“A very great number of the recent shops are elegantly, and some of them splendidly, fitted up. Perhaps there is in scarcely any part of the commercial world, either in Europe or America, a more superb or exquisitely finished room, for its size, than the shop of Mr. McDonald, at the corner of Place d’Armes and Notre Dame Street.”
If Mr. Greig were only privileged to take a walk along St. Catherine Street now!
CHAPTER XXXVI
COMMERCIAL HISTORY SINCE THE UNION
THE RISE OF MODERN MANUFACTURES AND INDUSTRIES
MONTREAL CENTER OF CANADIAN TRADE—LORD ELGIN’S OPINION OF THE CANADA CORN ACT—TRADE DEPRESSION BEGINNING IN 1847—SUGAR AND FLOUR INDUSTRIES—THE PANIC OF 1860—A PROSPEROUS DECADE—ANOTHER DEPRESSION—THE NATIONAL POLICY—PROSPERITY AGAIN IN THE EIGHTIES—ST. CATHERINE STREET—THE RISE OF FURTHER INDUSTRIES—THE RISE OF THE COMMERCIAL ASSOCIATIONS—THE COMMITTEE OF TRADE—ITS ACTIVITIES—THE BOARD OF TRADE—ITS ACTIVITIES IN CANAL, PORT, RAILWAY, CANADIAN AND EMPIRE EXPANSION—ITS INTEREST IN CIVIC GOVERNMENT AND GENERAL CIVIC BETTERMENT—ITS BUILDING—ITS SOCIAL FUNCTIONS—THE “CHAMBRE DE COMMERCE”—ITS ORIGIN—THE OTHER MERCHANTS’ ASSOCIATIONS OF THE CITY—A TRIBUTE TO THE MERCHANTS OF MONTREAL. NOTES: PRESIDENTS OF THE BOARD OF TRADE—CENSUS (1912) OF MONTREAL MANUFACTURES.
Trade at the time of the Union centered at Montreal. Quebec had been left behind. The Canada corn act brought in by Lord Stanley, the colonial secretary in Robert Peel’s cabinet, while it cheapened corn in England stimulated business in Canada, for the act lowered the duty on Canadian wheat and flour to one shilling in the quarter upon the condition that Canada should impose a duty of three shillings upon United States wheat. Montreal became the center of its distribution. This success was dashed to disappointment by Peel’s bill of 1846, described by Lord Elgin in writing to a friend shortly after, as drawing “the whole of the produce down the New York channels of communication, destroying the revenue which Canada expected to derive from canal duties and ruining at once mill owners, forwarders and merchants. The consequence is that private property is unsalable in Canada; not a shilling can be raised on the credit of the province.” To crown the disasters in 1847 there was the ship fever in the city. In 1848 the depression was continued, followed next year by the riots over the rebellion losses bill, so that many were ready in the same year for the annexation to the United States as a desperate remedy.