“On the 28th of May, 1818, I first landed at Montreal. On my left was a dirty creek running down inside of a warehouse, being the outlet of a ditch, now tunnelled, that then, as a part of the old fortifications, ran around the city, westerly from the Champ de Mars through Craig street, with dilapidated banks, the receptacle of all sorts of filth. Above and below there was a revetment of a few hundred feet; except this, the beach and river bank were in their natural state. Just above the Grey Nunnery there was a cottage with a garden running down to the river, and adjoining this a ship yard where vessels continued to be built for some years later. Further on, the place of the Lachine Canal was a common with three windmills and the graves of three soldiers shot for desertion. The Island Wharf was then a little island, far off and alone.
“The city gates and fortifications, such as they were, had been removed some time previous. A remnant of walls remained at the corner of McGill and Commissioners streets, and between Bonsecours street and Dalhousie Square there was a mound of earth 55 feet high, called the ‘citadel.’ The old rampart on Great St. James street had been levelled, but there was no building on the west side between St. François Xavier and McGill streets. The northern portion had been a cemetery and an old powder magazine still stood in the middle of the street.... I came into the city through a narrow passage leading to the Custom House Square, then the ‘Old Market,’ a low, wooden shed-like building; and along the south side of the square was a row of old women seated at tables with eatables for sale. Capital street was a succession of drinking houses carrying on an active business from morning until night.... The largest was that of Thomas l’Italien (Thomas Delvecchio), facing the Market with a clock, on which small figures came out to strike the hours, to the continued wonderment of all, and next came Les trois Rois, of Joseph Donegani. This was the center of trade. A new market of similar construction had been erected on the present Jacques Cartier Square, running from Nelson’s monument (opposite to which was the guard house, jail, pillory and courthouse) to St. Paul street, but it was not liked. Everybody crowded to the little space of the Old Market and habitant vehicles so filled St. Paul street in each direction that constables were often sent to drive them down to the new market....
“Along the beach were moored several small ships and brigs, constituting the spring fleet.... The city was bounded by the river on the east, by Bonsecours street and the Citadel on the north, Craig street on the west, and McGill street on the south; within which limits all the ‘respectable’ people with few exceptions resided. The population in it was nearly as great as today—the upper part of nearly every store being occupied as a dwelling. All the houses in Notre Dame street were dwellings—in its whole length there were but two shops and three auction rooms. The cross streets’ buildings were nearly all dwellings and commercial business was almost confined to St. Paul street. Wholesale stores, except the establishment of Gillespie, Moffat & Company, were small indeed compared to the growth of after years.... There were numerous shops for country trade, all doors and no windows, always open winter and summer, with a goodly portion of the stock displayed outside, where salesmen without number were stationed to accost and bring in customers, who were often dragged forcibly....
“Nunneries occupied more space than now—the Hotel Dieu making an ugly break in St. Paul street. Of churches there were few.... The city was composed of one and two story houses, very few of three stories, built, with very few exceptions, of rubble stone, plastered over. All the stores and many of the houses had iron doors and shutters; many buildings had vaulted cellars and many had the garret floored with heavy logs, covered with several inches of earth, and flat paving stones, with a stone staircase outside, so that a roof might burn without doing other damage....
“Four streets leading to the country—St. Mary’s, St. Laurent, St. Joseph and St. Antoine—were bordered by houses, mostly of wood—one story, but intervening streets were short and vacant ground extensive. Log fences divided fields on the west of Craig street as far as Beaver Hall Hill, which was a grassy lawn with a long, one-story wooden building across the summit and a garden behind. All to the west of this was open fields where now stands the city of our richest people....
“Village primitiveness had not disappeared in Montreal fifty years ago. Old men sat out on the doorsteps to gossip with passing friends and often the family would be found there of an evening. In the suburbs neighbours would collect for a dance in the largest house and any respectable passer-by was welcomed if he chose to step in.... Business relations were more intimate between French and English fifty years ago than now, and I think there was more kindly feeling.... But social relations were much as they are now, the races keeping separate in their charities, their amusements and their gatherings. The English were more dominant—they were more generally the employers, the French the employed.”
November of 1819 was marked by an alarming natural phenomenon. On Sunday the 9th a dense black rain descended, depositing a substance which to the eye and taste resembled common soot. On the following Tuesday, after a dark morning of gloom, with the sun clouds at times greenish black, pitch black, dingy orange colour and blood red, so that some thought that the history of Pompeii or Herculaneum was to be repeated, and feared that Mount Royal, reported already to be the extinct crater of a volcano, was again in activity. At 3 o’clock in the afternoon rain fell again of the same sooty character mid fearful lightning and thunder. At 4 o’clock the summit of the steeple of Notre Dame Church was struck with lightning. The tocsin sounded a fire alarm; the steeple was on fire. The people gathered on Place d’Armes and before the conflagration was extinguished, the great cross fell with a crash, breaking into many pieces. The rain had deposited greater quantities of the sooty substance than on the Sunday preceding and “as it flowed through the streets it carried on its surface a dense foam resembling soapsuds. The evening again became darker and thus ended a day which may be classed among the dies atri of Montreal.”
At this time there was a certain official society life in the city which was fostered by the young military officers from the old country, to whom, apart from their extravagances, the colony is largely indebted for its heritage of culture, literature and art. The religious situation was filled by three Catholic churches, the Notre Dame parish church, built in 1672; the Bonsecours Chapel, rebuilt in 1771, and the “Recollets,” built in 1695, and loaned at different periods to the Anglicans and Presbyterians till they had their own temples. There were two Protestant churches, the Anglican Christ Church, which was the old disused Jesuit church till 1803, but which was now in its own edifice on Notre Dame Street in 1814, and the Presbyterian or Scotch chapel on St. Gabriel’s Street, built in 1792. The religious horizon was not clear. The Catholics and Presbyterians, or non-Conformist group, both had grudges against the Anglicans, arising from the question of the clergy reserves by which, according to the Constitutional Act of 1791, the Anglicans were the established church and reserves of land were provided for their growth and expansion to the exclusion of other Protestant denominations, who resented this privilege in a new country, especially by the “Church of Scotland,” who claimed equal rights to establishment, and the Catholics who had become civilly crippled and disestablished since the conquest, when they came under the same condition of the civil disabilities meted out to the Catholics in the old country.
The government officials and most of the British military officers therefore attended the Anglican services, while the fur lords and the traders, those of St. Gabriel’s church. The newspapers took sides. The Gazette followed the government party, while the Courant and the Herald voiced the views of the dissentients. In 1825 the Herald was bought by Archibald Ferguson, a rich merchant of Montreal, for the express purpose of upholding the rights of the Presbyterian church to a share in the clergy reserves, on the ground that the Scottish Church in Canada should be considered as much an established church as that of the Anglicans. Eventually it gradually came to be recognized in the courts that there were three “established” churches in Canada, the Anglicans, the Scottish and the Catholics.[1] But the increasing number of non-conformist bodies arising could not brook this, and so the old opposition against the “clergy reserves” was renewed and it was not till 1854 that this long burning question was settled by total diversion of the reserves from all religious purposes.
We may now return to the story of the Constitutional struggles again about to commence and in which Montreal was to take a leading part.