The year 1849 was one of political turmoil already recorded, centering around the rebellion losses bill and resulting in the burning of the Parliament house and the removal of the seat of government from the city, a loss to its social life.
An aspect of the burning of the Parliament house was that, with the political rancour there was mixed, in certain misguided quarters, a fanatical religious frenzy. It was planned to burn the “Grey Nuns,” near at hand, as well as the Jesuits’ residence and St. Patrick’s Church. The menaces came to nothing, owing to the guards of Irish watchers. Yet at the time, according to a letter written from Montreal in August, 1849, by the Jesuit Father Havequez to a friend in France, the Grey Nuns hard by were likely to become a prey to the fire “had not the brave Irish run to the rescue and succeeded, after extraordinary efforts, in mastering the flames.”
The imposing public ceremony this year was the funeral, in the military cemetery on Papineau Road, of Sir Benjamin D’Urban, from whom Durban, in South Africa, bears its name, the charger of the deceased soldier being led through the streets in the procession by the groom, carrying the reversed boots of this companion of Wellington. It was long a remembered incident.
The next year, 1850, saw the first meeting of the Mount Royal Cemetery Company for the burial of non-Catholics and the consecration of the Rev. Francis Fulford in Westminster Abbey as the first Bishop of Montreal, both signs of the growth of the English-speaking population.
This year there was a great charity ball and it is interesting to note that among the subscribers to this ball were the Earl and Countess of Errol; Sir George and Lady Simpson (who lived at Lachine in a big stone mansion, standing on the present site of the Lachine Convent); the Chief Justice and Madame Rolland, Sir James and Lady Alexander, Colonel and Mrs. Dyley, Honorable Mr. and Mrs. Moffatt, Honorable Mr. Justice and Madame Mondelet, Honorable Mr. and Mrs. Drummond, Madame Rochblave, Mr. and Mrs. John Molson, the Commissary General and Mrs. Filder, Honorable Mr. and Madame Rolland, Mr. and Madame de Beaujeau, Honorable Mr. Justice and Mrs. Smith, Mr. Sheriff and Mrs. Coffin, Mr. and Mrs. Ogilvy Moffatt, Captain and Mrs. Claremont, Major and Mrs. MacDougall, Lieut.-Col. Sir Howard Dalrymple, Honorable McCall, Major Chester, Major Colley, Mr. and Mrs. Collingwood, Mr. Arthur Mondelet, Mr. Arthur Lamothe and many others.
The band of the Nineteenth Regiment also attended by kind permission of Lieutenant-Colonel Hay.
The Grand Trunk was formed in 1851. The name of the incorporators which follow are also those of familiar families in the city of today: Thomas Allan Stayber, William Collins Meredith, Sir George Simpson, William Macdonald, David Davidson, J.G. McTavish, N. Finlayson, John Rawand, Edward B. Wilgress, John Boston, Theodore Hart, T. McCullough, John Matthewson, John M. Tobin, E.H. Mount, Wilkinson John Torrance, Isaac Gibb, Donald P. Ross, Robert Morris, James Henderson, Aaron H. David, John Ostell, J.H. Birss, William Lunn, Dougall Stewart, C. Wilgress, William Molson, W.S. McFarlane, A. Dow, John Lavanston, Peter McKenzie, D. McKenzie, John McKenzie, Hector McKenzie, William Foster Coffin, Hon. James Ferrier, William Molson, George Crawford, Duncan Finlayson, John Silveright, John Ballenden, Allen Macdonnell, Samuel Gall, Benjamin Hart, John Carter, Andrew Cowan, Walter Benny, John H. Evans, James H. Lamb, W. Watson, Charles H. Castle, J.B. McKenzie, James Crawford, W. Murray, M. McCullough, M.E. David, J.F. Dickson, John Leeming, Jesse Joseph, D.L. Macpherson, James Cormac, Archibald Hall, Hugh Taylor, Colin Campbell, John Simpson, Thomas Taylor, E.M. Hopkins, John Miles, Charles Geddes, John Macdonald, E.T. Renaud, J.D. Watson, and William Cunningham.
Educational movement also began to gain strength in 1851. The College Ste. Marie on Bleury Street the Young Men’s Christian Association and the new Theatre Royal were opened, while this year the first external signs of the modern movement for woman’s emancipation was strikingly illustrated in July in the streets of Montreal by the appearance for the first time of the “bloomer costume,” made famous at the time by the cartoons of Punch.
Times of commercial prosperity seemed now promised.