MONTREAL - Montreal can develop the ambition to become one of the world's great metropolises, Mayor Soraya Martinez Ferrada said Thursday as she was formally sworn in during a ceremony at city hall.

Martinez Ferrada, who arrived in Canada as a child refugee from Chile in 1980, takes over from outgoing mayor Valérie Plante, who did not seek a third term.

On Thursday, she entered city hall's main hall to the sound of bagpipes, led by a police and firefighter honour guard.

Later, a cheer went up in the room as she was sworn in to officially become mayor of Montreal, and she was joined onstage by family members as she signed the city's official book.

Montrealers, she said, "gave us a mandate to rebuild confidence, improve essential services, give back to Montreal the ambition of being a gr

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