The History of Montreal

by Paul-Andre Linteau

  The seigneurial regime was maintained after the Conquest. Catholic institutions were one of the driving forces behind continuity and the Church managed to maintain its positions. The Saint-Sulpice seminary was given the seigneury of Montreal by the organization’s seminary in Paris. Although the transaction was not immediately acknowledged by the British authorities, leaving the Sulpicians somewhat uncertain for a time, their rights were confirmed in the longer term, thus ensuring the seminary’s financial security. The seminary remained at the head of the parish of Notre Dame, the Hospitallers continued their work at the Hôtel-Dieu, the Grey Nuns at the Hôpital général, and the sisters of the Congregation of Notre Dame in the schools. The British government did, however, ban male religious orders from recruiting new members, which meant that after a few decades the Jesuits and Récollets died out when their last member passed away.

  The look and feel of the town did not change much in the decades that followed the Conquest. The British had homes built in the traditional Montreal style, a legacy of the French regime. In outward appearance, Montreal remained a small French town. The overhaul of the town centre, begun previously after fires, continued. The centre increasingly became the place where the business elite lived, building solid stone homes often bigger than those that had preceded them. Increasing numbers of artisans and day labourers moved to suburbs that, in the late 1700s, were home to more Montrealers than the town inside the walls. In 1792, these suburbs were included within Montreal’s official limits.

  The town was now governed differently: justices of the peace replaced the intendant and his representatives. Chosen by the colonial administration, these magistrates were drawn from the ranks of local elites. At first, they were mostly British, but French-speaking Canadiens became much more numerous after the Quebec Act of 1774. The magistrates were responsible for issuing rules concerning public works, construction, markets, local policing, and more—rules not much different to those previously laid down by the intendants in New France.

  Towards the end of the eighteenth century, Montreal resembled a typical pre-industrial town, both in physical appearance and social structure, with the fur trade still the predominant activity. But major changes were afoot in the final few decades of the century, turning a new page on Montreal’s history.

  CHAPTER 6

  A Gateway City

  for the British Empire

  1800–1850

  For the first half of the nineteenth century, Montreal underwent a surprising series of changes. Growth surpassed previous levels, and new business activity took over from the fur trade, thereby transforming the city’s economy. The population, which had swelled, was now composed of a majority of English speakers. The area the town covered was growing and needed to be managed in new ways.

  A commercial metropolis

  The transformations Montreal was undergoing can be explained first and foremost by mass immigration to Canada. The movement began after the American War of Independence when thousands of Loyalists moved north of the border, mainly to Ontario, which they began to colonize. And it increased in tempo after 1815 with the end of the Napoleonic Wars and Ireland’s economic woes causing an unprecedented wave of migrants to leave the British Isles.

  At the same time, the French-Canadian population was growing rapidly, thanks to a sky-high birth rate. The countryside of the plains around Montreal was populated in a matter of decades, skipping ahead of the population on the lands around Quebec City.

  Whereas Montreal’s small rural population had curbed the town’s development in New France, the situation was now reversed. Montreal found itself at the heart of a rapidly expanding hinterland, which encompassed the vast plains surrounding it and, above all, Ontario, to which it was the main gateway. All these new farmers were in need of new products and were looking to sell their crop surpluses. Montreal would be the main broker in these exchanges.

  The town found itself at the head of a much more diversified business that had considerable economic repercussions. It exported produce—mainly wheat—to Britain and imported a host of manufactured goods. This new situation also spurred local manufacturers. Ships were built in Montreal and equipment manufactured to meet business needs. Shoes were made there, along with hardware items and the other products that gradually replaced imports and were distributed across the countryside using networks set up by Montreal merchants. The town’s increased population even created more work for a slew of small producers. Items continued to be made in artisans’ workshops for the most part, but bigger factories like John Molson’s brewery were beginning to emerge.

  Such a boom in activity boosted the construction and retail sectors, needless to say, but the services sector swelled too. Transportation required a bigger labour force, and inns were popping up all over town—newspapers too. More servants were needed as well. In these circumstances, the loss of the fur trade in 1821 was not devastating, such was the extent to which Montreal’s economy had diversified in past decades.

  But the transportation system had to be reorganized if new businesses in Montreal were to operate efficiently. Birch bark canoes had been well suited to the fur trade, but proved hopeless for meeting the demands of trade on a much larger scale. And so Montreal merchants had boats built and founded shipping companies to manage transportation between Montreal and Ontario and between Montreal and Quebec City. In 1809, John Molson launched Accommodation, the first steamship on the St. Lawrence, which shuttled back and forth between Montreal and Quebec City. Businessmen also got the government to set up a system of canals on the St. Lawrence, allowing their ships to bypass numerous rapids. The Lachine Canal, a project that had been dreamt up by the Sulpicians in the days of New France, at last became a reality in 1825 and would be expanded in the 1840s. Other canals were added along the St. Lawrence, all the way to the Great Lakes.

  The port also required some work. The muddy shoreline that stretched out before the town meant that ships had to weigh anchor off Montreal and unload their goods using smaller craft. Merchants wanted wharves and demanded a permanent organization be created to develop them. Their wish was granted when the Montreal Harbour Commission was set up in 1830, with commercial interests well represented. The commission set to work immediately and the wharves were built.

  Starting in the 1830s, the businessmen of Montreal also developed an interest in a new means of transport: the train. In 1836, they built the first railway in Canada, linking Laprairie to Saint-Jean on the south shore and hastening communications with the United States, and were involved in many other railway projects throughout the following decade.

  Masters of transportation, Montreal’s businessmen honed their control over the economy by setting up a trading network that encompassed everyone, from the importers/exporters in Montreal to the smaller merchants in the countryside, not to mention the regional wholesalers in between. It was backed by credit provided by businesses in Great Britain. Given the number of financial transactions, the businessmen soon set up their own banks, starting with the first bank in Canada, the Bank of Montreal, founded in 1817.

  All these changes saw Montreal replace Quebec City as the country’s largest and leading city from the 1830s. It was now the economic powerhouse of Canada and an important economic link in the British Empire, but despite its position of dominance, Montreal remained sorely dependent on the United Kingdom and its businesses.

  A new population

  Economic expansion brought with it a population boom that outpaced the rest of the country. In the second half of the eighteenth century, Montreal’s population doubled, before increasing sixfold over the next half century. A town of some 9,000 souls around 1800, it was home to 23,000 in 1825 and 58,000 in 1852. By then the most populous city in Canada, it would hold on to this title for the next century and a half.

  Immigration played a key role in this growth. The 1825 census already revealed that one third of Montrealers had been born abroad and, by the following census in 1831, one fifth of the popula
tion had immigrated to Montreal within the previous six years. So much change over such a short period of time couldn’t fail to leave its mark on the small town, which Montreal still was at the turn of the century.

  These changes were reflected in the population’s ethnic makeup. The British contingent—the English, Scots, and especially the Irish (who made up more than half of all new arrivals)—exploded. From 1831 onward, the majority of Montreal’s population was British in origin and would remain so for the next 35 years.

  The English-speaking population was no longer limited a handful of merchants and administrators: they were present in every class of society, swelling the ranks of artisans, as well as labourers and servants, among whom most were Irish. Moreover, the city’s new ethnic makeup followed its streets and lanes: the English and Scots dominated the west, the Irish the southwest, and the French-speaking Canadiens the east. Needless to say, there was also some overlap between these divisions, with some French Canadians in the west and some English in the east.

  The arrival of the British, quickly and en masse, also had a significant impact on Montreal’s culture. The English language was everywhere. Protestant churches, schools, and associations multiplied. The city’s architecture was transformed as it began to draw on British inspiration.

  This turnaround led to political and ethnic tensions that climaxed in the 1830s when the Parti patriote, formerly the Parti canadien led by Louis-Joseph Papineau, headed a political struggle that culminated in the rebellions of 1837 and 1838. Essentially, the political goals of the Patriotes, like those of the Reformers in Upper Canada led by William Lyon Mackenzie, involved obtaining self-government for the colonies. Violence grew and the city streets became a battleground for loyalists pitted against Patriotes. However, the rebellions did not break out in Montreal itself—there were too many British about and the garrison was too strong—but in the surrounding area where Canadiens dominated. The rebellions were crushed by the military, consecrating the political victory of English-speaking Montrealers. Montreal now belonged to them.

  The twin forces of immigration and economic change remoulded the city’s social structure. The ranks of the business elite swelled considerably. A smattering of beaver barons gave way to a throng of merchants, some of whom were beginning to specialize. A clearer hierarchy was forming between the leading businessmen—the McGills, Molsons, Torrances, Moffatts, and Ferriers—who had a stranglehold on trade, transportation, and finance, and local merchants whose influence was more modest. The Scots and the English dominated the first group, where only a handful of Canadiens—Masson and Cuvillier among them—were making a name for themselves. The sphere of activity of French-Canadian merchants tended to be limited to the city itself and the immediate surrounding area.

  Artisans also exploded in number thanks to the new possibilities afforded by rapid expansion. Growth was particularly pronounced in the leather and garment sectors, not to mention the metals, transportation equipment, wood, and food sectors. Construction grew in importance, employing one worker in ten. The French-speaking population dominated construction, whereas the English gained influence in the other sectors.

  In what was still a pre-industrial city, the number of labourers and servants—40 percent of the workforce in 1825—was considerable. Their ranks were of course inflated by the influx of poor, unskilled Irish immigrants. Labourers found employment in transportation and construction, while servants were for the most part women and girls, mainly immigrants. Manufacturers, who multiplied throughout the 1840s, could thus count on masses of workers who formed the basis of Montreal’s industrial proletariat.

  Immigration also made for religious diversity. A number of Protestant churches were now active in Montreal, each with its own place of worship and organizations. Church towers sprang up across the city, most of them Protestant. The small Jewish community had its own synagogue, the first one in Canada, built in 1777. But the Canadiens and the Irish ensured the bulk of the population remained Catholic. The Catholic Church adapted to the Irish by recruiting English-speaking priests and nuns and creating an Irish parish—Saint Patrick’s—whose church was built in 1847.

  The Catholic Church also had to adapt to the expanding Montreal area. Its goal was to create a separate diocese from the diocese of Quebec. First, Jean-Jacques Lartigue was named auxiliary bishop for Montreal in 1820. His nomination saw sparks fly with the Saint-Sulpice seminary, which had until then dominated religious life in Montreal. The difficulties smoothed themselves out in 1835 and Montreal finally got a bishopric of its own in 1836, although Bishop Lartigue died in 1840. His successor, Ignace Bourget, would more than leave his mark on the course of Montreal history in the decades that followed. The appointment of a bishop to Montreal led to the Saint-Jacques Cathedral being built. It opened its doors in 1825, while the Sulpicians had the new Notre Dame parish church built between 1824 and 1829 to meet growing numbers of the faithful.

  A new shape

  In 1792, the government redefined the boundaries of Montreal, setting them at a distance from the walls of 100 chains, based on the old British measurement, or approximately two kilometres. The new territory, an enormous rectangle, contained the old town, the suburbs, and a sizable rural area around them. This ensured Montreal had plenty of room to grow for decades to come.

  The trend continued: the suburbs especially grew and in 1825 contained a little over three quarters of the population. The biggest were the suburbs of Saint-Laurent, Québec, and Saint-Joseph. In 1831, the government divided the area into wards for the first time, and then redivided it in 1840 and, in particular, in 1845. As of 1845, Montreal had nine wards: three in the old town (West, Centre, and East) and six elsewhere (Sainte-Anne, Saint-Antoine, Saint-Laurent, Saint-Louis, Saint-Jacques, and Sainte-Marie). The town would remain divided in this way, with only minor modifications, until the end of the century.

  The private sector continued to drive urban development. One notable exception was the demolition between 1801 and 1817 of the fortifications, which had become awkward and cumbersome. The government put three commissioners in charge of the project and they came up with a plan to add appeal to the areas reclaimed. Their actions would leave their mark on the city for a long time to come: canals were made out of the rivers and de la Commune, Saint-Jacques, and McGill streets were all developed, not to mention Dalhousie and Victoria squares and Champ-de-Mars.

  It was also at the start of the nineteenth century that a new market was created, a market that would become Place Jacques-Cartier. The old market was reclaimed in the 1830s to build Montreal’s first Customs House. In 1833, Sainte-Anne market went up at Place D’Youville. It would be home to the Parliament of Canada from 1844 to 1849, when it was torched by protesters rioting against the adoption of the Rebellion Losses Bill, devised to compensate victims of repression during the rebellions of 1837–1838. A similar bill compensating victims in Upper Canada had passed with little opposition, but when the Governor had just sanctioned the equivalent bill for Lower Canada, English Tory protesters, egged on by The Montreal Gazette, marched on the Parliament, broke in, and set fire to the building that also housed the library and archives. This event brought an end to Montreal’s brief stint as the country’s capital. In 1845, the municipal government made a start on the imposing Bonsecours market building, which would act both as City Hall and a public market.

  These are only a few of the transformations to affect Old Montreal in the first half of the nineteenth century. Growing trade led merchants to erect bigger buildings for their stores and warehouses, particularly along Saint-Paul. Notre-Dame became the main shopping street, while Saint-Jacques was home to the headquarters of the first financial institutions (it was here that the Bank of Montreal had a new building built, from 1845 to 1848, opposite Place d’Armes). From the 1840s onward, merchants began to live elsewhere, moving away to what became the Golden Square Mile at the foot of Mount Royal and leaving the downtown area to commerce and city management.

  The bu
ildings of Old Montreal were built with grey stone dug up from quarries on the island. In the suburbs, on the other hand, almost every home was built with wood. The French style of home with a gable roof continued to predominate, and it was not until the 1840s that flat-roofed, British-inspired homes began to appear in rows. Over 50 years, Montreal garnered a reputation that it would hang on to for a long time to come: it became a city of tenants (some 70 percent of heads of household in 1825), due to an influx of poor people who could not afford to buy their own homes.

  Managing the city

  In the early nineteenth century, justices of the peace chosen by the colonial authority were still responsible for local administration. In order to take care of the needs of a city the size of Montreal, they had to adopt a growing body of regulations and to oversee a larger number of local officers (road inspectors, constables, tax collectors, etc.). The leaders of the Patriotes, who were fighting for a more democratic political system, wanted these justices of the peace replaced by elected city councillors. For their part, British merchants were campaigning for a Harbour Commission. Ignoring their usual differences, both groups joined together to support both projects. The Harbour Commission was set up in 1830 and the act incorporating the municipality was adopted the following year, though not applied until 1833. A first municipal council was elected and chose Jacques Viger as mayor. The experience was short-lived, however, since the act did not apply beyond 1836 and political unrest prevented its renewal. The justices of the peace recovered their previous responsibilities for a few more years.