Concordia University Montreal (Quebec)

Concordia University is a comprehensive Canadian public university located in Montreal, Quebec, one of the two universities in the city where English is the primary language of instruction. For the 2008 to 2009 school year, total enrollment was 45,963 making the university the sixth largest in Canada.

According to a worldwide ranking by the École des Mines de Paris, Concordia ranks first among Canadian and 33rd among world universities in terms of graduates occupying the rank of Chief Executive Officer at Fortune 500 companies. The university is also home to the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema.

Concordia has well recognized programs and ranks highly in Canada and internationally in fields such as fine arts, social science, journalism and engineering. In the THES - QS World University Rankings of the top 500 universities in the world for 2010, Concordia University placed 401-450, and 19th overall in Canada. The university's John Molson School of Business is consistently ranked within the top ten Canadian business schools, and within the top 100 worldwide.

Official Website: http://Concordia.ca

Loyola College

Loyola College in 1937.

Loyola College was founded on Sherbrooke Street West in 1896 as an English-language program of the Jesuit Collège Sainte-Marie de Montreal (since merged into Université du Québec à Montréal). It was originally located at the Sacred Heart Convent in downtown Montreal. The college moved into the present west-end campus in 1916. Although founded as a collège classique (the forerunners of Quebec's CEGEPs), Loyola began granting university degrees through Université Laval as early as 1906. By 1940, collège classique programs were gone and Loyola became a four-year university, although it never obtained its own charter, granting its degrees through Laval or, after 1920, the Université de Montréal.

Loyola Chapel

The Loyola College chapel is a place of Catholic denomination worship for students, personnel as well as their families. The chapel is a classic example of gothic revival architecture. Charles William Kelsey created a twelve light stained glass war memorial window (1933) in the Loyola chapel. The windows depict the torture of the priests by North American Indians. In the dedication panel is written: "To the Greater Glory of God and In Memory of the Officers and Men of the 55th Irish Canadian Rangers." The Loyola Chapel has been converted in to a theatre named the F.C. Smith Auditorium.

Sir George Williams University

Sir George Williams University's Henry F. Hall Building in 1970.

In 1851, the first YMCA in North America was established on what is now De Maisonneuve Boulevard in Downtown Montreal, in a district now known as Quartier Concordia. From its early years, the YMCA offered evening classes to allow working people in the English-speaking community to pursue their education while working during the day. In 1926, the education program was re-organized as Sir George Williams College, named after George Williams, founder of the YMCA. In 1934, Sir George Williams College offered the first undergraduate credit course in adult education in Canada.

The College became Sir George Williams University (SGWU) in 1948, when it received a university charter from the provincial government, though it remained the education arm of the Montreal YMCA. SGWU expanded into its first standalone building, the Norris Building, in 1956. It established a Centre for Human Relations and Community Studies in 1963. SGWU continued to hold classes in the YMCA building until the construction of the Hall Building in 1966. The university gained international attention in 1969, when a group of students occupied the Hall Building's 9th floor computer lab.