stanley Cup in 1924.
Q 27The Montreal Expos, who played from 1969 to 2004, were the first what?
MLB franchise outside the United States
The Expos became MLB's first franchise outside the United States when they debuted in April 1969 at Jarry Park; after the 2004 season they moved to become the Washington Nationals.
Q 28The Circuit Gilles Villeneuve sits on which man-made island in the St Lawrence?
Notre Dame Island
Notre Dame Island was built from Metro excavation fill for Expo 67; Gilles Villeneuve won the first Grand Prix there for Ferrari in October 1978, and the track was renamed for him in 1982.
Q 29The Alouettes beat the Winnipeg Blue Bombers 28-24 to win the Grey Cup in which year?
2023
Montreal beat Winnipeg 28-24 in the 110th Grey Cup in Hamilton on 19 November 2023, on a late Cody Fajardo touchdown pass; the Alouettes' previous title had come in 2010.
Q 30Which botanist founded the Montreal Botanical Garden in 1931?
Brother Marie-Victorin
Brother Marie-Victorin, a Christian Brother and botany professor at the Université de Montréal, founded the Montreal Botanical Garden in 1931; Henry Teuscher designed its grounds and greenhouses.