Well, I’m off to Montreal today on business. Yay me!
This was quite a while ago (over 10 years), but the first time I visited Montreal I was staying in a university dorm. I saw a guy smoking in the lobby and then when the elevator came he pitched out his (still burning) cigarette on the floor! I was stunned. That’s when I knew for sure that Montreal was definitely different from Saskatoon. 
Ah, so population is part of your definition, not necessarily the OP’s. Got it. That makes more sense to me.
If it’s your first time there and you’re driving, remember right turns on red lights are illegal. Wikipedia:
Even with that bit of quaint, old-world life aside, Quebec City is far more exotic than Montreal.
I might as well ask here, outside Montreal, when visiting Quebec are you likely to be in situations where you simply must speak French?
It sorta happened to me, but the circumstances were trivial.
A small town had one gas station and two pumps, one dispensing premium, one regular. I had to resort to my long-forgotten high-school French and sign language to explain that I wanted a fill-up of half-and-half because the engine knocked with only regular but didn’t with mid-grade.
Yeah, I’m cheap. And gas in Canada is trés expensive.
That’s OK…it’s all one-way streets going the other way anyways, so even if you wanted to turn right, you can’t. You get used to it. 
In touristy areas, such as Old Québec City or parts of the Eastern Townships, the region near Ottawa or ski resorts, etc, you’re likely to find someone who can speak enough English that you can make yourself understood for most simple requests.
In small towns, especially the further you go from Montreal (read: North), the less English you are likely to encounter. Visiting the Saguenay region means you’re in an area with something like a 97% uni-lingual francophone population, and while some English is taught in French schools, it’s generally not learned to any significant level of fluency. Some sort of sign language or basic French vocabulary would be necessary in such circumstances.
In general, visitors should make an effort - learn the French words for Please, Thank you, I’m sorry/Excuse me, and maybe a few simple phrases. Using even that much will make people much more likely to want to help you (as opposed to someone I recently witnessed, who marched into a dépanneur and basically announced “This is Canada, I speak English, serve me in English!”, which got him lots of derision, mocking in French and service which I’m sure he went back home and called “rude,” never noticing how rude he was! ETA: the employees all spoke English, they were just pissed off that the guy couldn’t be bothered with at least saying ‘bonjour’)
Wow. This is so topical.
I drove through Montreal today to the town of Mascouche to visit a supplier. My Google Map directions stopped at town centre, and although I’d been there once before back in August I couldn’t find my way.
I stopped at a small store, some kind of craft store by the looks of it, and here’s what transpired:
Me: Bonjour. Do you speak English?
Gentleman: ((Looking confused)) A bit?
Me: Je suis perdu. Je cherche pour Boulevard Industriel.
Gentleman: Ah. Turn right. Go maybe 5 lights.
Me: So I’ll come to if I just turn right?
Gentleman: Yes. Oui.
Me: Parfait! Merci beaucoup.
My high school French served me well, and I’m guessing the effort was well received. So, the bottom line is, if I know a little French and the person I’m communicating with knows a little English, we can get along just fine.
Saskatoon!!!
I kid, I kid. My real vote is for Vancouver.
Saskatoon is only fun for be because it’s where my family lives.
A couple weeks ago it was still under construction. Guess I should take the wife and go try it out? It’s actually only a couple of blocks away.
I voted Toronto as most typical of the Canadian multicultural experience, but Montreal will obviously give you much more of the French side. Especially if you like being sworn at by drivers in novel ways. Toronto wins because of the close proximity of other nearby attractions like the Niagara region, the greenbelt areas, the population difference, and the level of economic importance in various fields, plus the importance of many nearby cities like Waterloo with its tech industry.
I learned French intensively in secondary school for 5 years. But in the 12 years since I left school I’ve not visited a Francophone area. I think I’ve had perhaps half a dozen conversations in French since 1999. I’ve probably forgotten most of it now. 
I’m really interested in visiting Quebec and so was curious whether I should attempt to brush up before visiting.
Toronto is most certainly the largest and most financially and economically significant city in Canada. Calgary is on the upswing, but has not replaced Toronto as the financial capital yet. The actual capital - Ottawa - while a very nice place indeed, is more of a town. Montreal and Vancouver are the other candidates. Certainly in the past Montreal was by far the premier city of Canada, but that is no longer the case and hasn’t been for some time.
You will know that Calgary is indeed more important that Toronto when all of the Canadian Internet yokels replace “Toronto sucks, Yeah!” with “Calgary sucks, Yeah!”. That’s the sure sign. 
It’s pretty good, though it can get pretty crowded and noisy. Not a place for a date night, but good for a burger&beer night. Go now, before the UofG students come back from break, because you can bet it’ll generally be packed otherwise!
Only people from Kitchener-Waterloo (and Cambridge and Guelph like to get in on the action, for some reason) think that Waterloo is important. 
It really depends what you want to visit. If you intend on visiting Chicoutimi and St-Pit-de-Nowhere itty bitty towns, then yeah, brush up on your French. If you want to visit Québec City and Montreal, then you probably have enough with a polite “Bonjour/bonsoir” and “S’il-vous-plait/merci”. Your accent will give you away pretty fast I would think: there’s no expectations that foreigners visiting Québec make much effort to speak French…it’s the other Canadians that can’t be bothered that annoy the locals! 
Based on what you describe, you probably have enough buried in your memory to be able to read a menu or ask for directions. If you have a smartphone, download a translation/dictionary ap and you’ll be fine.
What does it signify if [del]I[/del] some already say both…?
Happily, no-one seems annoyed by even anglo-Canadians’ most pitiful, stammering, broken YES/NO/TOASTER attempts to communicate in French.
Really, that is all we are looking for!
Somewhat related story:
A French-Canadian soldier walks into a pizza place my father was manager of - this is on a military base in Europe. He demands service in French, and the guy working the cash calls my dad over to handle the order.
My father greets him and invites the soldier to order.
Soldier: “Ouais, une large pizza all-dressed, s’il-vous-plait. Et un Diet Coke”
:smack:
Personally, I think we can resolve the language issue once and for all by simply teaching all of Canada proper Franglais. Or Frenglish. We’re gonna have to agree on the name…
In all of the times I’ve been in Montreal or Quebec City, the only time I can remember someone not understanding my English was in a Quebec City McDonald’s. I was trying to order an ice cream cone and the teen behind the counter just gave me a blank stare. Someone quickly translated for him, though, and all was well.
I dunno. Are [del]you[/del] they yokels?
As a non-Francophone, how difficult would it be for me to do the tourist thing in Quebec City? I found Anglophones to be ubiquitous in Montreal, but I’m told they are less so in QC.
Nah. You’ll get by just fine. The businesses that want to make money aren’t dumb; they’ll have English-speaking staff.
If you find yourself in a small, out of the way business, and there’s no English staff it’s really not that difficult through gestures and expressions to trade information.
I think he means that to him, “francophone culture” means to smoke (especially indoors), drink alcohol everywhere and drive like a maniac. I’m not quite sure what to say about this, so I’ll just ignore it.
hogarth did say “francophone culture”, not “bilingual people”. Now it depends on what you think francophone culture means. (Well, at least we know what hogarth thinks it means.) Culturally speaking, French speakers in Ottawa aren’t the same as those in Quebec, including Montreal. Interestingly, given the changes Quebec society underwent in the last 50 years or so, I’d say they might be closer to what anglophones think “French-Canadian” means.
I don’t even mind Canadians who cannot speak French, as long as they’re polite. It’s Quebecers who cannot or will not speak French who piss me off. As per An Gadaí and others’ question, you cannot always speak the language of the country you’re visiting. (Well, OK, you can, but it requires a very strong commitment to language learning.) Part of being in a foreign land is the fact that communication might be somewhat harder. But people can manage it anyway. So yes, you can visit Quebec even if you don’t speak French; just remember a few keywords, it’s always appreciated wherever you are. And if you actually do know some French, it’s probably more than enough.
ETA: oh, and as for which Canadian city a visitor should visit first… As somebody else says, you cannot get the whole idea of Canada only with a single city. But that’s also true of most every other country. So I don’t know. But Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Quebec City are all places that should be visited. I’ve been in Calgary once (and once in Edmonton as well), and I’ll say that Calgary seemed more typically “Albertan” to me. But that was five years ago, and I’ll have to go back at some point.