Montreal, a slightly younger sister of Quebec, is more sophisticated and progressive. The largest city in Canada, she is, from a commercial standpoint, undoubtedly the most substantial. And yet, a mystery rests upon her. She speaks through domes and towers of some far off dream. She suggests a form in space that is circular. Most places are laid out on straight lines. You get the impression of a runner making for a goal—streets, shops, parks, people all straight line. There are few unexpected places. The atmosphere is clear cut. But Montreal is surprising, and vastly attractive. Her spirit is cloudy rather than glowing; and she wears purple best of any colour, though she began in a blaze of light.
To come up the river from the sea, or to go down the river from Kingston and so approach Montreal, is to realize the beauty and the prevalence of her cathedral domes coming like the sound of bells. When the air is misty and a fog is rising from the river, the sound is faint and mysterious. If the air clears you catch a golden note, and then another and another; and in [page 31] spite of myriads of roof-tops and the unfolding of a great city, laid terrace-like at the foot of Mount Royal, you know that Montreal is a circle.
Remember how she began, in a blaze of light. It was on a May morning, a little less than three hundred years ago, that Maisonneuve and his band of religious enthusiasts landed and on the very spot where, alas for romance the Customs House now stands, the saintly Dumont planted the grain of mustard seed which it was his belief was “destined to overshadow the land.” Born of the Church, sprung to life out of spiritual zeal—a sword-like French zeal at that—no wonder that Montreal ascends dome-like and wears a purple cloak.
The germ of the city came out of religion, but as she grew, her commanding situation drew commerce towards her. And from first to last trade has meant fighting.
She was on the outer confines of civilization and at the door of the Iroquois country. Hence the fur trade and with it the necessity for a military garrison. Indians, priests, soldiers; these in their garish or somber dress held the streets of the town at first. In another hundred years, though the priests and the soldiers were both to be seen, the Indians were beginning to disappear and the fur trader was less crafty. After a while he too disappeared from the life of the modern city. [page 32]
Apart from religious, political and business relationships, the influence of a dual element is important. It is a well-known fact that there is no Canadian city, and only one other in America, New Orleans, that can [page 33] compare in picturesqueness with Quebec. No seaport of the continent has more dignity and beauty than Montreal. The attraction is largely composed of solidity, allied to tradition and romance, that makes the French-English combination.
A book might be written on the various approaches to Montreal. Even the route by land from Quebec, over any of several ways across narrow fields facing on the river, is interesting. Here one may pass some of the old manor lands discarded at the termination of French rule. Visitors from the United States find points of comparison between Quebec and New Orleans, Montreal and Mobile. The lower streets of both Canadian cities recall the saints, but it was from the North that Bienville brought names to Mobile and New Orleans. The old manors also, common on the St. Lawrence, were introduced into Louisiana by Louis the XIV. There are now few traces of these seigneurial rights in the South, and in Canada the British Government bought them from the Seigneurs in order to simplify the law system.
Steep streets, wide distances, noble churches, great squares, river-way or mountain summit; yet with all its solidity this is a city of surprises. I hear a church bell ringing, a sandalled monk may pass me, a priest hurries by, book in hand…Then, a laugh in the air, [page 34] and a party of school girls pass, humming an English air. Before the great Banks or Railroad Offices, whose headquarters are stationed here, antiquity is lost in commerce. But just around a corner there are streets whose low stone buildings take one back to the early days of the fur trade.
These glimpses of Montreal make me glad that I do not know it ‘thoroughly.’ I would rather retain flashes that are painted in colours so vivid that they can not easily be effaced.
There was a snowy night when we stopped at the great doors of Notre Dame and slipped in where a thousand candles were burning. Somewhere out of the distance came the vibrant sing-song chant of the French priest. There was the city in the cold blue light of early morning, the streets piled high with snow. The city burning at noon-day under an August glare, the golden angel of the spire of Bonsecours touched by the sun, the drip, drip from the fountain in a Square insisting upon itself intermittently between the onrush of traffic. A city of twilight seen from the mountain with starry lights beginning to twinkle below, a great ship coming lazily in from the sea, the busy docks a faint blur in the distance, and the panorama of streets and squares and towers and steeples all mixed in a haze of coloured light. The city at night with a midsummer [page 36] moon floating above a serene street of palatial residences, the silhouettes of great buildings, the blind high walls that guard the Church’s possessions, the shrill laughter of the French town—the old city—this is the meeting of past and present in Montreal’s own way.
When I see candles lit on the altars of Montreal I think of the legend that relates to that May day when she was christened. For we are told that when night fell a Mass was celebrated, and fire-flies, caught and imprisoned in a phial upon the altar, served as lights.
The old houses are full of romance. The Château de Ramezay is a low, cottage-like building behind an old-fashioned stone fence. For over two hundred years it has been a house of importance. Now it is gray with age and exceedingly picturesque in spite of the fact that it is a museum. On its left the quaint open market edges close and slightly below it; a crowed, many coloured, odoriferous bouquet. Claude de Ramezay, Governor of Montreal, used the Château for twenty years. After his death it became the property of “La Compagnie des Indes,” and the salons lost the roses and candle light of polite French society and were crowded with Indians from the back country and fur traders. After the Conquest it became the residence of the British Governors. When the American [page 36] revolutionary army occupied Montreal in 1775, this was Montgomery’s headquarters, and from it issued his manifesto to the Canadian people, urging them to cast off their allegiance to Great Britain. Benjamin Franklin [page 37] came here at the time, bringing his printing press which was set up in the vaults of the Château.
The other day poking underground, as I have so often done, in these stone vaults of castle-like construction I found among ancient trophies a queer phæton-like conveyance with an iron rod sticking up in the centre. It looked at least two hundred years old. I enquired of an ancient guide upstairs. “That,” he said, “is Montreal’s first automobile—a matter of only thirty years ago!”
The neighbourhood of the Château was in 1705 the fashionable part of the town and was occupied by the Baron de Longueil, the Contrecoeurs, Madame de Portneuf and others of the French aristocracy who naturally chose their houses near the magnificent garden of the Jesuits.
South of Notre Dame Church, indeed, is the region in which romance lingers. Going down St. Sulpice Street to St. Paul Street and then turning east to St. Jean Baptiste, one of the oldest houses in the city may be seen. It is now occupied by a Chemical Company. St. Gabriel Street was laid out in 1680 and one sloping roofed building dates back to 1687. Its heavily vaulted cellars were probably used for storing furs. Jacques Cartier Square also contains its old houses.
The Place D’Armes centres the city’s life. In the [page 38] Square stands Maisonneuve in bronze, brave in the cuirass and French dress of the 17th Century holding the banner of the fleur-de-lys. The sculptor, Louis Hébert, has suggested phases of early Canadian life in [page 39] his bas-reliefs and the four figures at the base in bronze, an Indian, a colonist’s wife, a colonist with the legendary dog Pilote, and a soldier. Notre Dame de Montreal faces the Square with its tall stiff façade and towers and here is also the Bank of Montreal, pure classic Corinthian, the white granite Royal Trust Building, and the Post Office with its bas-reliefs in the Portico after designs by Flaxman.
All about Bonsecours, the church and market, you feel the tingling magic of old Canada. The very name was a thank offering for escape from the Iroquois. Maisonneuve felled the first trees for the little church and pulled them out of the forest. That was in 1657. A second larger chapel was built twenty years later and the present church was erected upon its site; the stone foundations go back to 1675. The new church has been too much ‘restored’ and ‘improved.’ But still the miraculous Virgin, whom Sister Marguerite Bourgeoys set up to guard the sailors two centuries ago, looks out towards the water, and there are old paintings and old altars. Old memories too, fading eras slipping by into the centuries with hardly an echo in the sturdy French provincial life of to-day. On the Place Viger, a block from the church, is a statue to Chénier, one of the ‘patriotes’ of 1837 who died fighting furiously in the church of St. Eustache, outside the city, where he had [page 40] taken refuge. But in the market, where now the habitants flock on Tuesdays and Fridays, there is still a note of the past in the quaint carts, the homespuns and the little chairs that are brought in from the country for sale. Also there are squawking ducks and chickens, and maple sugar, and garlic, and straw hats and native tabac, and rosaries and cheap jewellery. And the barter takes one back to Paris markets, only this is a kindlier commerce.
There is a newer but no less striking romance in the opening up of the mountain district. The upper levels of Westmount, creeping up Côte des Neiges; the magnificent driveways; great vistas of plains seen from one mountain, with other mountains dim on the horizon; here a tall column, with an incomparable background of hills, the Cartier Monument on Fletcher’s Field; there a Pleasure Park; to the lower left, if you are looking south, the Molson Stadium, pride of McGill;—every thing on a heroic scale, like masterful young music set to an old Canadian theme.
Because she is a city with a soul it would seem that her literary traditions should be many. As a matter of fact this is hardly the case, though certain outstanding figures are undoubtedly linked with it. Romance rests upon the name of Charles Heavysege, who came to Montreal from Liverpool in 1853. He was a wood [page 41] carver by profession and his drama “Saul” shows that he was a poet by birth. George Murray, an Oxford man, did much literary work in his new home, and so did John Reade, who arrived in Canada in 1837 from Belfast and joined the Montreal Gazette. William D. Lighthall is a Canadian anthologist of note, a poet and also a novelist. Stephen Leacock is a humorist of international fame. Dr. William H. Drummond has for ever left his impress upon the literature of Canada in the habitant verse which has immortalized the French-Canadian farmer, the voyageur and the coureur de bois.
The “Chansons Populaires” of Canada are unique. The songs, which came out of the convents of France in the Middle Ages, were brought to Quebec by its founders. As the years went on the ancient, beautiful songs became Canadianized, in a sort of verbal and musical patois containing much piquant anecdote of the early days. Dr. Drummond in his poems illustrates the life and manners, the humour and the tragedy of the habitant. He does not touch the old songs which are their heritage.
In a different way Mrs. J. W. F. Harrison, “Seranus,” has pictured the life along the St. Lawrence in her exquisite villanelles, many of them written in or near Montreal. A group of the younger generation [page 42] of poets would include such names as Nelligan, Lozeau and Paul Morin.
During the summer months the entente between Canada and the United States is strong. Montreal is full of Americans, which recalls a tribute from Horace Traubel, late of Philadelphia and long a sojourner in this city which he loved so well. He says: “What we get in New York from our East side we get here in a Latin and sometimes an Oriental way. The distinctly English cities whether on this or the other side of the Border are passionless prose. They need fire. They need colour. They are too respectable to be descent. Montreal is awake, Sundays and week-days.”
For fully a century Montreal has been alive to the new movement in education, art and science. As far back as 1801 the establishment of non-sectarian free schools was provided for, and shortly after that, the foundation for McGill was laid. It is now one of the great universities of the world, and such distinguished names as those of Sir William Dawson, William Peterson, L L.D. and Sir Arthur Currie, Commander-in-Chief of the Canadian forces in France during the great war, are associated as its Principals. The Hon. James McGill, a leading merchant and citizen of Montreal, looked forward to a University which should consist of several colleges. Three such are already [page 44] in existence, the first and original one being that which bears his name.
Montreal is a centre for art and for artists. While the National Gallery at Ottawa contains its treasures, Montreal possesses the most important permanent collection of European pictures in Canada. The new Art Gallery on Sherbrooke Street, beautiful in its classic architecture, was erected through the liberality of a group of Montreal picture lovers. [page 44] |
