The History of Montreal
Paul-André Linteau
History of Montreal
The Story of a Great North American City
Translated by Peter McCambridge
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
Quebec: A History 1867-1929. Toronto: 1983 (with R. Durocher and J.-C. Robert).
The Promoters’ City: Building the Industrial Town of Maisonneuve, 1883-1918. Toronto: 1985.
Nouvelle histoire du Québec et du Canada. Montreal, CEC, 1985 (with L. Charpentier, C. Laville and R. Durocher).
Quebec Since 1930. Toronto: 1991 (with R. Durocher, J.-C. Robert and F. Ricard).
Histoire de Montréal depuis la Confédération. Montreal: 1992, 2000.
Clés pour l’histoire de Montréal. Bibliographie. Montreal: 1992 (with J. Burgess, L. Dechêne and J.-C. Robert).
Histoire du Canada. Paris: 1994-2010.
Barcelona-Montréal. Desarollo urbano comparado / Développement urbain comparé. Barcelona: 1998 (with Horacio Capel, eds.).
Vers la construction d’une citoyenneté canadienne. Paris: 2006 (with J.-M. Lacroix, eds.).
Vivre en ville. Bruxelles et Montréal (XIXe-XXe siècles). Brussels: 2006 (with S. Jaumain. eds.).
France-Canada-Québec. 400 ans de relations d’exception. Montreal: 2008 (with S. Joyal, eds.).
Sainte-Catherine Street: At the Heart of Montreal Life. Montreal: 2010.
Place Ville Marie: Montreal’s Shining Landmark. Montreal: 2012 (with F. Vanlaethem, S. Marchand, and J.-A. Chartrand).
Originally published as Brève histoire de Montréal
© 2007 by Les éditions du Boréal
Publié avec l’autorisation de Les éditions du Boréal, Montréal, Québec
Translation Copyright © Baraka Books 2013
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Linteau, Paul-André, 1946-
The history of Montréal: the story of a great North American city / Paul-André Linteau; translated by Peter McCambridge.
Translation of: Brève histoire de Montréal.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Issued also in electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-926824-77-2
1. Montréal (Québec)–History.
FC2947.4.L55313 2013 971.4'28 C2013-900715-6
ISBN 978-1-926824-77-2 pbk; 978-1-926824-81-9 epub; 978-1-926824-81-9 pdf; 978-1-926824-81-9 mobi/kindle
Cover by Folio infographie
Book design by Folio infographie
Translated by Peter McCambridge
Legal Deposit, 2nd quarter 2013
Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec
Library and Archives Canada
Published by Baraka Books of Montreal.
6977, rue Lacroix, Montréal, Québec H4E 2V4
Telephone: 514 808-8504
info@barakabooks.com
www.barakabooks.com
Printed and bound in Quebec
Baraka Books acknowledges the generous support of its publishing program from the Société de développement des entreprises culturelles du Québec (SODEC) and the Canada Council for the Arts.
We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada, through the National Translation Program for Book Publishing for our translation activities and through the Canada Book Fund (CBF) for our publishing activities.
Trade Distribution and Returns
Canada and the United States
Independent Publishers Group
1-800-888-4741 (IPG1);
orders@ipgbook.com
Cover photos
FRONT COVER: clockwise from top.
Corner Craig street and Saint-Laurent, Montréal, ca1910. Notman Photographic Archives, Musée McCord MP-0000.816.3
Expo 67: Ville de Montréal, Collection Claude Bouchard
The Port in 1884: Musée McCord, Collection Claude Bouchard
Corner Saint-Urbain and La Gauchetière, Archives de Montréal, J.Horatio Walker (1858-1938)
BACK COVER
Student march on Sherbrooke street, March 22, 2012, Jacques Nadeau
Montreal skyline at night, Claude Guillet
Publisher’s Foreword
Montreal has always fascinated people throughout the world. Yet, nearly forty-five years have gone by since the last accessible short history of Montreal appeared in English, Montreal: A Brief History by Cooper published in 1969. So much has changed since then, not the least of which is the way we study, read and understand history. Professor Paul-André Linteau ensured that French-speaking readers could read the story of Montreal when he wrote the original book, Brève histoire de Montréal, first published in 1992 to mark the city’s 350th anniversary and then updated in 2007. Surprisingly, however, the book did not appear in English until now. In itself, that absence fully justifies publishing this book.
Yet there are so many other reasons to bring out a good short history of Montreal. People have written about this city extensively, often enthusiastically, sometimes romantically, occasionally disparagingly, but never indifferently. Fascination for the city and its inhabitants dates back many centuries.
In 1535, Jacques Cartier glowingly described Montreal’s predecessor, the Iroquoian village of Hochelaga and the country surrounding it, now the island of Montreal, as “the finest and most excellent one could find anywhere… fine land with large fields covered with corn of the country.” He also lavished praise on the people who welcomed him and on how their village was organized. During his travels in the seventeenth century, Samuel de Champlain also vaunted the site of the future city.
The Swedish botanist Pehr Kalm, in his 1749 travelogue originally published in Latin, provides detailed descriptions of the town’s fortifications, its churches and wide streets, its lively weekly market, but also its people, and particularly the women. Contrasting the ladies in Montreal with those in Quebec and in France, he wrote: “Even the French reproach the ladies in Montreal for their immodesty, like that of Indian women, and their lack of instruction.”
One hundred years later, Henry David Thoreau brilliantly captured the feeling of Montreal in his book A Yankee in Canada published after he visited Canada in 1850.
This city makes the more favourable impression from being approached by water, and also being built of stone, a gray limestone found on the island… it made on me the impression of a seaport. (…) Montreal makes the impression of a larger city than you had expected to find, though you may have heard that it contains nearly sixty thousand inhabitants. In the newer parts it appeared to be growing fast like a small New York, and to be considerably Americanized. The names of the squares reminded you of Paris,—the Champ de mars, the Place d’Armes, and others,—and you felt as if a French revolution might break out any moment. Glimpses of Mount Royal rising behind the town, and the names of some streets in that direction, make one think of Edinburgh.
Jackie Robinson came to Montreal one hundred years after Thoreau, not as a Yankee but as an African-American baseball player about to revolutionize professional sports. Jackie Robinson and his family loved Montreal and talked about it regularly. To the CBC he declared, “Fortunately I broke in (to professional baseball) in a city like Montreal. We have a tremendously warm spot for that city because they treated us so well… The fact that I played in Montreal had a great deal to do with the success I had.”
Quotes about Montreal over the centuries are so numerous that it would take another book to do them justice. And yet we would still not know what makes the city so interesting.
Who better therefore than Paul-André Linteau to take on that challenge? Who better than he to explain the forces and circumstances that have made Montreal what it is, one of those unique cities that has been—and will
likely continue to be—at the crossroads of history? Professor Linteau has devoted much of his life to studying the history of Montreal, writing about it in popular and academic publications, teaching it to university students, and giving talks about it in Canada and abroad. This book is a result of those many years of teaching and research, but is also based on the works of hundreds of authors who have explored the diverse aspects of Montreal’s past. A special thanks for their help is also extended to Mario Robert, who heads the Archives at the City of Montreal, and Jean-Claude Robert, Emeritus Professor at the Université du Québec à Montréal.
As Montreal prepares to celebrate in 2017 the 375th anniversary of its founding, Baraka Books is proud to join forces with Paul-André Linteau to publish The History of Montréal, The Story of a Great North American City.
Robin Philpot
CHAPTER 1
Hochelaga
Montreal was born in 1642, but the area’s history obviously dates back much further. And yet knowledge of this part of the city’s past remains, even today, far from complete. We know that the island was frequented—and even inhabited—by Iroquoian people before the French arrived, but experts do not agree on what happened to these first populations. 1
An enviable location
To understand the reasons that led to groups settling, temporarily or permanently, on the island of Montreal, first we need to take a closer look at the island. Thousands of years ago, only the summit of Mount Royal peeked out above the waters of the Champlain Sea. As the waters retreated, the mountain acted as an anchor for the land that formed the island of Montreal, and remains a focal point of the cityscape today.
The St. Lawrence River played an even greater role in shaping Montreal’s history. All around the world, mighty rivers have cradled civilizations, favouring the emergence of great cities, especially for centuries when water was the main means of transporting people and goods over long distances. The St. Lawrence was no exception. But why did Montreal and not Sorel or Trois-Rivières become the biggest city along the river? As we will see later, this can partly be explained by the city’s history as a whole, as well as the constraints of geography.
Coming from the Atlantic, travellers along the St. Lawrence hit a major obstacle at Montreal: the Lachine rapids. Goods had to be unloaded and portaged all the way to Lachine, with things being no better for those heading the other way. This obligation to unload and reload boats would make Montreal’s fortune over the years.
Prehistoric Montreal was likely a temporary camp for groups passing through the St. Lawrence Valley. With game, fish, and berries in abundance, it even offered ready access to food. Yet there is scant archaeological evidence of human activity on the prehistoric island of Montreal. We know that occupation of the St. Lawrence Valley began some 6,000 years ago, but artifacts uncovered beneath the city seem to date back no further than a handful of centuries before the Europeans arrived. It is plausible that the island was frequented long before, but this has never been proven. Nor do we know exactly when Aboriginal peoples permanently settled on the island of Montreal. What we do know is that in 1535, when French explorer Jacques Cartier travelled across the island, he found a sedentary population living in a large village: Hochelaga.
The Iroquoians
These people were part of a group known as the St. Lawrence Iroquoians. The St. Lawrence Iroquoians belonged to the broad linguistic family of the Iroquoians, along with other nations like the Hurons and the Iroquois, but were a distinct people. Little is known about their origins. The St. Lawrence Iroquoians are thought to have formed a specific cultural group around 1300, and are believed to have emerged from groups previously established in the area. Specialists have observed differences within this people, particularly between the groups that settled around Quebec and Montreal.
The St. Lawrence Iroquoians, like the Hurons and the Iroquois, were sedentary and lived mainly from agriculture. They mostly grew corn, but also beans, squash, and tobacco. They fished and hunted to complete their diet, and traded with Algonquin hunter-gatherers, exchanging corn for fur pelts and meat.
Women had an important role to play in their society and were the heads of families and clans. They farmed the land and made pottery decorated with original motifs that illustrated the distinct culture of the St. Lawrence Iroquoians.
The Iroquoians lived in villages surrounded by wooden stockades, with some of the biggest villages boasting more than a thousand inhabitants. They built huge oblong-shaped houses, shared by families from the same clan. The houses were made from wood lattice covered with bark. Farmed fields surrounded their villages. After 10 to 20 years, when the fields had grown less fertile, the Iroquoians would move their villages, usually to somewhere nearby.
The village of Hochelaga described by Cartier broadly resembled this description. It was surrounded by a high stockade to which walkways were attached, enabling the village’s defenders to throw projectiles at attackers. Access to the village was through a single gate. Inside, Cartier saw some 50 houses, 50 paces long and 12 to 15 paces wide. Each was divided into separate living areas for each family and had a central fireplace for cooking food. Cartier estimated the village to be home to one thousand souls, but judging by the number and dimensions of the houses, ethnologist Bruce Trigger believes 1,500 to be a likelier estimate. Here is how Cartier described Hochelaga:
And in the middle of these fields is situated and stands the village of Hochelaga, near and adjacent to a mountain, the slopes of which are fertile and are cultivated, and from the top of which one can see for a long distance. We named this mountain “Mount Royal.” The village is circular and is completely enclosed by a wooden palisade in three tiers like a pyramid. The top one is built crosswise, the middle one perpendicular and the lowest one of strips of wood placed lengthwise. The whole is well joined and lashed after their manner, and is some two lances in height. There is only one gate and entrance to this village, and that can be barred up. Over this gate and in many places about the enclosure are species of galleries with ladders for mounting to them, which galleries are provided with rocks and stones for the defence and protection of the place. There are some fifty houses in this village, (…) built completely of wood and covered in and bordered up with large pieces of the bark and rind of trees, as broad as a table, which are well and cunningly lashed after their manner. (From H.P. Biggar, The Voyages of Jacques Cartier: published from the originals with translations, notes, and appendices, Ottawa, 1924.)
So where was Hochelaga? It remains a mystery to this day. According to Cartier, it was close to the mountain. In the nineteenth century, remains of an Iroquoian village were discovered—the Dawson site—south of Sherbrooke, opposite McGill University. But it was much smaller than the site described by the French explorer and probably another village, perhaps a satellite of Hochelaga.
Everything hangs, obviously, on how we interpret Cartier’s words. If, as most specialists believe, Cartier approached the island from the St. Lawrence side, then Hochelaga was probably somewhere between today’s Sherbrooke street and the mountain. If, as Quebec architect and history buff Aristide Beaugrand-Champagne maintained, he came along Rivière des Prairies (sometimes called the Back river in English), then the village would be on the other side of the mountain. Which means that, unless new archaeological discoveries advance the debate, the question surrounding the village’s location will remain unanswered. But one thing is for sure: there was no direct correlation between the location of Hochelaga and the town of Montreal to come, since the latter would be built on the shores of the St. Lawrence.
Cartier returned to Montreal in 1541. His notes from the voyage mention two Iroquoian villages along the St. Lawrence. They were probably temporary fishing camps, one close to Sainte-Marie Current (near what is now the Jacques-Cartier Bridge), the other close to the Lachine rapids. This time there was no mention of Hochelaga, but the town of Tutonaguy, which Cartier did not visit. Might it have been another name for Hochelaga (or perhaps even the
village’s real name, with Hochelaga the name for the area as a whole?) or a village that replaced Hochelaga? The question has never been answered to anyone’s complete satisfaction.
What should we take away from all of this? In the sixteenth century, and perhaps before, the island of Montreal was home to at least one major permanent settlement inhabited by the St. Lawrence Iroquoians. By 1603, when Champlain explored the St. Lawrence, the Iroquoians no longer lived in Montreal or anywhere else in the St. Lawrence Valley. Many have tried to explain their disappearance. A series of poor harvests caused by bad weather could have forced them to move. Illnesses introduced by the French, against which they were defenceless, might have thinned their ranks. Most of all it is highly probable that they were attacked by their traditional enemies the Hurons, the Algonquins, or the Iroquois. Keen to join the burgeoning fur trade with the French at the end of the sixteenth century, these rivals might have cast aside the St. Lawrence Iroquoians who controlled the river, the main means of travel. A combination of these factors might have led to the dispersal of the St. Lawrence Iroquoians. And it is possible that some of the survivors were integrated into other Aboriginal groups. The end result was that at the start of the seventeenth century, Montreal no longer had a permanent settlement, even though the island remained a hub that hunting groups, war parties, and trading expeditions would pass through.