Delphi Complete Works of Stephen Leacock, page 755
Something of this, accentuated by its French nationality, swept over Montreal also in the early years of the French Jacobin republic instituted after the execution of the King. Our local histories expand the disaffection in Montreal into something like a Jacobin movement. But this is out of all proportion. We have to remember that although Great Britain and France were at war from February 1793 and all intercourse suspended, the United States and France remained at peace. Diplomatic ministers and agents came and went. There was thus an easy access to Montreal, from Vermont, of all kinds of agitators and spies, people with no real connection with Canada, sent in by Genêt, the new republican ambassador to the United States, and by Fauchet, his successor. It was rumored too that the new state of Vermont, looking for new trouble to replace its old quarrel with New York, had suggested an invasion of Canada. Dorchester called for two thousand militiamen, a call answered by only nine hundred. The Governor’s common sense told him that this meant not disloyalty but the disinclination of people grown accustomed to peace. A certain disaffection there was, but history should rather stress how little it amounted to than how much.
Take the case of the violent and treasonable pamphlet circulated in Montreal in 1794 under the title Les Français Libres à leurs Frères Canadiens. It emanated all too plainly from France. It rang false. Just as D’Estaing’s proclamation of 1778 about Henry IV was too aristocratic, setting up a throne, this document was too republican, setting up a guillotine. Its contents, to most plain French Canadians of the day, whether seigneur or habitant, would seem abominable. It not only proposed Canada as a free state with equality for all, votes and offices for all, but it cut out all hereditary rights, titles, and claims, as also all the rights of the Roman Catholic Church, making all religious cults equal, with clergy elected by the people. This overshot its mark and effected nothing, except a sort of open invitation to rowdyism that broke out now and again when Dorchester’s strong hand was gone (July 1796). There were many arrests and trials.
The assumption of power by Napoleon (1799) ended this form of Jacobin propaganda. It led instead to a sort of standing Napoleonic scare, rumor of invasion by a French fleet. There was also “secret” information that Jerome Bonaparte was going to lead an expedition against Montreal from the States. British agents in New York sent his description to Montreal, “twenty-one years of age, five feet six or seven inches high, slender make, sallow complexion, etc., etc.” This was Napoleon’s youngest brother Jerome, at that time in Baltimore, “marooned” in the States by the British Atlantic fleet. Later he was King of Westphalia and fought at Waterloo. From him descends the surviving Bonaparte family. If he actually came to Canada all record of it is lost. But, oddly enough, Napoleon did plan an invasion of Canada, of which these people never heard. It was not by way of Montreal. It was to be a roundabout attack from the rear, initiated from Louisiana and the Mississippi under the command of General Bernadotte, who told of it later when King of Sweden. The Louisiana Purchase of 1803 canceled it.
All this Napoleonic scare passed away with the Battle of Trafalgar. Here is how the news came to Montreal. On a December evening in 1805 a grand assembly and ball were being held at the Exchange Coffee House (St. Paul and St. Peter streets). The supper merriment was at its height when a messenger came in out of the snow with a great packet of English newspapers just arrived via New York. They contained Admiral Collingwood’s dispatch recounting the victory of Trafalgar of October 21, 1805. In an instant the whole assembly was in a tumult of excitement. The very building, we are told, shook with the roaring hurrahs. But in the midst of the excitement many of the ladies suddenly broke into tears when it was announced that the victory had cost the life of Admiral Nelson. In this scene of emotion the chairman, Samuel Gerard, leaped up and proposed a subscription for a monument to Nelson’s memory. All thronged to write their names. Enough money was subscribed in a few minutes. This is the Nelson Monument, completed in 1809, and now standing in Jacques Cartier Square.
These memories, alarms, and dangers, condensed into a page, look crowded. Spread over ten years they are too thin to attract attention. Life looked elsewhere. Above all it looked in Montreal to the rising commercial life, the new fur trade to the Northwest, the English settlement of the near-by “townships,” the continued passage of immigrants bound for Upper Canada, and the new commerce of the river, now being revolutionized by steam.
In the eye of history the momentous event was the coming of steam navigation. Molson’s riverside experiments took form. The Accommodation was launched as steam’s first bride of the river, clumsy, bulky, but still a bride. She slid into the river sideways, down beside the brewery, in 1809. There are many pictures of this pioneer steamer, but none, we are told, that can be guaranteed, for photographs, even the fading daguerreotype in the silk case, were still unknown. But there is a picture, with every attempt at truth, in the charming little memorial volume, Old Montreal, a treasure of pictured history published — or may we say “brewed” — by the Molsons when the brewery was 150 years old (1936). We may put with the picture the contemporary account given by the Quebec Gazette of November 9, 1809, of the first trip of the Accommodation down to Quebec.
The Steam-Boat, which was built at Montreal last winter, arrived here on Saturday last, being her first trip. She was 66 hours on the passage, of which she was at anchor 30. So that 36 hours is the time which, in her present state, she takes to come down from Montreal to Quebec (over 160 statute miles). On Sunday last she went up against wind and tide from Brehault’s wharf to Lymburner’s; but her progress was very slow. It is obvious that her machinery at present has not sufficient force for this river. But there can be no doubt of the possibility of perfectioning it so that it will answer every purpose for which she was intended; and it would be a public loss should the proprietors be discouraged from persevering in their intention.
Little did the Quebec Gazette realize that the main “purpose for which she was intended,” or which she intended herself, audible in every clank of her engine, was the overthrow of the Port of Quebec. That, of course, was a long way off. For two full generations yet, Quebec was the great overseas harbor, the great shipyard of Canada. Nor was Molson in any way discouraged from persevering. He lost no time. Within two years he had the Swiftsure in the water, in 1811. Here was a steamboat one hundred and twenty feet by twenty-four feet. She did the trip in twenty-four hours, laughing off a head wind as she came down. The innocent Quebec Gazette sang its own swan song in praise of the boat’s “celerity” and “security” and “equality” to the best hotel.
The outbreak of the war with the States checked, but only halted for a time, the progress of the steamboat in the St. Lawrence. From now on John Molson, among his other claims to eminence, was hailed by his French compatriots as the “bourgeois des steamboats.”
The title carries a great meaning. It suggests the entire good will as between such leading British men of business as Molson, James McGill, Isaac Todd, and their French fellow townsmen. McGill, like many others, had married a French wife. It is true that many murmurs of discontent were already heard, presaging the Rebellion of the next generation. The new constitution granted just enough rights to give a taste for more. Money was still controlled and wrongly spent by the Executive. There were sinecure offices and favoritism, including the attempt to favor the Anglican Church. The Assembly at Quebec fomented controversy. The newspapers spread it abroad. But as yet it filled little place in the life of the community.
The War of 1812, while dislocating the course of trade and commerce, was only directly felt at Montreal for a smaller period. Recollection of it afterward must have been vivid and intense, but brief. The first main incident was the entry into Montreal (September 10, 1812) of the captive American, General William Hull, with his officers and men, which carries something of a comic-opera touch. Hull had been defeated by General Isaac Brock at Detroit, and he and his men were sent to Lower Canada for safekeeping. But their entry into Montreal appears in the record much like a civic reception. There were military bands, “escorts” of soldiers, the streets illuminated, with General Hull riding in an open carriage accompanied by Captain Gray. The procession headed for Government House, where General Hull was presented, to His Excellency, Sir George Prevost, who invited him “to take up his residence in Government House during his stay in Montreal.” The American officers were “guests” at the barracks and their men comfortably housed in town. . . . There is really much more than comic opera in this, namely, common sense and common decency. Acts such as this have helped to unite North America. The comic opera is that Hull, after a short stay, was exchanged for thirty British soldiers, went home, and was sentenced by a court-martial to be shot. President Madison canceled the sentence on two grounds: (1) that Hull had served well in the Revolutionary War, (2) that he was too old to shoot.
Here, then, we may pause, at the renewal of peace in 1815, and take a look around Montreal as it was in its happy, peaceful expansion between the peace and the Rebellion. All excellent guide is found in the map of Montreal, as issued in 1835 by order of the Mayor and Common Council, in the new pride of their life as a city which began in 1832. It shows at once the city limits as vastly greater, several times as great, as those of the old French town. The suburbs (les faubourgs) are now well occupied. The Recollet suburb and, west of it (the use of west instead of south now begins), the Ste. Anne, St. Joseph, and St. Antoine suburbs carry the inhabited city out to and past Guy Street to end at “Canning” Street (four streets on). Guy Street, as now, runs on up the hill as the Côte des Neiges Road. The largest suburb, St. Lawrence, runs all along between Craig Street, now named but not all developed, up to St. Catherine Street. This last runs east and west across St. Lawrence Main, reaching beyond Bleury Street on the east and about three times as far (to St. Helen Street) on the west. Dorchester Street cuts through the center of the St. Lawrence suburb, then takes a dive after the known fashion of Montreal streets and comes up west again. Lagauchetière Street, just below it, takes a similar dive east. The space between the St. Lawrence and the St. Antoine suburbs was relatively open. Here on the hillside stood Beaver Hall. In the life of a growing city early priority spells later poverty. The palace becomes the slums. The suburb presently houses the newer palace. This open space (from the Windsor Hotel to the Bell Telephone Building of today) was later to be the grandeur of Montreal. Above St. Catherine Street lie the beautiful farms and country houses extending to the foot of the mountain. Two very large ones, just beyond the west end of St. Catherine Street, are those of McGill, at this period under legal dispute, and the McTavish property reaching halfway to the Côte des Neiges Road. Cutting through the farms, from the McGill estate across to St. Denis Street, runs a beautiful country road called Sherbrooke Street, with already two or three houses on it. East, in the direction the French called north, lies the Quebec suburb greatly extended. The Bonsecours Church by the river still serves as a guide. This church, our Lady of Good Help, had indeed a special, a mystic meaning. It was first built, as already mentioned, in 1657, to carry above its roof an image of the Virgin Mary, brought from France by Marguerite Bourgeoys. The Virgin, looking down the river, watched over the safety of the sailors. Thank offerings were laid on the shrine. To her marvelous intercession was ascribed the great storm on the Lower St. Lawrence which broke up Admiral Walker’s fleet, about to attack Quebec in 1711. The citadel, at the bottom end of the French town, has all been shoveled flat to make Dalhousie Square; the gates are gone and the city goes on and on for about a mile with Fulham Road as its last street downstream, and St. Marys Road (later part of Notre Dame Street) its main highway.
The new directions of east and west appear in the official parliamentary division of the two wards, for the Assembly set up in 1791. They are divided by the “main street of St. Lawrence,” the East Ward being downstream and the West Ward upstream. They are all wrong with the compass; as explained above, the trouble rises in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, where the north shore is the north shore, and it comes all the way up. This makes Longueuil the south shore of the St. Lawrence which, at Montreal, it isn’t. But if we call Longueuil south we must call Longue Pointe east.
In the lower town, of course, a great many of the old buildings public and private of the French Regime were still there. The Château de Ramezay was Government House. The Hotel Dieu was still on St. Paul Street. Old Notre Dame Church was still standing, but a new one, the present one, was begun in 1824. The old Bonsecours Church was still at the north end of the city, and the Recollet Church at the south. The Grey Nunnery was still the Charron Building, the Hospital General of a century before. But the changes were more striking than the survivals: the wooden houses had mostly disappeared from the main part of the town. In their place were stone, rubblestone, and brick. There were now about 100 occupied streets and about 2500 houses, all numbered in the older city and partly so in the suburbs. The total population is put at 9000 in the year 1800, 22,000 in the year 1825. Montreal was as populous at night as now, for in those days all the merchants slept over their places of business and officials and professional men in their offices.
But the great change was that the old fortifications were gone, all knocked down except a few survivals on McGill Street and elsewhere. There are many lesser changes. The Jesuits being gone, their property has been built over with the Court House (1800), the gaol, the so-called “Old Gaol” of 1806-36, and the Champs de Mars, extended now to a space of 227 yards by 114, a parade ground and a fashionable promenade. In the new Jacques Cartier Square has been erected the Nelson Monument just mentioned. The Château de Vaudreuil, used for a time as a school and college, was burned. In its place is the new college, the Petit Séminaire, in the Recollet suburb. Large stone barracks have been built near where the Quebec gate stood. Spacious hotels stand on the Place d’Armes, and near the river, St. Paul Street, the main thoroughfare is crowded and busy all day. There is a new stone customs house (1836) built on the old French market square.
Between these days and the present time the whole aspect of Montreal, even of the lower town, has of course been altered, its river front, as it used to be, obliterated by the remaking of the harbor, the Craig Street hollow drained and built upon, St. Paul Street sunk to its present shabby appearance, Notre Dame Street altered from a dignified residential street to be the mere back annex of St. James Street, and the latter a narrow thoroughfare between tall buildings and skyscrapers, unrecognizable as the “Great St. James Street” of a hundred years ago, broad and half empty.
A sign of the movement of the times is the appearance and the multiplication of coffeehouses and hotels, things hardly needed under the Old Regime. In those days “hotel” meant a private mansion such as the Hotel Vaudreuil. A public inn was presently called a “hotel” as a sort of flattering compliment, like the word “funeral home” of today. But now with steamers up and down the river and the canal, ships from overseas, mail stages from Quebec and Kingston (for York) and to New York and, above all, with immigration on the move, the hotel came into its own. So we find now the Exchange Hotel and Coffee House, 170 guests; Orr’s Hotel in Notre Dame; the Montreal Hotel, also called Dillon’s, on the Place d’Armes, and half a dozen others. Most conspicuous was the spacious and beautiful Mansion House. This was a fine stone building, originally built by Sir John Johnson (of Mohawk fame) after he settled in Montreal. It stood near the Bonsecours Church, overlooking the river. John Molson bought it and added two big wings to it. It had a great terrace, 144 feet long and 30 feet wide, with an unimpeded view of all the stretch of river, islands, shore, and mountains that lay before it. Life in the Mansion House, with dinners and suppers and dances unending, with officers in uniform and beauty in the flowing dress of the day, with champagne at a few shillings a bottle, with the Beaver Club and the Bachelor Club to keep it moving, and the public library in the great room on the premises to keep it quiet, with the Théâtre Royal just over the way with French opera at five shillings a box, with boats for hire for a row on the river on a summer evening, with a military band in the distance and a tangle of fireflies in the foreground — perhaps the good old limes were not so bad after all.
The old hotels are gone now. The Mansion was burned in 1812. Where Dillon’s guests made merry is now the buried silence of a trust company. Where the guests gathered at the Exchange Coffee House once shouted the news of Trafalgar, the cable company and brokers’ offices now click more vital news from Europe. All are gone except only the last of them, Rasco’s Hotel, built just at the end of the epoch 1836 as its last word in grandeur. Rasco’s is still standing today, ignominiously crowded out by a market, battered, dingy, its ornamentation gone, its garment divided, its very lettering fallen in part away, with nothing but the recollection of Charles Dickens’ visit there in 1842 to keep a faint breath of survival stirring.
The Mansion House, we say, stood beside the water, and in front of it was the private wharf built by Molson for his steamers for Quebec and for La Prairie, from which town ran stages to St. Johns and thus to the States. This wharf was one of the first real attempts at improving the port and harbor facilities. The ships that came before the peace era were small, mostly about 150 tons, and very few. For example, in 1813 only nine ships in all came up to Montreal from the sea, a total of 1589 tons. These could lie almost alongside the riverbank, in places where the current had scooped the water deep, or so close that improvised stages were built out from the shore’s edge to the deck. With this went the plan of running out horses and carts deep into the water to reach vessels hauled up, bow on. With the ships were the bateaux and the new and bigger type of Durham boat that came in after the American war. These were big flat-bottomed sailboats eighty or ninety feet long, with “center boards,” which enabled them to beat to windward. In the harbor also floated the rafts, a conspicuous feature for more than half a century. There were firewood rafts bringing down cordwood for town use from farms up the river and big sections of rafts of square timber on the way to Quebec and England. These had come over the Lachine Rapids and were made up again in La Prairie Basin or below Montreal for Quebec.
