There are also published in the city a number of educational, technical, religious and trade periodicals, and the following monthlies: the Canada West Indian Magazine, the Canadian Municipal Journal, La Revue Populaire, La Revue Canadienne, etc.
It would be a fascinating study to pursue the history of defunct newspapers, but, since up to 1904 Dr. Dionne made his abstract of the names and numbers of 800 newspapers, journals, etc., printed at one time or another in French in the Province of Quebec, and 681 in English, of both of which so many have appeared at Montreal, the treatment to be given would outrun this present purpose. The same is to be said of the history of publications of a general character which in 1906 amounted to 2,921 in English and 3,092 in French, registered and published in the Province of Quebec.
Montreal has taken a great part as the publication centre of the above. As, however, the treatment adopted has been the record of institutions rather than personal works, the appreciation of Montreal writers in French and English is here foregone. A note may be placed on our historians.
MONTREAL HISTORIES
The literature of Montreal begins with Jacques Cartier,[2] who wrote a full description of his visit to Hochelaga in 1535 and described the people there. The next writer was Samuel de Champlain in the beginning of the seventeenth century, who made his map of the island and described his trading post at Place Royale. After the foundation of Montreal in 1642 the Jesuits in their “Relations” have given us sidelights of its progress and after the coming of the Sulpicians in 1657 and Dollier de Casson, the soldier Sulpician, wrote the first “Histoire de Montreal.” Another contemporary Sulpician of Montreal, the Abbé de Belmont, wrote a history of Canada. The Jesuit Charlevoix, who wrote his history of Canada later, at the end of the first quarter of the eighteenth century, penned much of his work at Montreal. Peter Kalm, the Swiss traveller, has left us a valuable picture of 1749. Later writers who have contributed to our knowledge of Montreal are Montcalm and De Levis, the soldiers who had their headquarters in this city and whose letters and journals contain much history leading to the fall of Montreal in 1760.
Under the English rule the French writers, who have contributed to our knowledge of the history of Montreal have been the following: The Montreal historian, Michel Bibaud, who in 1837 published the first volume of his “Histoire du Canada Sous la Domination Française.” Jacques Viger, the first Mayor of Montreal, began publishing his various archaeological and historical studies of the city about 1840. Between 1852 and 1865 the Abbé Fallon published the lives of Marguerite Bourgeoys, Jeanne Mance and Madame d’Youville, and his lengthy work of the “Histoire de La Colonie Française,” which only went as far as 1672 but contains valuable Montreal history. The same is to be said of the history of F.X. Garneau, who, however, is to be more closely connected with Quebec. The Montreal Societe Historique and the Numismatic and Antiquarian Society have each produced writers already named who have surveyed Montreal under the historical or archaeological aspect. The “Annuaire de Ville Marie,” by Huguet-Latour, is one of such contributions. A “Histoire Populaire de Montreal” was published by M. le Bloud Brumath in 1890.
With reference to English historians of Montreal outside the fugitive references in works by Heriot, Weld, Lambert and others, no important specific history of the city appeared until “Hochelaga Depicta” by Newton Bosworth in 1839, followed in 1870 by Alfred Sandham’s “Ville Marie, Past and Present,” which later was succeeded by the Rev. J. Bosworth’s Studies of Montreal, the History of Montreal (in 1875), that of the prisons (1886), and others later. In 1887 the Rev. Robert Campbell, D.D., published his History of St. Gabriel Street Church, which was a valuable contribution to the “Scotch” history of the city. “Lights and Shrines” and “Montreal after 250 Years,” appeared by W.D. Lighthall in 1892 to celebrate the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the foundation of the city. Terrill’s “Chronology of Montreal and Canada” appeared in 1893. Of late years there have also been several sketches and semi-advertising ventures of a historical nature. In addition there have been numerous gazeteers and studies, in French and English, of Montreal personages, the last to appear being that of the History and Times of George Etienne Cartier by John Boyd.
The occasion of the international war of 1914 affords a suitable opportunity for the publication of the present work, to fill in the gaps left by earlier works on Montreal.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] One of the best known of Montreal dramatic writers was Charles Heavysege whose dramas of Saul, Count Felipo and Jeptha’s Daughter, published in the early ’60s, gave him an international reputation.