The first works undertaken were for the construction of wharves, ramps, slips for Durham boats, a revetment wall and a bridge to Oyster Island, which was to be the principal wharf.
In their first annual report the commissioners, who were called the Corporation of the Trinity Board of Montreal until 1855 when an act was passed changing the name to the Harbour Commissioners of Montreal and increasing the number of commissioners from three to five, stated that they confidently anticipated that the wharves undertaken, when completed, would be superior to any works of the kind in the Province, and would enable the City of Montreal to be advantageously contrasted with any other in North America for beauty, solidity and convenience of approach by water, and the present Harbour of Montreal rather justifies the modest boast of the commissioners of eighty years ago.
Writing in 1839, before the improvements had been made in the harbour by the commissioners, Mr. Newton Bosworth in “Hochelaga Depicta” quotes a New York traveller, who, on landing from a bateau which brought him from La Prairie, thus afterwards expressed himself:
“The approach to Montreal conveyed no prepossessing idea of the enterprise of its municipality; ships, brigs and steamboats lay on the margin of the river at the foot of the hill, no long line of wharves, built of the substantial free stone of which there is an abundance in the very harbour affording security to vessels and profit to owners; the commercial haven looked as ragged and as muddy as the shores of Nieu Nederlandt when the Guede Vrow first made her appearance off the battery.”
“Now,” remarks Mr. Bosworth in 1839, commenting on this “if he were to repeat his visit he would be constrained to make a different report, and find himself able to step ashore without more trouble than in walking across a room.”
The appropriation for the first three years amounted to $4,000, while at present the Harbour Commissioners have undertaken a series of improvements which are soon to be completed at an approximate cost of $6,000,000.
During the past ten years no less than thirty-eight million dollars has been expended to improve the local harbour and ship channel, nearly one-half of which immense sum has gone towards the establishment of harbour and terminal improvements.
Millions of dollars have been spent on lighthouses, light ships, submarine bell stations, whistling buoys, the dredging of the main ship channel from 27½ to 30 feet at low water, its widening and straightening have been carried out at a cost of $14,000,000, the reorganization of the pilotage system has cost $140,000, the establishment of fifteen land telephone stations between Quebec and Montreal has involved the expenditure of $150,000, while hundreds of thousands of dollars have been spent for other important projects.
Since 1830 some of the best Engineers in Canada, the United States and Great Britain, have from time to time been called upon to investigate and submit plans for improvements.