“Being a lifetime Montrealer, I have seen this city go through massive change. And it’s probably at a point now economically where it is moving towards its former greatness. I don’t think it is fair to delude anybody into thinking that Montreal is where it was 40 years ago, and I know, I was in Montreal 40 years ago. But I do say that it is very fair for the entrepreneurs and for the forward thinkers who recognize that Montreal is destined for greatness again, and that’s very cool, because we’re the only city in Canada who can say that we’re destined for greatness again.

And you see it in the massive amount of growth, both at a construction level, also infrastructure level, not withstanding the orange cones everywhere in the city of Montreal. You also see it with investments, with new businesses. The thing that a lot of people don’t recognize is that every time a new business comes to Montreal, and every time 800 jobs are added, or 200 jobs are added, that contributes massively to the economic development of this city.

And what I can see as an old time Montrealer is that we were there, we went through a bit of an economic setback, but as a result of that, we kinda cleaned the pipes a little bit. This time, our greatness will be based on a far greater diversity, a far broader base, which I think will bring a lot more long term stability.

40, 50 years ago, the greatness of Montreal was very narrowly focused, let’s be frank, it was. It should not have been that way, and thanks to some very courageous people, it evolved from that. Now it’s time to move on, and we’re moving on, and we’re moving on to greatness again.”

Victor Levee recently filmed this video with Make It Montreal, a storytelling platform geared towards Montreal’s business community and produced by local content strategy house Cat Around Films. The full set of clips can be found on Make It Montreal’s YouTube channel.