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Abstract

EDITOR'S NOTE The recent change in political leadership of the City of Montreal, marking the end of the Drapeau regime, offers an opportunity to look back on the evolution of Quebec's metropolitan center during the long reign of Mayor Drapeau, which began at the same time as that other major political event, Quebec's Quiet Revolution. Under Drapeau's direction Montreal underwent a transformation that, in certain ways, parallelled and reflected the changes that swept the whole of Québec society. This issue begins with a special section on Montreal, organized by Editorial Board member Martin Lubin. In the opening article, Henry Milner draws on his unique perspective as a participant-observer to analyze the forces that led to the defeat of the Drapeau regime through the political victory of the Montreal Citizens' Movement (Rassemblement des Citoyens de Montréal). Focusing on administrative rather than political organization, Andrew Sancton looks at the evolution of the Communauté urbaine de Montréal, a unit of metropolitan government that, Sancton claims, after eighteen years of existence still remains obscure and incomprehensible to most citizens of Montreal. If the workings of urban government remained hidden, however, even casual visitors to Montreal could not help but notice the physical transformation of the city center during the Drapeau years. Although Drapeau announced no comprehensive city "plan," Michel Barcelo's examination of the policy direction given to a number of apparently unrelated projects discloses the outlines of what was, in fact, a clear and powerful plan—so powerful that Barcelo terms it an "authoritarian Quiet Revolution." Moving from architectural to economic change, Marc Levine documents the transformation of Montreal's economy in the wake of the political Quiet Revolution and, especially, of the French language legislation put in force by the government of René Lévesque. In Levine's view, Montreal has, in recent years, been the site of an economic reconquest by Francophones.