Its significance affords the markets of the hour an unbroken retrospect of nearly two hundred and fifty years.
And of course that first market of Notre Dame des Victoires was herself but a daughter of the old markets everywhere in vogue in France transplanted to Quebec. So that if “blood counts” the “’scutcheon” of the markets now scattered throughout Canada, many of them in the great out-of-doors literally under the banner of the Maple Leaf, is certainly that of an “Honourable Company”.
To Quebec then, belongs the title of “Mother of the Canadian Market”. It was on her foot that the Province children of the Dominion learned to ride:
“To market, to market, to buy a fat pig.
Home again, home again, jiggety jig.”
And that they learned it well there is Dominion-wide proof: for not a city of worth-while size but has its public market. Everybody knows the Halifax market. Prince Edward Islanders claim that the Charlottetown market is ne plus ultra! Quebec now has as many as four open-air markets. In Montreal “Bonsecour” is a word familiar in every household. Its vegetables and flowers line-up under the very shadow of the Nelson Column, the Cathedral de Notre Dame and the Chateau de Ramesay.
Kingston, Toronto, Brantford and every other considerable city of Ontario draw out the line of the market.
Winnipeg magnetizes the products of the truck-farm under the shadow of her city hall. And here the Market-train, that is Vision, calls “All aboard for Points West” and so, if you wish, in time you come in to Saskatoon, Calgary, Vancouver and Victoria. And when you get to Vancouver the stalls of colour are grouped about the Post Office just as they used to be in Halifax.
Each city has its own ideas of a market. And so, although the line of the market is long, each has its own urban individuality.
The four in Quebec, although they are all of Quebec and all French, would never be mistaken for each other. The same individuality is evident in each stall, in each market.
Madame of Saint Roch’s sells from her cart, seated in the middle, with her vegetable family all grouped around her.