The Grand Trunk Railway Company’s elevator now stands on the site of the water front of 1824.
A small wharf 200 feet long existed, providing a depth of water of 9 feet, in the position of the flood wall opposite the present Harbour Commissioners’ office.
Another irregular wharf known as Berthelette’s Wharf existed between the Harbour Commissioners’ office and the Custom House.
From the Little River, now the Custom House, downward, the beach was unimproved except by the construction of sloping roadways down to the water.
Shallow water, even points of exposed rocks, existed two-thirds of the distance across to St. Helen’s Island, in the early days before the Moffatt’s Island Wharf was built.
The size and type of the vessels trading to Montreal may be imagined from the fact that Lake St. Peter limited the draft to 11 feet, and even that depth was not available at any of the wharves in the Harbour.
The shipping trade of a whole season, eighty years ago, could have been carried in one or two of the modern ships which now frequent the port.
Sloping roadways down to the water where the river was so low as to permit of rocks showing above the current, a long stretch of beach where the children of those days romped and played, and the poorer women washed the linen using the big stones as washing boards, a long unbroken line of trees and shrubberies past Maisonneuve, where now the Harbour Commissioners’ powerful locomotives transport merchandise from vessels of 15,000 tons register to the various railway terminals, these were the features of the Port of Montreal long before Confederation had ever been dreamed of. In those days inland navigation commenced at Lachine. Goods for Upper Canada were carted to Lachine and from there taken up the Haldimand Canals in bateaux about thirty-five feet long and 5½ feet beam, built of the type of a modern raft boat with pointed bow and stern.
From 1824 to 1892 the development of the port progressed but slowly. Still, in the early days the development of the harbour was a very live question and it was on the 8th of May, 1830, that George Moffatt, Jules Quesnel and Capt. Robert S. Piper, R.E., were appointed commissioners under the Great Seal of the Province of Lower Canada and signed by His Excellency the Governor at the Castle of St. Louis; for the purpose of carrying into effect an Act of the Provincial Legislature, 10 and 11, Geo. IV., Cap. 28: “An Act to provide for the Improvement and Enlargement of the Harbour of Montreal.”