Meanwhile the new parish church, begun two years ago, was being completed, the funds, owing to the poverty of the colonists, being largely supplied by the Seigneurs. It was adjoined to the Hôtel-Dieu on St. Paul Street, so that it might suffice for the citizens and the sick. It was dedicated to St. Joseph, the patron of the hospital, and was opened in 1656. In the foundation and under the doorway of entrance there was placed, within the first stone, the following inscription, engraven as a leaden plate: "Cette première pierre a été posée en l'honneur de St. Joseph, l'an 1656, le 28 Août.
Jesus! Maria! Joseph!"
This building, which served up to 1689 as the parish church of the colony, was adjoined to the hospital situated on the street which was formed a little afterwards by the first houses constructed at Ville Marie and called St. Paul, and was placed at the corner of another street which was called from the name of the church, St. Joseph, today known as St. Sulpice. The body of the building was of wood, about eighty feet long, thirty broad, and twenty feet high; the church being at one end, covering about fifty feet, and surmounted by a bell tower with two bells. The good folk of Ville Marie were proud to see their new temple.
Affairs were now in a bad state; the Iroquois were uncurbed and unsettled through the weak administration of de Lauson, and thus prepared for the bitter war again to be proclaimed at the end of 1657.
But at present, in the summer of 1657, there was nothing but anticipation of the arrival of the governor and the four Sulpicians who were to be the parish clergy, with a permanent abode and a settled ecclesiastical status.
The Jesuits who had so long served the mission were to be free to go to the up-country Indians—their long connection with the settlement was to be severed.
NOTE
THE JESUIT MISSIONARIES AT MONTREAL
(From 1642 to August 12, 1657, when the Sulpicians succeeded them.)
The first mayor of Montreal, Commander Jacques Viger, has collected in a little manuscript book preserved in the Archives of St. Marie's College at Montreal the list of Jesuits serving Montreal from 1642-1657 as follows: