Before their departure from Canada, Lord and Lady Dufferin had the pleasure of assisting at the ceremony of laying the corner stone of this new gate, as well as of the new terrace, which bears their name, and of fairly starting those important works on the high road to realization.
As an interesting link between the present and the past, St. John's gate holds an equally prominent rank and claims an equal antiquity with St. Louis gate. Its erection as one of the original gates of the French fortress dates from the same year and its history is very much the same. Through it another portion of Montcalm's defeated forces found their way behind the shelter of the defences after the fatal day of the Plains of Abraham. Like St. Louis gate, too, it was pulled down on account of its ruinous condition in 1791 and subsequently rebuilt by the British Government in the form in which it endured until 1865, when it was demolished and replaced, at an expense of some $40,000 to the city, by its present more ornate and convenient substitute, to meet the increased requirements of traffic over the great artery of the upper levels—St. John street. St. John's gate was one of the objective points included in the American plan of assault upon Quebec on the memorable 31st December, 1775; Col. Livingston, with a regiment of insurgent Canadians, and Major Brown, with part of a regiment from Boston, having been detailed to make a false attack upon the walls to the south of it and to set fire to the gate itself with combustibles prepared for that purpose—a scheme in which the assailants were foiled by the depth of snow and other obstacles. This gate, being of quite recent construction and of massive, as well as passably handsome, appearance, is not included in the general scheme of improvement. The erection of a life-size statue of Samuel Champlain, the founder of Quebec, upon its summit, is, however, talked of.
Palace or the Palais gate is the third and last of the old French portals of the city, and derives its title from the fact that the highway which passed through it led to the palace or residence of the Intendants of New France, which has also given its name to the present quarter of the city lying beneath the cliff on the northern face of the fortress, where its crumbling ruins are still visible in the immediate neighborhood of the passenger terminus of the North Shore Railway. Erected under French rule, during which it is believed to have been the most fashionable and the most used, it bade a final farewell to the last of its gallant, but unfortunate French defenders, and to that imperial power which, for more than one hundred and fifty years, had swayed the colonial destinies of the Canadas and contested inch by inch with England, the supremacy of the New World, when a portion of Montcalm's defeated troops passed out beneath its darkening shadows on the fatal 13th September, 1759. After the capitulation of Quebec, General Murray devoted himself at once to the work of strengthening the defences of the city, and the attention in this respect paid to Palace gate appears to have stood him in good stead during the following year's campaign, when the British invaders, defeated in the battle of St. Foye, were compelled to take shelter behind the walls of the town and sustain a short siege at the Hands of the victorious French under deLévis. In 1791, the old French structure, now a decayed ruin, was razed by the English, but, in the meanwhile, during 1775, it had gallantly withstood the assaults and siege of the American invaders under Montgomery and Benedict Arnold. The somewhat ornate substitute, by which it was replaced is said to have resembled one of the gates of Pompeii, and seems to have been erected as late as the year 1830 or 1831, as, in the course of its demolition, in 1874, an inscription was laid bare, attesting the fact that at least the timbers and planking had been put up by local workmen in 1831. It is not intended to rebuild this gate under the Dufferin plan, on account of the great volume of traffic, more especially since the completion of the North Shore Railway, to whose terminus the roadway which leads over its site is the most direct route. To mark that memorable spot, however, it is intended to flank it on either side with picturesque Norman turrets rising above the line of the fortification wall.
Hope Gate, also on the northern face of the ramparts, was the first of the two purely British gates of Quebec, and was erected in 1786 by Colonel Henry Hope, Commandant of the Forces and Administrator of the Province, from whom it takes its name. It was demolished in 1874 for no especial reason, this gate being no obstacle whatever to the growing requirements of traffic, as will be readily understood from its situation. Like Palace Gate, too, it is not to be rebuilt—its approaches being easily commanded and its position on the rugged, lofty cliff being naturally very strong.
Its site, however, will be marked in the carrying out of the Dufferin
Improvements by flanking Norman turrets.
The last of the city gates proper, wholly of British origin, but the first that grimly confronted in by-gone days the visitor approaching the city from the water-side and entering the fortress, is, or rather was, Prescott Gate, which commanded the steep approach known as Mountain Hill. This gate, which was more commonly known as the Lower Town gate, because it led to that part—the oldest—of the city known by that name, was erected in 1797, (to replace a rough structure of pickets which existed at this point from the time of the siege by the Americans in 1775) by General Robert Prescott, who served in America during the revolutionary war, and, after further service in the West Indies, succeeded Lord Dorchester as the British Governor-General in Lower Canada in 1796, dying in 1815, at the age of 89 years, and giving his name to this memento of his administration, as well as to Prescott, Ontario. Old Prescott Gate was unquestionably a great public nuisance in times of peace, its demolition, in 1871, consequently provoked the least regret of all in connection with the obliteration of those curious relics of Quebec's historic past. For reasons, which are obvious, it would be impossible to replace Prescott Gate with any structure of a like character, without impeding seriously the flow of traffic by way of such a leading artery as Mountain Hill. It will, however, be replaced by a light and handsome iron bridge of a single span over the roadway with flanking Norman turrets.
KENT GATE.
For the information of our visitors and strangers generally, we may explain that, a few years since, the western fortification wall between St. John's gate and the military exercising ground in past years, known as the Esplanade, was cut through to form a roadway communicating between the higher levels of the Upper Town and the St. Louis suburbs, now styled Montcalm Ward.
It consequently became necessary, in keeping with the aesthetic spirit of the whole Dufferin scheme, to fill up in some way this unsightly gap without interfering with the traffic. It was finally decided to erect here one of the proposed memorial gates, which is altogether therefore an addition to the number of the existing gates or their intended substitutes. This edifice, has been designed to do homage to the memory of Edward, Duke of Kent, the father of Queen Victoria. This gate will be the most imposing of all in the entire circuit of the fortifications, while it has had the signal honour of further being reserved for a handsome subscription towards its cost from Her Majesty's privy purse and dedication at the hands of H. R. H. the Princess, who laid its corner stone with appropriate ceremonial during the month of June, 1879.