Montreal

“ The Victoria Bridge, a triumph of engineering skill, spans the river above Montreal. It is built of solid blocks of granite, a mile and three quarters in length; and it is in passing under its noble arches that we get our first view of Montreal, the metropolis of the Dominion.
A filmy mist lay over the "city of spires," spreading up even to the sides of Mount Royal—the wooded mountain that rises abruptly and stands solitary guard behind the city. The golden dome of the old market of Bonsecours, and the twin spires of the cathedral of Notre Dame loomed faintly out from its midst. ”

“ Montreal is a much finer-looking place than I had expected. The irregularity of the streets pleased the eye, wearied by straight lines and regular frontage. The houses of stone with double windows have plain bare fronts, and do not present so good an appearance as the best of New York; but the character of the residences as a whole is better, and the effect of the city, to compare small things with great, very much more interesting and picturesque. ”

“ But while making these resolutions Roland, like one in a dream, watched the view from Madame Darnel's windows: Montreal, the largest of the three elevations near the city so named—its base surrounded by country houses, with orchards and gardens, and its summit covered with foliage; the city itself, with its lofty edifices of dark limestone or of painted wood, its churches, monasteries, its glittering spire, its shipping, and the St. Lawrence winding far away in the distance, till he was roused by the rustle of a silk dress, and Aurelia Darnel stood before him, and her hand was in his. ”

“ Montreal may be entered by many ways, by land or by sea; but she is very conveniently entered from New England.
It is a picturesque trip, that between Boston and Montreal, and as the sun journeys onward to the horizon line the purple valleys and the rose and amber that tinge the summits of the Green Mountains afford luxurious contrasts of colour. In the late evening the brilliant illuminations of Montreal at the west side of the Victoria Jubilee Bridge, {68} spanning the St. Lawrence River, come into view. ”

“ Montreal is a turbulent place. It is not very many years since a mob assembled and burned down the Parliament House, for which exercise of the popular will the city is disqualified from being the seat of government. I saw something of Montreal society, which seemed to me to be quite on a par with that in our English provincial towns.
I left this ancient city at seven o'clock on a very dark, foggy evening for Quebec, the boats between the two cities running by night, in order that the merchants, by a happy combination of travelling with sleep, may not lose that time which to them is money. ”

“ Soon the city of Montreal was discovered with its tin roofs shining afar. Their reflections fell on the eye like a clash of cymbals on the ear. Above all the church of Notre Dame was conspicuous, and anon the Bonsecours market-house, occupying a commanding position on the quay, in the rear of the shipping. This city makes the more favorable impression from being approached by water, and also being built of stone, a gray limestone found on the island. ”

“ Montreal should be made known not only as a gateway for export and import transportation, but also as the busy center of headquarters of numerous and constantly growing industries of its own. It is a distributing source of cheap power, light and heat. All that goes towards the making of a great and successful commercial metropolis has been planned by the merchants of modern Montreal, whose predecessors began humbly [544] in 1822, and ever conscious of the future destiny of their city, were always led by visions of its future greatness as the commercial metropolis of Canada. ”

“ Certainly it will be seen that Montreal is great and will be greater still, because great thoughts, high ideals, strenuous purposes have been born and fostered within its walls.
The thinking student will witness the law of cause and effect, of action, and reaction, ever at work, and will read design where the undisciplined mind would only see chaos and blind forces at work.
Recognizing that the city is a living organism with a personality of its own, he will watch with ever increasing interest the life emerging from the seed and at work in all the varying stages of its growth and development. ”

“ The organ rolled out its floods of soul-shattering music, and deep-throated chant of priests invoked God's blessing on the coming of the women to the mission. So began the Ursuline Convent of Quebec and the Hôtel Dieu of the hospital sisters; but Montreal was still a howling wilderness untenanted by man save in midsummer, when the fur traders came to Champlain's factory and the canoes of the Indians from the Up-Country danced down the swirling rapids like sea birds on waves. ”

“ In this "History of Montreal" we shall picture the busy world as we see it round us. Here are heroic and saintly deeds being done today in our midst. The foundations of new and mighty works even surpassing those of the past are being laid in the regions of religion, philanthropy, art, science, commerce, engineering, government and city planning this very hour, and their builders are unconsciously building unto fame. ”

“ But as it is almost wholly of stone in the business portions and along the extensive and massive quays which line the banks of the river, Montreal makes a dignified, indeed, an imposing effect. The beholder for the first time, unless marvelously well up in his geography, is surprised to find so large and so complete a city. To stand at a street corner for a moment is to see pass by the Indian woman, wrapped in her heavy blanket ”

“ The people of this city spend much of their time in laying up their riches in this world or the next. Indeed, the British part of Montreal is dominated by the Scotch race; there is a Scotch spirit sensible in the whole place. The rather narrow, rather gloomy streets, the solid, square, grey, aggressively prosperous buildings, the general greyness of the city, the air of dour prosperity. ”

“ The people here are extravagantly fond of dress; a stranger would take Montreal to be a city inhabited by none but the rich and idle: they are all finely powdered, walk with their hats under their arms, and wear long coats, adorned with tinsel lace, and buttoned down to the extremity. ”

“ Religious enthusiasts founded Montreal, and the foundation of Montreal was a challenge to the Iroquois. Always the enemies of the French, the Five Nations saw in the settlement a new menace to their power. Above the Richelieu river, they looked on the St. Lawrence as more especially within their own domain; and when Frenchmen took up ground on the island of Montreal, the Indians resented the intrusion with savage bitterness and with more than savage foresight. On the part of the French, state policy had nothing to say to the new undertaking, nor was it a commercial venture. ”

“ Montreal is a beautiful city. Its public buildings are constructed of solid stone, in which a handsome limestone, found in the neighborhood, predominates. Its churches, banks, hospitals and colleges are all edifices of which to be proud. Its private dwellings are, a majority of them, substantially built, while many of the roofs, cupolas and spires are covered with metal, which, seen at a distance, glitters in the sun. The most elegant private residences are found upon the slope of Mont Rèal, surrounded by ample grounds containing fine lawns, trees and shrubbery. ”

“ The paths that lead from the Gardens are varied and fascinating. One stretches up a broad and sober street to Ste. Catherine's, the great shopping promenade of the town, where the girls are all bound west toward the big shops that stretch from Phillips to Dominion squares—another at the opposite direction three blocks to the south and the harbor-front, a wonderful place now in a chaos of transformation that is going to make Montreal the most efficient port in the world. ”

“ It would be absurd to suggest that poverty or slums are conspicuous things in Montreal. The average tourist will see none of them, but only many beautiful things—from the Bank of Montreal to the Cathedral, from the Lachine Rapids to the Mountain. ”

“ Sometimes on a Tuesday or a Friday morning we have come to the place early enough to see the open-air market of Montreal, one of the heritages of past to present that seems little disturbed with the coming and the passing of the years. Shrewd shoppers coming out of the solid stone mass of the Bonsecours pause beside the wagons that are backed along the broad-flagged sidewalks. The country roundabout Montreal must be filled with fat farms. One look at the wagons tells of low moist acres that have not yet lost their fertility. ”

“ The people of Montreal, in general, are remarkably hospitable and attentive to strangers; they are sociable also amongst themselves, and fond in the extreme of convivial amusements. In winter, they keep up such a constant and friendly intercourse with each other, that it seems then as if the town were inhabited but by one large family. ”

“ Navigation across the Atlantic from Canada opened in 1831; the first railroad was successfully started in 1836; and Montreal was incorporated in 1832. The Lachine Canal had been completed in 1825. From the first, Montreal has been prosperous, and the present metropolis, rapidly nearing a population of three-quarters of a million, with its nine miles of river front, its fifty public parks, its admirable municipal improvements in all modern appliances, stands as a monument to the faith and devotion of its early founders led to the wilderness as by vision. ”

“ As the metropolitan city of a virgin half-continent, towards which the tide of immigration is yearly rushing with greater force, Montreal is growing with Canada’s growth, and every man who is convinced of the tremendous development Canada will witness within the next decade must realize that this development will mean that Montreal must move, in that time, close to the million mark. ”

“ And then today when I went westward and saw what was being done there in the way of expansion in the building up of the environs of the city, in the multiplicity of machine and car shops, along the Lachine canal, I said to myself that such growth surpassed that of London or Paris proportionately to population.
“Why, you will have a million, not in a decade, but in a lustrum. You don’t see all this growth as a stranger sees it. I am not a stranger, of course; but I have been absent. I tell you I am amazed at what I see, and proud of old Montreal.” ”

“ I should not do justice to Montreal were I to omit to mention the drive of the place, "round the mountain." A New York gentleman whom we met in Montreal took us round, and I was glad I saw the city at parting to such good advantage; distance brightened it up wonderfully, and the St. Lawrence sparkled as gayly and as innocently in the sunlight, as if its waters did not play the mischief with every traveller who tasted them. There are many fine [Pg 206] country-seats round the mountain. ”

“ The situation of Montreal lying on Mount Royal and along the river is most picturesque. Population with suburbs 466,000. The city is noted for its hospitals and their perfect equipment. Montreal is the home of scores of millionaires, not a few of whom are patrons of art, owning valuable paintings and generous towards educational and charitable objects. The population is mixed, the French predominating, and yet to a wonderful extent harmony and good feeling prevail. ”

“ Half a century ago no one in his wildest imaginings could have prophesied the amazing growth of the Canadian Metropolis. In 1861, Montreal had a population of but 91,000 and with its suburbs 101,439. It was practically the ancient Montreal, which had scarcely outgrown the days when it was a fortified city crowded within walls to resist the incursions of hostile Iroquois. The city was bounded on the north by the old creek at Craig Street, and did not extend west of Victoria Square. ”

“ Montreal, the second city in political dignity, but the first in magnitude and commercial importance, in British America, is situated in Latitude 45° 31' North, and Longitude 73° 34' West. Including the suburbs it covers about 1,020 acres, although within the fortifications the area did not much exceed 100 acres. Its local advantages for the purposes of trade, giving it a decided superiority over every [639] other place in the Province, and its climate, though severe, is more genial than that of Quebec. ”

“ M——‘s dry goods store has long been known in Montreal as a well-started and well-appointed establishment. Carriages daily blocked the thoroughfare while waiting for their fashionable owners outside its door; and inside busy walkers and clerks could be seen running hither and thither, serving customers. Young women, also, some of them still bright and cheerful, many, alas, pale and heavy with sadness, might be seen grouped behind the counter, engaged in handing goods down from the shelves, and displaying them to the fashionable loungers behind the counter. ”

“ And nowadays smart modern restaurants are also crowding upon Ste. Catherine street, for modern Montreal will proudly tell you, and tell you again and again, that it is more continental, far more continental than London, which in turn is tightly bound down by the traditions of English conservatism. Montreal is not very literary—Toronto surpassing it in that regard—but it has a keen love of good paintings, good art of every sort. It ranks itself next to New York and Boston and among North American cities in this regard. ”