The year 1850 was not commercially satisfactory, but remains bright in the annals of trade on account of a most successful fair opened in Bonsecours Hall, October 17th, and attended by from 20,000 to 30,000 people. This fair was held in order to prepare for the great International Exhibition in London in the following year, and resulted in 200 packages being sent forward, by which the attention of Great Britain was called to Canada in a most practical manner. The war between Great Britain and Russia in 1854, while improving the demand for cereals, injuriously affected commerce in Montreal through stringent European money markets, etc., while American tourists, upon whom the retail trader then as now relied for no small portion of his summer trade, were deterred from visiting the city through the prevalence of cholera. This, coupled with the unusually late arrival of the spring importations, resulted in leaving large stocks on hand.
In 1854 the Canada Sugar Refinery business was established by Mr. John Redpath. The late Sir George Drummond was early connected with it as general manager.
An improvement in business characterized the following year, while the city was thronged in March with visitors to a fair held in anticipation of the Paris Exhibition, and which was very successful. In the same year Montreal was visited by Admiral Betveze to arrange for closer trade relations between Canada and France. The reciprocity treaty also of 1855, followed by the American Civil war, led to increased activity of trade in Montreal, her citizens, as well as those of other Canadian cities, supplying many of the needs of the army of 1,000,000 taken from pen and plough in those days of trial.
In 1858 a torchlight procession of about twenty thousand souls (including spectators), a general illumination and a military parade, expressed the jubilation of Montreal over the successful laying of the first Atlantic cable. The procession, composed of tradesmen and handicraftsmen, was a mile long and marched six abreast.
In 1859 the Victoria Tubular bridge was opened, but just before its completion in 1860, commercial panic struck the country, with disastrous effects.
The greatest disasters were those in the United States, where every bank but one suspended payment; but the calamity was sympathetically reflected in the Dominion.
The Bank of Montreal remained firm, thanks to Mr. Davidson, the cashier, who carried the Montreal merchants through that black time. It may be said that Mr. Davidson founded a school of banking.
Manufacturing made great progress in the ’60s, owing to the Civil war in the United States taking millions of men from the ordinary activities of the country to the battlefields, thus stimulating Canadians to manufacture sufficient to supply the resultant demand.
In the decade from 1860 to 1870, the investment in Montreal industries leaped from $800,000 to $11,000,000. Just about then, however, a period of depression set in, due to a variety of causes.
Chief among these were the inevitable slackening in Canadian outputs due to production being resumed in the United States, and the general stress caused by the financial losses incurred through wars both on this continent and in Europe. During this period the manufacturers of Montreal suffered possibly more than any other body; for the great population and easier developed natural resources of the United States, with other contributing factors, enabled nearly all lines of goods to be produced there at a lower cost; and with his goods barred from the States by high tariffs and his home market thrown open to American factories, the Montreal manufacturer suffered from his nearness to the American border, suffered, perhaps, more acutely than other Canadians. With the inauguration of the National Policy in 1879 conditions changed materially, and the beginning of 1880 found business booming again. Meanwhile St. James Street had become the chief business street. Morgan’s Colonial House was at the northeast corner abutting Victoria Square. When the head of the firm took an idea to open on St. Catherine Street, as yet an unimportant business thoroughfare, in the present location, it was a dangerous move according to the wiseacres, but instantly justified, being followed by other great departmental stores, such as Murphy’s, Hamilton’s and the rest. Substantial and steady progress was made in the ensuing twenty years, the products of the various factories doubling in value in each decade. Then came the remarkable development of the city, beginning about 1898, and in the ten years from 1900 to 1910 the production increased from about eighty-five million dollars to two hundred millions.