THE PICKET ENCLOSURE—FORTIFICATIONS STRENGTHENED—GARRISON JEALOUSIES—PRESEANCE—THE "CONGREGATION" BURNT DOWN—A POOR LAW BOARD—TO QUEBEC ON FOOT—THE CHURCH OF THE "CONGREGATION" ON FIRE—THE ENCLOSING OF A RECLUSE—THE JESUIT RESIDENCE—THE RECOLLECTS—THE "PRIE DIEU" INCIDENT—MGR. DE ST. VALLIER'S BENEFACTIONS—THE FRERES CHARON—FIRST GENERAL HOSPITAL—TECHNICAL EDUCATION—THE SEMINARY BEING BUILT—SULPICIAN ADMINISTRATION—THE MARKET PLACE. NOTE: THE GENTLEMEN OF THE SEMINARY.
The last chapter has treated of Montreal as the base of many military operations under Frontenac and Callières and has followed the history of some of its celebrated citizens. We must now survey the town at closer range. As said, the inhabitants were virtually confined to the picket enclosure, constructed by de Callières in 1687, yet the king did not approve of enclosing Montreal with fortifications, thinking that this expense would be better employed by strengthening the forts in the West. (Vide mémoire du Roi à M. de Denonville et à Champigny, Mars 5, 1688.) It is not till May 8, 1694, that the minister wrote to de Callières saying he might repair the palisades. [151] In the garrison petty jealousies and struggles for precedence were being maintained. By an ordinance of Intendant Champigny of June 10, 1688, confirming a previous one, it was decided that the officers of justice should hold préséance over the church wardens, both without and within the church, such as the first places in receiving the pain bénit and the offertories on Sundays, the receiving of tapers on Candle-Mass day and palms on Palm Sunday. The time was one of unsettlement and of terrorized conditions, yet the religious communities were growing stronger. In 1683 the home of the congregation founded by Marguerite Bourgeoys had been burned down. Writing to the minister, Denonville says: "They have lost everything. It would be necessary for them to build, but they have not a penny to begin with." Yet they started again, for, says Sister Juchereau in her "Histoire de Quebec:" "They were so full of confidence in God, they began to build with only forty sous in their possession." Sister Morin, the historian of the Hôtel-Dieu says: "After their second house, a stone one, had been destroyed by fire, the Congregation nuns built a convent on the site they still occupy; their house touches our enclosure, making us neighbours; the house is large and spacious, and one of the best built in town."
Monseigneur de St. Vallier, having seen the nuns some time after the fire, remarks: "How they subsisted, since the accident befell them three or four years ago, is truly a marvel. Their entire house was burned in one night; they saved neither their furniture nor their wardrobes, happy enough in this that they were themselves rescued; even then two of their number perished in the flames. The courage of the survivors bore them up in their extreme poverty." Again he wrote to the minister of marine in this same year of a group of grown-up girls to the number of twenty, called the Daughters of Providence, who were trained and prepared for work by Sister Bourgeoys. He recommended that a gratuity should be given them to undertake some manufacture.
In 1688 their mission of free and popular education was extended by Marguerite Bourgeoys' trained workers to Quebec, at the invitation of St. Vallier, who had bought a house with a yard and garden on November 13, 1686, as the initial step of a foundation and in 1688 the free schools were opened for the smaller girls.
Those concerned with the history of the birth of philanthropic agencies in city life will find of interest a decree of the Supreme Council of Thursday, April 18, 1688, ordering a "Bureau des Pauvres," a Poor Law Board, to be established in the towns of Quebec, Montreal and Three Rivers, and other parishes dependent on them, and also in the country parishes. The object was to discriminate between the honest poor and the lazy shirkers and the ne'er-do-wells of the period. The lengthy decree gives elaborate instructions for this purpose and would delight modern charity organizers. It insists that work should be carried on by the poor applying for relief. The directors should be the curé; an executive director of the poor, to do the research work by investigating into the real state and cause of the poverty and to find work and to supervise the hiring of the poor and fixing the remuneration; a third was to be the treasurer, who should keep account of all the revenues coming from church collections, or public canvasses for money or gifts in kind; a fourth should be the secretary, who should keep the records and lists of those applying to the bureau for assistance. These directors were to be on an equal footing, the secretary to count their votes and the decisions to be signed by all the directors present, two to form a quorum.
There does not seem to be any grant from the government for the support of this voluntary charity organization society established by order of the council, Christian charity and alms giving being, seemingly, considered to suffice in providing its funds. The directors could, according to circumstances, chastise the poor by imprisonment in the dungeon on a bread and water diet, or by retrenchment on their victuals for a time, according to the enlightenment of the said directors, to whom the council, under the good pleasure of His Majesty, gives the power for the case required. Prohibitions were also issued to all the poor and necessitous against begging under any pretext whatever, on pain of such punishment as should be adjudged by the council. The directors were to put themselves in touch with the procurator general or his substitutes in each jurisdiction. Thus the volunteer and official sides of civic philanthropy were brought together—an admirable combination to be more widely imitated these days.
In order to start the new bureau, the council chose directors from out of its own members, appointing as the first directeur des pauvres the procurator general of the king, François Madaleine Ruette d'Auteuil; for the post of treasurer Paul Dupuy, his substitute on the prévôté; and for secretary the clerk of the Supreme Council, Jean Baptiste Peuvret de Mesnu.
Though admirably mapped out the organization of the Bureaux des Pauvres in Quebec, Three Rivers and Montreal, ordered by the Sovereign Council in 1688, appears to have grown weak shortly. Ten years later, in 1698, as the zeal of the citizens needed new inspiration, the order was renewed and the Rev. Father Leblanc, a Jesuit, was charged by the bishop of the diocese of Quebec, Mgr. de St. Valier, to preach in the towns the reorganization of the bureaux. He came for this object to Montreal on June 1, 1698. In consequence of his sermon two days later a meeting of the most notable citizens met in one of the halls of the seminary to form a bureau composed of priests and lay people. Its business was to place poor children as apprentices to learn a trade, to put the sick poor into hospitals or to place them with relations in easier circumstances, to distribute wheat, bread, boots and merchandise to the poor. The voluntary contributions necessitated a house-to-house canvass, which was started in June by Madame de Maricour, the Mademoiselles de Repentigny, and followed in December by Madame Jucherau de St. Denis and Madame d'Argenteuil. The ladies kept to the town and immediate suburbs while the men collected in the outlying districts.
In 1689 St. Vallier called Sister Bourgeoys to Quebec to execute a project, by him, of the establishment of a home where the poor could be usefully employed in work. It was early spring; the shifting ice on the river would not allow a vehicle on the St. Lawrence; there were no roads to Quebec for carriages, and the aged woman, now sixty-nine years of age, traveled the whole distance of 180 miles, thither, on foot through the slushy snow of the woods and across melting ice-bound streams. Arriving at Quebec, she found that the bishop had changed his mind and he asked her to undertake a "General Hospital," instead of the more humble House of Providence originally contemplated. This hospital her companions directed till it was transferred to the Hospitalières de St. Joseph in 1692.
In 1693 the "Congregation" started to build a church in their own grounds with the help of Jeanne LeBer, who offered to share the expenses, and of her brother, Pierre LeBer, who promised to furnish all the stone required. It was finished in February, 1695. "During the night of the 24th of February," says one of the latest historians of the congregation, [152] "a lurid flame leaped up in the steeple of the Hôtel-Dieu church. Fiercely it blazed, until the pealing of alarm bells roused the townspeople and brought them, half dressed, into the ruddily illuminated streets. As the tumult of a terrified crowd filled the air, and the red signal of destruction spread over the sky, a panic seized on many hearts. Each man looked on the white face of his neighbour, ghastly in the fire's glare, and there read the same question, 'Will the town be saved?' Then it was that Dollier de Casson, followed by the priests from the Seminary, came to the place of danger, bearing the Blessed Sacrament. A passionate prayer went up, 'Lord, save us, have mercy on us.' The wind veered suddenly, and carried the roaring flame away from the town. At that manifestation of Divine clemency, a mighty shout of thanksgiving rent the air. But the maddened element had to find some fuel. A moment later, the hospital itself was a mass of flames and smoke. Père Denys, a Récollet, went fearlessly into the burning church, took out the Blessed Sacrament and carried it, at first, to the house of a certain merchant named Arnaud." At dawn of day it found its home in the new church. Later in the day the homeless Hôtel-Dieu Sisters were brought to the house of the congregation by Dollier de Casson, and there they lived and worshipped side by side with the Daughters of Marguerite Bourgeoys, thus carrying on the friendship begun between Jeanne Mance and Marguerite, the two founders. A solemn spiritual alliance was drawn up by the two communities, "to love one another," and years have not severed this friendship.