Compare & Contrast

Montreal has the highest number of restaurants per capita in Canada. Fort McMurray has… no we’ll concede that point.

One of the cities has a loud obnoxious bunch of politicians who made promises to fix things that aren’t broken and don’t know when to retire… and the other is… – well I’ll let you decide which is which.

Montreal’s Mount Royal Park was designed by the same man who designed Central Park. In Fort McMurray, our parks are designed by nature and we’re surrounded by them. Score one for us.

Montreal’s flag supposedly commemorates the first four nations of the city, English, French, Scots and Irish. In Fort McMurray, we remember that the founders of the community were the Aboriginal Peoples, not Peter Pond.

Montreal is the fourth largest French-speaking city in the world after Paris, Kinshasa and Abidjan. Fort McMurray doesn’t even make the top 10,000. Fort McMurray is the largest oil sands city in the world. Montreal doesn’t even make the top 10,000.

On average there are 12 days per year with a wind-chill below -30 C and one day per year with a wind-chill below -40 C in Montreal. We don’t even have to look that up to know we have a tougher winter.

Montreal had the first Olympic Games in Canada in 1976. They may have paid it off by now, just. Fort McMurray will host the 2015 Western Games, and will finish paying for them in 2015.

Montreal proudly considers itself to be the most European city in North America. Fort McMurray on the other hand doesn’t limit its viewpoint as it is one of the most ethnically diverse cities in North America.

Canada is the 7th least corrupt country in the world, (and if you take away the boring Scandinavians, we’d be third behind New Zealand and Holland). If Montreal wasn’t part of Canada, we’d be much higher up the list.

Montreal is a city of used-to-be landmarks. It used to be the biggest city in Canada, and its business centre, and the gateway to the country, and the cultural capital. Slowly it has lost all those things as it has declined from a once great to an also ran. In Fort McMurray, things are only going to get better.

But in their defence, Montreal has better bagels and more strip clubs than Fort McMurray. In fact it is safe to say that Montreal has more strip clubs and better bagels than just about anywhere on the planet.

And churches. Montreal has large beautiful churches nobody goes to. Meanwhile, Fort McMurray is building more as quickly as they can.

Montreal has festivals as well. Large annoying festivals all year long that drive the residents batty. Fort McMurray, on the other hand, respects where you live, and is therefore, by a vote of 8-4, the better city.