The day after the summer solstice, Montreal economic developers enjoyed a day they wished could go on forever, as they enjoyed proof that not all airborne products have wings.
      SAP Labs Canada announced it would double its R&D space, hiring 40 and bringing its total number of recently created jobs to 240. Their main job? Creating software applications for manufacturers and service companies.
      Not far away, U.K.-based Babel Media announced it would open its North American HQ in the city and would create 200 jobs over the next two years. The company serves the game development industry, providing services ranging from testing to translation and licensing.
      Company officials from both firms echoed similar comments from a wealth of software, animation and other high-tech companies when they gave credit to the city's geographic position halfway between Silicon Valley and Europe, and its multicultural, multilingual population. Girding those companies' momentum was data released in early 2005 that showed the metro's first net gain in information and communications technology jobs in four years.
      The very real growth of the virtual-environment industry sometimes overlaps with the province's aerospace aims. Two days after those two international investments, Canadian simulation and training company CAE announced it was moving its headquarters back to Montréal from Toronto, reclaiming the home base it launched from some 60 years ago. Over half of the company's 4,800 employees are based in Montréal. Through a network of 450 suppliers and subcontractors, CAE injects some US$57 million a year into the Québec economy. Globally, the company operates in 17 countries on five continents to support its primarily aviation and defense customer base. Most recently, a new business aviation training complex launched construction in Morris Co., N.J., which will now join a U.K. complex in meeting the training provisions of a contract with Dassault. Its other two business aviation training centers are strategically located in Dallas and Dubai, among 22 training centers in all around the globe.
      "We have brought CAE back to its birthplace," said Robert E. Brown, CAE's president and CEO, at the company's annual and special meeting of shareholders. "Montréal is the center of Canada's aerospace industry, and it was here that CAE was founded in 1947. It is appropriate that the company headquarters be located here."
      Two weeks prior to that batch of announcements, the City of Montréal adopted a five-year economic development strategy that naturally builds on the same strengths those companies find attractive.
      Among its provisions:

• Efficiency enhancement of corporate services, particularly in employment zones.
• Downtown enhancement, including development of "strategic transport infrastructures."
• Establishment of an international university campus.
• Building on the capacity for innovation, including active support of the following industries: aerospace, life sciences, information and communication technologies, garment and textiles, bio-food, tourism, petrochemical, film and television and nanotechnology.
• Further integration of the metro's strong cultural and technological sectors.
• Revitalization of vacant lots and unused industrial zones into residential areas.
• Consideration of business and industry incentive programs to support commercial development.
• Encouraging the recruitment and retention of foreign knowledge workers.

      The big plans coincide with those outlined in Montréal International's 2005-2007 action plan, and are accompanied by big actions, ranging from federal-level support of competitive clusters to hundreds of millions of dollars worth of transport and water infrastructure projects.
      To put an exclamation point on the city's goal of international prestige, it recently beat out finalists Brussels, Copenhagen, Hong Kong, Nagoya and Turin for the world headquarters of the International Design Alliance, an organization formed by the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design and the International Council of Graphic Design Associations.