February 2017 | Business View Magazine

204 205 Dorval, Quebec Dorval, Quebec It’s great to live in Dorval! T he history of Dorval, Quebec, dates back more than 350 years to 1667 when Sulpi- cian priests established a mission on the outskirts of what was then called Ville-Ma- rie.The mission, originally named “Gentilly”, was later renamed “La Présentation de la Vierge Marie” and finally“Dorval”,which was incorporated as a village in 1892, as a town in 1903, as a city in l956, as a borough of Montreal in 2002, and as a city, again, in 2006. As with many other settlements on the Island of Montre- al, the railroad, which came to Dorval in 1855, was highly instrumental in attracting many wealthier families, mostly English-speaking, in search of a summer refuge in prox- imity to their downtown residence and place of work. After the Second World War, many middle-class families mi- grated to Dorval from the city of Montreal and from other parts of Canada. From 12,853 residents in 1955, Dorval grew to today’s population of about 20,000. Most of the city’s growth over those years was largely due to the construction of the Pierre Trudeau International Airport, which opened in 1941 and by the mid ‘50s was hosting more than a million passengers a year. “Before that, Dorval was mostly farmland,” says Mayor Edgar Rou- AT A GLANCE Dorval, Quebec WHAT: A city of 20,000 WHERE: On the island of Montreal in southwestern Quebec, Canada WEBSITE: www.ville.dorval.qc.ca