Montreal is a city in the Canadian province of Quebec. It is the largest city in the province, the second-largest in the country after Toronto and the fifteenth-largest in North America. Originally called Ville-Marie, or City of Mary, it is named after Mount Royal, the triple-peaked hill located in the heart of the city. According to one theory, the name derives from mont Réal, as it was spelled in Middle French Mont Royal in modern French . And yet, Cartier's 1535 diary entry, naming the mountain, refers to "le mont Royal". Another argument, mentioned by the Government of Canada on its web site concerning Canadian place names, is that the name Montreal was adopted as it is written nowadays because an early map of 1556 used the Italian name of the mountain, "Monte Real". The city is located on the Island of Montreal, which took its name from the same source as the city, and a few much smaller peripheral islands, the largest ofSee More