Montreal within Province and Country ( Strategies 2)

Montreal city view

To proceed with a research project a basic design has to be formulated. The places will of course include Canada as the largest X component. We will propose the province of Quebec and the city of Montreal as the regions being studied as the second and third sizes of the X component. The political boundaries in the case of Canada and Quebec are clear cut. Montreal will only include the Island of Montreal. The study of a particular population set of a large geographical region such as Canada will have included in it population sets from other smaller regions. The definition of a population set will include all people who have a residence in that area regardless of whether or not they obtain employment or schooling from the same region.

Valuable demographic features to be included would have both changeable and unchangeable characteristics. Two examples to research are the age and ethnic composition found within regions.

To study changing age and ethnic populations within Canada, within Quebec and within Montreal, from 1981 to 1986, the census government documents are the most accessible and valuable forms of information. They however should not be the only source if one wants to more comprehensively research ethnic population change. The literature on Canada’s immigration policy during and before the time period being researched should be examined. How the immigration policy might differ when an immigrant arrives in Quebec as opposed to Ontario might be a question worth investigation. Montreal could have some aspect of the city that are more attractive to a potential immigrant than the rest of Quebec. This would be it’s size or active job market or ethnic activities.

During the data collection process we must decide what ethnic groups we are interested in studying first. To study all the different ethnic groups would be far too cumbersome a task. In this search we must narrow down the study to a limited amount of ethnic groups. The five most numerous ethnic groups in all of Canada and how they change over a five year period. How these changes might differ from country to province to major metropolitan area will be a prime concern of analysis. The top five most numerous ethnic groups in Canada according to the 1981 census are in numerical order; British, French, German, Italian, and Ukrainian.