Canada, the Spellbinder

by Lilian Whiting

Interior of Notre Dame, Montreal

Nor is the view by daylight less to be remembered. The mighty river sweeps under the massive and majestic structure, while hundreds of steamers, sailing vessels, steam tugs, craft, indeed, of every description, are plying the waters of the St. Lawrence opposite the harbour, and the vast city of Montreal in its transcendently beautiful location at the base of the mountain completes a picture never to be forgotten. For miles the harbour is lined with imposing stone structures, the city's warehouses; and the numerous manufactories, with their tall chimneys sending out great volumes of smoke, stretch away on the shores of the St. Lawrence as far as the eye can reach, with their story of the wonderful commercial metropolis of the Canadian empire. The picture is one to enchain the artist and the social statistician as well. It is of itself a study in economics and commercial development.

From an engineering standpoint this bridge ranks with the foremost structures of contemporary achievements. The Victoria Tubular Bridge which it replaced was built in 1860, and was at that time considered the eighth wonder of the world; but it became insufficient to meet the increase of traffic, and in October of 1897 the work of building the present stupendous structure was inaugurated. The chief engineer was Mr. Joseph Hobson, whose ingenuity and skill contrived to utilise the tube of the old bridge as a roadway, on which a temporary steel span was moved out to the first pier, the new structure being then erected outside the temporary span. Begun in 1897, it was completed in 1899, and during its construction the enormous traffic of the Grand Trunk System was delayed very little, a remarkable fact when it is realised that while the old bridge weighed nine thousand and forty-four tons, the new one weighs twenty-two thousand tons, and while the width of the former was but sixteen feet, the width of the new bridge is sixty-six feet, with a height of from forty to sixty feet, while the one it replaced was but eighteen feet high. The old bridge was built for seven million dollars, while the new one cost two million pounds. The latter carries trains in both directions at the same time, trains with two consolidation engines and tenders, coupled, whose average weight is five thousand two hundred pounds to each foot of length, with a car-load of four thousand pounds to the foot; and a moving load on each carriage way of a thousand pounds a foot. Nor is there any limit prescribed for the speed of either railway trains or carriage and motor car crossings.

This magnificent structure is, indeed, a marvel of the age. There was a pretty scene that lives in memory which marked the date of October 16, 1901. On the very spot where the Prince of Wales (later King Edward) stood when he drove the last rivet in the old Victoria Tubular Bridge in 1860, stood their Royal Highnesses the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall and York (now King George and Queen Mary), with a group of the officials of the railway, thus linking into succession notable events separated by more than forty years.

As one of the wonderful achievements of the opening year of the twentieth century, this bridge draws thousands of sightseers, every year, to study its beauty and marvellous efficiency.

The scenes that Cartier saw fade from the eye, and one sees the solid and splendid business quarters of Montreal, the charming and enticing residential sections. Yet again an anomaly—a mountain in the heart of a city! And it is ascended, not by climbing over perpendicular rocks, but by an easy gliding car that makes its ascent as much a part of a pleasure drive as might be the drive in Hyde Park or in the Bois du Boulogne. Mount Royal suggests in some way the Monreale of Palermo, save that it is crowned by no cathedral, but from its height of a thousand feet it offers a panorama of city and river and wood and mountain ranges that is indescribable. What must be the influence on a city's life of having such a resort as this? It is in itself a prospect of unique and unrivalled beauty; it is a playground for all forms of recreation, al fresco; it is spiritual sanctuary. Again, the mystic vanishers beset one's footsteps, and signals beckon from the vast azure sea of the air. The sunset splendours glow and deepen over Westmount, Montreal's most beautiful suburb, which climbs up the mountain side, with such views, such charm of outlook, as one might well travel many a league to find.

It is again in that realm where nothing is but what is not, that one is led to that haunt of the student and the antiquary, the Château de Ramezay, built more than two hundred years ago by Claude de Ramezay, then governor of Montreal. And if the American Congressional Commission, comprising Franklin, Chase, and Carroll, who sat there for days and nights arguing, pleading, insisting that Canada should unite with the thirteen states in their rebellion and defiance of King George, had prevailed, had the Canadians yielded, what would the course of history have been? How would its trend of events have contrasted with the present? It is an interesting and curious speculation not without historical value of its own.

The Antiquarian and Numismatic Society of Montreal acquired the Château de Ramezay in 1895, after the building had passed through several vicissitudes of ownership, to make of it an Historical Portrait Gallery and Museum. One finds here a copy of the old painting in oils of the first Ursuline Monastery in Quebec, which was built in 1640, and destroyed by fire a year later, the original work being in the Ursuline Convent in Quebec. In the foreground of the picture is the house that was occupied by Bishop Laval in 1699. A large number of interesting old portraits are here, the gifts of the descendants or adherents of the sitters themselves; and coats-of-arms, antiquities, documents, and other matters of interest make up a valuable historical museum.

Montreal is enshrined in legendary lore. The Ile de la Cité, in Paris, is hardly more entangled in mystic story than is the metropolis of the Dominion. The tale that has come down the ages that the martyred preacher Saint-Denis walked from the heights of Montmartre, near Paris, to the Ile de la Cité, carrying his severed head in his hands, does not more challenge one's confidence in its authenticity than do many of the legends that haunt the imagination of the visitor in Montreal. About the middle of the seventeenth century a permanent settlement was founded in La Place Royale, near where the old Customs House now stands. Upon a warehouse in close proximity is placed a tablet with an inscription to the effect that on this site stood the first manor-house of Montreal, which from 1661 to 1712 was the seminary of St. Sulpice.