You don't need to lecture me on the history of Quebec, I'm well aware.
Harvard and Stanford are 'elite' schools.
U. Laval is not.
"Do you have any idea how big is the "circus"?" - it's somewhat less than $1 Billion revenue - which is not that huge.
Desjardins? Ha ... I use Desjardins as my main account - it's backwards and the most 'behind' of any major bank in Canada. I can't get a Visa Debit - among other things. Desjardins is '#1' in stability basically - because they are like a franchise and each branch is separate bank - they have extremely low lending leverage. This gives them a high degree of 'stability' (but also underperformance).
Don't be personal about it, I sense from your writing that you already know Montreal is not a 'winning city' and is not really moving in that direction.
Obviously I'm not 'anti Montreal' or I wouldn't chose to live here.
It's a great town, even a great town to build a startup in, but the people here have little interest in building industries, in the classical sense.