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
'City of Mary' honoured 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
He estimated over a thousand inhabitants; by Champlain's visit in 1603 the St Lawrence Iroquoians had vanished.
Q 03Who was the first governor of the settlement founded on 17 May 1642?
Paul Chomedey de Maisonneuve
He placed the first cross on Mount Royal in 1643 after praying to the Virgin to stop a flood.
Q 04Mount Royal, which gives the city its name, has how many peaks?
Three
The main summit stands 233 m; the illuminated cross on top dates from 1924.
Q 05Mount Royal Park, opened in 1876, was designed by which landscape architect?
Frederick Law Olmsted
He co-designed New York's Central Park, though his Montreal plan was never fully completed.
Q 06Montreal fell to the British in 1760 during which conflict?
The Seven Years' War
American forces under Benedict Arnold occupied it briefly in 1775-76 before being driven out.
Q 07Montreal lost its status as capital of the Province of Canada in 1849 when a mob did what?
Burned down the Parliament building
Tories were protesting the Rebellion Losses Bill; Ottawa was eventually chosen as a compromise capital.
Q 08The 1689 Iroquois attack, New France's worst massacre, struck which part of Montreal island?
Lachine
The Lachine Rapids and later the Lachine Canal made the same spot central to the city's trade.
Q 09Montreal is described as the largest primarily French-speaking city where?
In the Americas
About 58.5% of residents speak both French and English, making it one of the most bilingual cities in Canada.
Q 10Quebec's Charter of the French Language, known as Bill 101, became law in which year?
1977
Camille Laurin introduced it under Rene Levesque's first Parti Quebecois government; many businesses left Montreal for Ontario.
Q 11Which city overtook Montreal as Canada's largest and richest in the 1970s?
Toronto
The October Crisis and the 1976 election of the sovereigntist Parti Quebecois 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
Terre des Hommes was translated as Wind, Sand and Stars; 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
It links shops, universities, hotels and metro stations under 12 square kilometres of downtown, the largest such network in the world.
Q 22Saint Joseph's Oratory has the world's second-largest copper dome after which building?
St Peter's Basilica
It grew from a chapel built in 1904 by Brother Andre, a lay brother famed as a healer and later canonised.
Q 23Which singer married Rene Angelil at Notre-Dame Basilica in December 1994?
Celine Dion
The basilica also hosted state funerals for Maurice 'Rocket' Richard and Pierre Trudeau in 2000.
Q 14Habitat 67, the stacked-cube housing complex, began as whose master's thesis at McGill?
Moshe Safdie
It was built for Expo 67 at Cite du Havre on the St Lawrence and is still lived in.
Q 15The Montreal Biosphere's dome, the former US pavilion at Expo 67, was designed by whom?
Buckminster Fuller
Its acrylic skin burned off in a 1976 fire, leaving the bare steel frame, which reopened as an environment museum in 1995.
Q 16Montreal is the only Canadian city to have hosted what?
The Summer Olympics
The 1976 Games are remembered for Nadia Comaneci's perfect 10s, an African boycott and a stadium that took decades to pay off.
Q 17At the 1976 Montreal Olympics, 14-year-old Nadia Comaneci became the first to do what?
Score a perfect 10
She recorded seven perfect scores and won three golds; 29 mostly African nations boycotted over New Zealand's rugby tour of South Africa.
Q 18The Olympic Stadium's nickname 'The Big Owe' refers to what?
The huge cost of building it and the Games
The 'Big O' name comes from its doughnut-shaped roof; the bill was finally paid off in November 2006, over 30 years after it opened.
Q 19The Olympic Stadium's 165 m mast holds what record?
World's tallest inclined tower
French architect 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 Paris-style technology was imported; stations feature art by leading Quebec artists.
Q 24Notre-Dame Basilica's Gothic Revival architect James O'Donnell did what on his deathbed?
Converted to Catholicism
The Irish-American Anglican was thus allowed burial in the crypt of the church he built between 1824 and 1829.
Q 25The Montreal Canadiens have won the Stanley Cup a record how many times?
24
Founded in 1909, they are the oldest continuously operating pro hockey team in the world and the only NHL club older than the league.
Q 26The Canadiens were founded in which year, before the NHL itself existed?
1909
They joined four other NHA teams to form the NHL in 1917 and won their first NHL Cup in 1924 with Howie Morenz.
Q 27The Montreal Expos, who played from 1969 to 2004, were the first what?
MLB franchise outside the United States
They moved to become the Washington Nationals; the Blue Jays are now Canada's only MLB team.
Q 28The Circuit Gilles Villeneuve sits on which man-made island in the St Lawrence?
Notre Dame Island
Gilles Villeneuve won the first race there for Ferrari in 1978; the island was built for Expo 67.
Q 29The Alouettes beat the Winnipeg Blue Bombers 28-24 to win the Grey Cup in which year?
2023
Founded in 1946, the CFL club has folded and been revived twice; the 1970s team dominated with three titles.
Q 30Montreal hosts the world's largest jazz festival and Just for Laughs, the world's largest what?
Comedy event
The city also has Les Francos, the largest French-language music festival, among 100-plus annual festivals.