VOL 4, NO ULY-AUGUST 2007 . 4 NewsJ - Expo 67...

HeritageQuebec

NewsVOL 4, NO. 4 JULY-AUGUST 2007

G R A N D F A T H E R S O F C O N F E D E R A T I O N

$5

Lessons from Expo

Sea to Shining SeaRevisiting the Confederation Train

How living it up in ’67 put street life back into urban planning

Party Palace VisionAn architect looks back on Man and His World

EDITOR

JOSEPH GRAHAM

COPY EDITOR

SHEILA ESKENAZI

PRODUCTION & DESIGN

DAN PINESE

PUBLISHER

THE QUEBEC ANGLOPHONE

HERITAGE NETWORK

400-257 QUEEN STREET

SHERBROOKE (LENNOXVILLE)QUEBEC

J1M 1K7PHONE

1-877-964-0409(819) 564-9595

FAX

564-6872CORRESPONDENCE

[email protected]

WEBSITE

WWW.QAHN.ORG

PRESIDENT

RODERICK MACLEOD

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

DWANE WILKIN

HERITAGE PORTAL COORDINATOR

MATTHEW FARFAN

OFFICE MANAGER

KATHY TEASDALE

Quebec Heritage Magazine is

produced on a bi-monthly basis by the

Quebec Anglophone Heritage Network

(QAHN) with the support of The

Department of Canadian Heritage and

Quebec’s Ministere de la Culture et des

Communications. QAHN is a

non-profit and non-partisan umbrella

organization whose mission is to help

advance knowledge of the history and

culture of English-speaking society in

Quebec. Canada Post Publication Mail

Agreement Number 405610004.

Director’s Message

Letters

Duly notedMosaic encore, please

Timelines

Gaspé landmark savedReprieve for Shrewsbury

Crystal Falls reunion plannedTightening the line

Stitches in time

Lessons from Expo

Living it up in ’67 revived Montreal streets Party Palace Vision

An architect remembers Man and His World Grandfathers of Confederation

The long struggle for Canadian democracySea to Shining Sea

All aboard the Confederation Train The Edge of Change

Centennial fervour went cold in Morin Heights

Reviews

Paths of GloryThe Other Quebec

HindSight

Coming of Age

Event Listings

CONTENT

Cover: Unknown artist’s conception of Expo 67; from a 1963 postcard. Library and

Archives Canada, accession No. 1985-73-29. Graham Spry Collection, MG 30 D297.

3

Dwane Wilkin

4

Karen Findlay

Pamela Dillon

5

Dan Pinese

Sandra Stock

Christopher Goodfellow

Matthew Farfan

Angela Macleod

10

Rod MacLeod

12

Len Warshaw

15

Joe Graham

18

David Graham & Laura New

18

Sandra Stock

24

Tyler Wood

Dan Pinese

26

Rod MacLeod

27

HeritageQuebec

News

3

History’s tentby Dwane Wilkin

MEMORANDUM

There’s no denying the powerof sweet nostalgia to warp aQuebecer’s sense of the past.Canada’s centennial year, so

evocatively recalled by Rod MacLeodin this issue of Quebec Heritage News,was a time of seemingly unboundedenthusiasm, proudly displayed in asummer-long birthday bash staged inCanada’s greatest city. Ten years later,fear of separatism triggered the exodusof a quarter-million people, most ofthem belonging to the world’s so-calledbest-treated minority. Life had definite-ly changed, and not the least forEnglish Quebecers.

Building man-made islands in theSt. Lawrence River to host a world’sfair paled by comparison with the so-cial upheaval that came to be known inQuebec as the Quiet Revolution. Thesummer of ’67 did indeed mark a turn-ing point of sorts, when long-en-trenched inequities between Canada’stwo solitudes were openly questioned,denounced as unjust, gradually over-turned and finally swept away. Nolonger would francophones abide a sys-tem in which social status, employmentand career advancement for the majori-ty of Quebecers depended on their abil-ity to speak English to the boss. Blindfaith in religion and the will of theChurch was discarded in favour of po-litical leaders who strove instead tocreate new secular public institutionsthat would benefit all Quebecers, re-gardless of their cultural background.The province which had resisted socialchange so often in the 1950s was sud-denly playing a lead role in movingCanada towards universal health care,greater access to higher education andexpanded social services. “Québec saitfaire” was not just a slogan, but asource of public pride on both sides ofthe linguistic divide. “Le Québec auxquébécois” was a different matter.

By the early 1970s, a central plankin every provincial party platform in-cluded policies aimed not only at giv-

ing the province more political autono-my within Canada, but at protectingand vigorously promoting Quebec’smajority francophone culture. Within adecade of Canada’s centenary, a politi-cal party initially devoted to takingQuebec out of Confederation had rati-fied language laws that have provenextremely effective at promoting andpreserving French in Canada whilehelping to nurture a modern, dynamicand creative francophone culture. Butthese policies have also helped to exac-erbate the decline of Quebec’s English-speaking minority. What’s more, to thedisappointment of otherwise sympa-thetic compatriots, the diverse heritageof English Quebec is often dismissed,ignored or misunderstood. The fact is,Quebecers of many different culturaltraditions together fill this anglo tent.

For far too long, the politics of lin-guistic rivalry have tended to obscurethe stories of communities who don’tdefine their Canadian roots in terms ofBritish or French ancestry. The longhistory of blacks in Quebec, for in-stance, is hardly known and widely un-appreciated, although people of Africanancestry have lived here since the earlydays of New France and contributed vi-tally to the development of Canada—this, in spite of facing generations ofsystemic racism. For decades, begin-ning in the 1850s, black workershelped establish that icon of CanadianConfederation, the transcontinentalrailroad, and then, although relegatedto the lowest-paying jobs in the indus-try, they founded churches and neigh-bourhood improvement institutionssuch as the historic Negro CommunityCentre in St. Henri, birthplace ofMontreal jazz and the early stompinggrounds for such musical luminaries asOscar Peterson and Oliver Jones. Thelegacy of Quebec’s black history in-cludes contributions in all fields, fromscience and business to politics and ac-ademia; and yet this history is mostlyunknown. Every young scholar in the

country knows the story of doctorsPenfield and Bethune, but how manyhave ever heard of Dr. E. MelvilleDuporte, one of the most brilliant sci-entists ever to attend MacdonaldCollege, the first black man to teach atMcGill University, and co-founder ofthe college’s Institute of Parasitology?

One of the achievements of theQuebec Anglophone Heritage Network(QAHN) this past year was to initiate abroad exploration of Quebec’s multi-cultural history and the challenges itposes for Canada’s official policy ofbilingualism. This issue of Quebec

Heritage News contains JosephGraham’s sketch of the historical nego-tiations and compromises that came tounderpin the British North America Actof 1867, showing the somewhat flawedif wishful origins of our two-nation-state legacy. Even visionaries such asLouis-Joseph Papineau, William LyonMackenzie and Joseph Howe wereproducts of their own time and placewho could hardly have dreamed that ascruffy island port town in LowerCanada would grow into a sophisticat-ed, cosmopolitan city.

In the coming months I hope onceagain to have the privilege ofhelping to bring together a widerange of voices to discuss how

language and the learning of historyshape our identities. Incidentally, thoseof you who attended the MontrealMosaic heritage summit at McCordMuseum last April will be interested tolearn that QAHN has been invited bythe Department of Canadian Heritageto develop a sequel to this very suc-cessful project in the coming fiscalyear. However, the funding we receivewill ultimately depend on the level ofinterest shown by community mem-bers. (Readers, please send your lettersof support by email to me [email protected].)

I myself happen to live in theEastern Townships, a mostly rural area

QUEBEC HERITAGE NEWS

4

LettersDuly noted

Quebec Heritage News (May-June2007) has so much going for it—it isbeautifully presented on glossy paperand contains excellent writing on news-worthy and historical topics. Thereseems to be an important omission: fullbibliographies for the researched arti-cles. The short closing note listing prin-cipal sources is easily missed andwould not satisfy a scholar using the ar-ticle for further research.

Both footnotes and bibliographiesin standard format, such as MLA,would give your journal the credibilitythat it deserves. If this would make theprint version too long, perhaps the ref-erences could be offered in the on-lineversion. If cost of printing and mailing

is the issue, perhaps a lesser quality,lighter paper could be used.

Bylines for all articles would alsoenhance the credibility—even if the by-line just notes that the contribution isfrom ‘the editors.’

Congratulations on an excellentpublication, with just a little room forimprovement.

Karen Findlay, librarian

Ottawa, ON

Mosaic encore, please

I attended the Montreal MosaicConference at the McCord Museum inApril. The event took me on day longjourney with some of the brightestminds working in the field of Quebec

history. From start to finish, I was treat-ed to vibrant discussion, challengingscholars, and stunning displays ofdance and music. What more could oneask for?

Well, only this. That this eventmight be repeated again, and that theefforts of its organizing committee beencouraged and supported, throughcontinued funding and assistance.

How precious and inspiring the daywas for me. I commend your efforts,and encourage the work that bringssuch a mosaic to so many people. If Imay be of any help to you in your con-tinuing work, I would be happy to stepup and do so.

Pamela Dillon

Stanbridge East, QC

of small towns and villages that werefirst established by English-speakingimmigrants from New England andGreat Britain, beginning in the late1790s. When my father was born in1929, anglophones accounted for 20 percent of the region’s overall population;today that figure has shrunk to just 6per cent. While it’s hard to credibly iso-late the impact that coercive provisionsof the French Language Charter havehad on the vitality of Quebec’s officiallinguistic minority group, there is noquestion that English-speakingQuebecers, both on and off the island ofMontreal, today face a complex set ofchallenges which lessen the odds oftheir future survival as communities. Inrural Quebec, declining enrolment andthe de facto transformation of Englishschools into English-language immer-sion programmes for a largely fran-cophone clientele is but one conse-quence of this demographic collapse.Another, as contributor CherylCornacchia reports in this issue is theuncertain future facing anglophone her-itage in small rural cemeteries.

Cemeteries are significant reposito-ries of historic information and an im-portant component of Quebec’s culturalheritage. Yet hardly a month goes by inthe QAHN office without news of yetanother pioneer burial ground some-where in the province that’s in dire need

of attention, its gravestones cracked andcrumbling, its fence in ruins, its volun-teer trustees grown too old and feeble toclear the brush or mow the lawn. Whileit is a credit to the heritage sector in thisprovince that local historical societies,including many QAHN members, havespent time and energy transcribing andcataloguing early grave-marker infor-

mation, scarce and declining resourcesnecessarily prevent them in most casesfrom carrying out restoration and main-tenance duties. The result is that theseremnants of Quebec’s English-speakingsettlement history are increasinglythreatened with neglect and disrepair asaging volunteers who formerly assumedresponsibility for their upkeep die off ormove away. Of course, as the recent ex-amples of pioneer cemetery restorationsin the Laurentians and the Townshipshave shown, even long-vanished com-munities do occasionally reunite—al-

beit through their descendants.Complex economic and social

pressures have been brought to bear onrural regions everywhere in Canada in-cluding Quebec and they cross all lin-guistic boundaries. What makes ruralanglophone communities especiallyvulnerable is the makeup of their popu-lation: the current aging, shrinking baseof volunteers in rural Quebec simplycannot continue indefinitely to ade-quately support traditional communityinstitutions, be they schools, historymuseums or heritage graveyards. Thisfall, thanks to a donation from theTownshippers Foundation, QAHN willhold the first in what I hope will be sev-eral information workshops aimed attrying to preserve the latter. Of course,the need remains for a much more com-prehensive conservation programme,such as laid out in QAHN’s CemeteryHeritage Inventory and RestorationInitiative (CHIRI). This project com-bines knowledge gathering, sharing ofpractical conservation skills and ayouth-employment component. I hopeyou’ll show your support by spreadingthe word about QAHN and by renewingyour subscription to Quebec Heritage

News magazine, if you haven’t alreadydone so. Above all, wherever you live,get involved in your community, be-come a volunteer, claim your part ofour shared history.

JULY-AUGUST 2007

TIMELINES

5Kempffer House after move, June 7, 2007. Photographcourtesy of Normand Desjardins.

New Carlisle, a small community inQuebec’s Gaspé region, will soon be hometo a newly preserved heritage site. Therestoration of the historic Kempffer House

will conclude this summer, thanks to local volunteersand a grant from the Municipal Rural InfrastructureFund (MRIF).

Restoration of the house is reaching completioneight years after it was scheduled to be torn down. Anexample of New Carlisle’s unique blend of American,French, and British architecture, the dilapidated build-ing was saved thanks to enthusiastic volunteers whofounded Heritage NewCarlisle, a non-profitorganization dedicatedto protecting, promot-ing, and restoring thesocial, cultural, and ar-chitectural heritage ofthe town. After thehouse was moved tonew foundations in thewinter of 2004, this or-ganization, with thesupport of the munici-pal council and localresidents, began to de-velop Kempffer Houseinto a tourist and cul-tural heritage centre. The two-storey building willprovide conference spaces, tourist information, an ex-hibition space for regional artisans, and a permanentdisplay of a collection of local photographs and arte-facts.

Though the work on of Kempffer House is nearcompletion, Normand Desjardins, president ofHeritage New Carlisle, said the process of revitalizingthe building revealed the difficulties that new organi-zations can face when raising funds. “We were an or-ganization that had no collateral,” said Desjardins.“There were hurdles that gave a few sleepless nights.Not everybody could see the benefits at the time.”

Indeed, according to Desjardins, one of the hur-dles Heritage New Carlisle faced was convincing thecommunity at large that the preservation project wasworth the effort and investment. Referring to the fi-nancial commitment that was needed to proceed withthe preservation work, Desjardins explained that it wasthe near-decade-long process that gradually convinced

New Carlisle’s approximately 1,600 residents of thesite’s historic value.

“Restoring buildings like Kempffer House is anew idea for communities like New Carlisle,” saidDesjardins. “It took time for the community to see theimportance in what we were trying to do.”

During the restoration effort, the house has actedas a rallying point for the small town, whose heritageorganization assumed responsibility for over$170,000, representing a third of the total $512,000cost.

The remaining two-thirds was given to HeritageNew Carlisle under theMRIF, a provincial andfederal governmentcost-sharing initiativethat helps finance mu-nicipal projects inQuebec. Applying un-der Component 3 ofthe fund, which en-ables municipalitiesand non-profit organi-zations to repair build-ings of economic or re-gional impact, HeritageNew Carlisle preserveda building that is repre-sentative of the town’s

past status as the mercantile and economic hub of theregion. For Desjardins, the continued use of heritagespaces like Kempffer House is not only good fortourism, but is also central to a cohesive concept ofidentity in small localities like New Carlisle. “Everycommunity needs to hook on to its roots,” saidDesjardins. “This building gives a window into thetown’s beginning.” It is these types of efforts,Desjardins added, that will instil New Carlisle’s futureresidents with the desire to maintain a link to theirshared past.

“For the next generations, this building acts as areminder to preserve their heritage,” he said.

MRIF is administered by Quebec’s Ministère des

Affaires municipales et des Régions. To participate,

program applications must be approved by December

31, 2008 with work completed by March 31, 2010. For

more information on the MRIF program, go to

http://www.dec-ced.gc.ca.

Gaspé landmark saved Historic Kempffer House gets a makeover and new lease on life

by Dan Pinese


6 Knox Church photograh by Christopher Goodfellow.

Now comes the hard partShrewsbury stewards vow to revive abandoned pioneer site

by Sandra Stock

Arural municipality in the Laurentians has takena lead role in local efforts to repair and pre-serve a pioneer church and cemetery in the

abandoned village of Shrewsbury. Scott Pearce, mayor ofthe Municipality of Gore-Lakefield, offered to purchase St.John’s Anglican Church for a dollar during a commu-nity meeting at the church last June. The municipalityintends to work with remaining church members to developa detailed restoration proposal and fundraising scheme, whichwould see the building converted into a multipurpose com-munity centre. It was suggested that the building might even-tually serve as a centre for heritage-related tourism in the re-gion, drawing genealogical researchers to the site.

The church, which dates to 1858, is the only re-maining original building from this once-thrivingfarming settlement that has been almost totally desert-ed for the past sixty years. The building has never hadelectricity and retains the simple appearance of its pio-neer construction. It’s estimated that carrying out theproposed restoration would cost between $40,000 and$50,000, and the mayor indicated that the municipality wouldhave to seek financial assistance from other levels of govern-ment as well as other sources.

With a show of support from the 21 members of the con-gregation present, a three-member volunteer committee was

formed to work on the project with church officials and themunicipality.

The congregation of St. John’s has shrunk considerablyover the past decade to the point that only one service a year isnow held in the church. Also, it has suffered on-going vandal-ism and break-ins. It is believed that more activity and munic-ipal attention could reduce these problems. Jim Kyle, a churchwarden, noted that the “easy way out” would be to demolishthe building and just put up a monument to mark the site. Butthose present at the meeting believed that to do this would beto give up and also to negate the spirit of the original settlers ofShrewsbury. Also, most agreed that St. John’s could not con-tinue to serve as an active church, since the congregation hasalmost completely vanished and is unlikely to be replaced.

Historic Shrewsbury has featured in two local literaryworks. In 1969, the late Margaret Cook, a long-time summerresident of Shrewsbury, wrote Land Possessed, a novel aboutpioneer life. In 2005, to celebrate the 150th anniversary ofseveral adjacent Laurentian municipalities, including Gore-Lakefield, local historian Don Stewart wrote the play Nature’s

Victory, which was loosely based on Cook’s novel and pro-duced by Theatre Morin Heights.

For more information concerning the Shrewsbury her-

itage project contact Jim Kyle, (450) 432-9055.

Crystal Falls reunionKnox Church group keeps historic hamlet’s memory alive

by Christopher Goodfellow

An Annual Service will be held at the Knox Church inthe hamlet of CrystalFalls, Arundel on

September 2, 2007 at 2 p.m. Allare encouraged to attend this once-a-year memorial service at KnoxChurch, located eight kilometressouth of St. Jovite on Highway327. The non-denominationalservice celebrates the pioneer fam-ilies and founders of this smallcountry church and the memoryof all those buried in the cemetery.

The Knox Church CrystalFalls Memorial Fund (KCCFMF)is a registered charitable organiza-tion and a Core member of QAHN and has as its principalmission to preserve and maintain the church and cemetery atCrystal Falls.

In 2006 the fund announced the establishment of the

Canon Horace Baugh Memorial Scholarship. It is availablefor first-year university studentswho are descended from, or relat-ed to, families associated with thechurch and/or associated withparishes served by Canon Baugh,a lifetime supporter of KnoxChurch. Those eligible are en-couraged to apply for this scholar-ship before August 31, 2007.Please email a short description ofyour proposed field of study, yourgoals for the future and the univer-sity you will be attending, to:[email protected] information on the memori-

al fund can be found at: www.laurentian-web.com/knox.

Christopher Goodfellow is chairman of the Knox Church

Memorial Fund

JULY-AUGUST 2007

7Dunany quilt, photograph courtesy of Angela MacLeod.

The DunanyCountry Club inthe Laurentiancommunity of

Wentworth has a long his-tory of traditions, and itis indeed one of the last‘country’ clubs to main-tain a real country opera-tion. With the exceptionof the greens keepers, oneoffice staffer and sum-mer-student starters, theclub functions with a sol-id commitment from itsmembers in a variety ofvolunteer positions. Thisyear marks the club’s85th anniversary

One of the Dunanytraditions has to do withthe ages-old craft ofquilting. For more thanthree decades Dunany’slady members have spentthe winter months jointly producinga unique quilt that is awarded eachyear to the lucky winner of a draw atthe Club’s annual cocktail party inAugust. A recent book, Our Dunany

Quilts, pulls together records andphotographs of all the quilts theladies have produced over the years.Each is documented in the book withthe design ideas, dimensions, a pho-tograph and the list of the ladies whocontributed a square and/or helped tosew it together.

Although quilts have beenaround for centuries and are consid-ered a useful household item, aDunany quilt has become a localtreasure. Each year the quilt is de-signed, then the designer and thecommittee make up individual kits,which are distributed to the membersover the late winter months. Eachmember turns the kit into an individ-ual square resembling a small, flatpillow. The squares are returned tothe club in time for the LadiesOpening Meeting in June, and eachWednesday, after Ladies’ Day Golf,they are whip stitched together to

produce the quilt. Often the de-signer will add the borders, includ-ing an emblem with the word‘Dunany’ and the year.

The quilt designs are unique,some featuring local wildlife, wild-flowers, or some of the history ofDunany. Local landmarks have ap-peared on the quilts over the years,including St. Paul’s Church inDunany, which has been featuredfour times. Most of the quilts fea-ture floral designs while some aregeometric. Often the quilts tells astory.

The book, Our Dunany Quilts

also includes a section on localDunany history and the DunanyCountry Club history along withquilting tips. It may be purchasedby emailing June Parker at [email protected] or by callingDiane Hislop at (450) 562-5607.The book is a limited edition andcosts $40, taxes included.

Adapted from Main Street, June

2007.

Stitches in timeClub’s quilting tradition documentedby Angela Macleod

The border separating Quebec’s EasternTownships from the United States was deter-mined by the terms of the Quebec Act in 1774.

At that time, both Canada and the American coloniesto the south were dependencies of Great Britain. Theborder was established—on paper at least—at 45 de-grees north latitude.

A team of surveyors had been sent out in 1772 tomark off the 45th parallel. But for some reason, teamleader John Collins made serious errors in his calcu-lations. According to local folklore, he and his mendrank too much potato whiskey. The joke is stillsometimes told that Stanstead derives its name fromthe words ‘stand steady,’ which the inebriated survey-ors supposedly exhorted each other to do as they ma-nipulated their instruments. Folklore or not, the ‘par-allel’ that these men established was in fact a crookedline that zigzagged across the wilderness. What wasworse—at least from a Canadian perspective—wasthat the line zigzagged most of its way well to thenorth of the 45th parallel. In other words, Canadawas losing territory.

For years, confusion reigned as to where the bor-

der was. Before about 1800, there were few settlersin the Eastern Townships, so the issue rarely arose.However, as more people arrived and the region wasopened up, disputes began to occur. Some peoplecontended that the border was where Collins hadplaced it; others said that it was further south, wherethe Quebec Act had intended it. Some built homes inwhat they thought was one country, only to find outlater that they were actually in another. At LakeChamplain, the Americans even built FortMontgomery (sometimes called ‘Fort Blunder’) near-ly a mile north of the 45th parallel.

In 1842, the United States and Great Britainsigned the Webster-Ashburton Treaty, which left thecrooked border pretty much where the surveyors hadplaced it. Fort Blunder remained in U.S. territory,border villages like Derby Line remained American,and many Canadians felt cheated by the British nego-tiators who were supposedly representing their inter-ests.

To this day, many people believe erroneouslythat the border separating the Eastern Townshipsfrom northern New England is on the 45th parallel.

Matthew Farfan is editor of Townships HeritageWebMagazine and a Stanstead town councillor.


8Canadian and American border guards at the Haskell Free Library

and Opera House (c.1920). M. Farfan collection.

Tightening the lineA generations-old border tradition draws to a close

by Matthew Farfan

In the early spring, the picturesquetowns of Stanstead, Quebec, andDerby Line, Vermont, were the fo-

cus of a veritable media frenzy overthe possible closure of three unguard-ed residential side streets, streets thatactually cross the international border.

For generations, residents ofStanstead and Derby Line—many ofwhom are dual citizens—have beenfree to cross back and forth into theirrespective countries via Lee, Ball andChurch streets, unmolested by the au-thorities as long as they reported im-mediately to the nearest customs of-fice. Now, the U.S. Border Patrol, theRCMP and other agencies are askingthe two towns to authorize the closure of these streetswhich, they argue, facilitate the smuggling of illegalaliens and pose a terrorist security risk.

Many residents of Stanstead and Derby Line arenot enthusiastic about these closures. They see theircommunity as a model of international friendship, onewhere borders do not matter. Many residents cross theborder daily to buy their groceries or gas in one coun-try or the other. The communities share amenities such

as parks and skating rinks.Organizations such as the RotaryInternational club, the Golden RuleMasonic Lodge and Stanstead SouthUnited Church attract members fromboth sides of the line. The two townsshare a common water system. Andmany buildings actually straddle theinternational border, including theworld-famous Haskell Free Libraryand Opera House, whose patrons en-ter from both Canada and the U.S.

Some residents believe thatclosing the streets will diminish anattribute that is unique to their townsand one that makes their communitya curiosity for tourists who flock to

the area to see the world’s ‘friendliest’ border. Somesee these closures as an attack on their personal free-doms. Others, like the editor of the Stanstead Journal,wonder what will be next.

Time will tell how this story will play out. Fornow, the streets remain open while officials on bothsides of the line sort out how best to proceed.Whatever the outcome, the media will surely be payingattention.

Unparallel legend

JULY-AUGUST 2007

9

GO Ahead With Youth! -Jeunes VERS l’avenir!

SUNDAY, Sept. 23, 20079 a.m. - 5 p.m.Bishop’s University,Lennoxville

• Activities for all Ages• Artisans, Exhibits, Food• Live Entertainment• Student Cultural Gala• Youth Coffee House• Children’s Games• Ecumenical Service -

150th Anniversary, St. Mark’s Chapel

Bilingual EventRain or Shine!Admission Free - Parking $2

Info: 450-263-4422 (1-866-263-4422),

[email protected] www.tday.ca

Hosted by:

In partnership with:• Borough of Lennoxville• Champlain Regional College• ETFS

The Quebec Anglophone Heritage Network (QAHN)will recieve a total of $190,000 in operational assis-tance from the federal government between now and

early 2009 under the terms of a two-year contribution agree-ment with the Department of Canadian Heritage. The fund-ing, which will helps cover administrative and travel expens-es for board members and staff, has been earmarked as partof Ottawa’s ongoing investment in the development of offi-cial minority language communities across Canada.

Under the terms of the contribution agreement, QAHNwill undertake a wide range of activities between now andApril 2009. These include conducting a needs survey ofEnglish-language historical societies and and heritagegroups, a workshop on conservation skills, and the reactiva-tion of a speakers’ bureau to consist of a pool of Quebechistorians and heritage experts willing o address community-group gatherings around the province.

A central goal of the two-year action plan will be to as-sist QAHN’s volunteer board of directors in the developmentof the Network itself, whose braod aim is to promote aware-ness of the history and evolution of Quebec’s English-speak-ing communities. Among other activities, it’s expected thatQAHN will collaborate once again with its member groupsand other cultural community organziations to organize andstage a second edition of its highly successful MontrealMosaic symposium.

The anticipated level of annual financial assistance fromOttawa in 2007-08 and 2008-09 represents a 26 per cent in-crease over the two previous years. Quebec’s Ministry ofCulutre and Communications, which contributed $15,000last year, has not yet indicated whether it intends to renew itssupport.

The Quebec Anglophone Heritage Network publishesQuebec Heritage News magazine six times a year.

Boost for heritage networkQAHN approved for unprecedented two-year funding deal


10View of Ile Notre Dame, from a postcard in the Bibliothèque et

Archives nationales du Québec (BANQ) collection. CP 2769

Living it up in ‘67 helped put street life back into city planning

LESSONS FROM EXPO

by Rod MacLeod

“Don’t it always seem to go

that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone”

—Joni Mitchell

We look back now in a kind of horrifiedwonder at the glee and determination withwhich our civic leaders set about destroy-ing our cities half a century ago. It’s one

thing when you had to rebuild, as they did in London,Coventry, Rotterdam, Cologne, Berlin, Nuremberg,Hiroshima, etc. Modern architecture becomes less objec-tionable when you are faced with an inner city that resem-bles a charred wasteland. It is quite another thing to bull-doze historicallyrelevant and aes-thetically interest-ing buildings in acity likeMontreal—thePrince of WalesTerrace, the St.James Club, theCapitol Theatre,the Van Hornemansion, muchof Chinatown,and those rows ofhouses in the eastend that stood inthe way of theCBC—and re-place them with steel and glass.

Do I sound angry? Sorry. I am a disciple of the lateJane Jacobs, and it sometimes shows. Now, I don’t hateall the buildings that replaced the ones I just mentioned,and I do recognize the practical difficulties of keeping thedinosaurs going. Moreover, the destruction of so muchgood urban infrastructure 40 or 50 years ago did have thehappy result of spawning the heritage movement weknow and love today. And, I would argue, the heritagemovement of the 1970s and ‘80s has been directly respon-sible for the infinitely better architecture produced since.Compare 1000 Lagauchetière (the tower with the skatingrink inside it), with its clean lines and almost gothic spire,with Place Bonaventure, that brutalist block brooding nextto it. Compare the new ‘main’ building at Concordia withthe old Hall building across the street, which is so boxy

and grim that it makes the 19th century row housesaround it look fresh and aesthetically daring. Quite apartfrom the many marvellous examples of successful restora-tion (of use as well as structure), recent architecture hasbenefited from a sense of respect for context.

My own love for interesting urban space was actuallyborn of the sad experience of watching a bunch of 1960sbuildings deteriorate and eventually be demolished. Thetruth is, what was arguably the worst period in the historyof architecture also produced the most remarkable builtenvironment in Montreal’s, and arguably Canada’s, histo-ry: Expo 67.

This spring there was a lot of very appropriate nostal-gia about how crucial Expo was to the transformation of

Montreal and thecountry for whichit used to serve asthe metropolis.Expo brought usnew sights,sounds, tastes,and a sense of agreat big excitingworld out therefar beyond ourdaily experience.But apart frombeing culturallyt r a n s f o r m i n g ,Expo was also afabulous place in

its own right: we moved through it in awe, amazed by itsflash and grandeur but also by its intimate scale, some-thing quite out of step with contemporary planning.

Expo is just about my first real memory, and no won-der. First, there was getting there: the excitement of theExpo Express which whisked you through the archipelagolike something out of a sci-fi movie yet gave you the car-free freedom of those sophisticated European cities that Iwould only discover years later. Like many ancient cities,there were huge plazas framed by stunning buildings—yetyou could escape the bustle by stepping down onto acanal-side walkway and commune with the water (or usethe washrooms). At Expo you walked and walked andwalked, and then you took a balade or a (be still my beat-ing heart) minirail, which would let you take in thescenery, including mobs of other people walking and

JULY-AUGUST 2007

11

walking, at your leisure. (Some people took pedicabs, butmy father always vetoed these.) You could also just stopand sit, and sometimes eat—outdoors, again as they did infancy faraway cities. It was a world very far removedfrom the west-end suburbs where a high point was drivingto shop at the A&P.

As a kid I gazed hungrily for the next unusual thing -or, as often as not, thirstily for the next water fountain,those pale triangular structures that I still associate withblessed liquid relief. The main entrance to Expo was viathe Place d’Accueil, but my parents’ pronunciation of itleft me searching somewhat uneasily for a giant plasticeye. There was a fire-breathing monster that came out ofthe water near the Quebec pavilion, and it was the heightof daring to ride the minirail under the nearby waterfall(itself a real curiosity) waiting for its attack. The minirailwould also go right through the spherical USA pavilion(later on we knew it as the Bucky Ball) and every time itdid my father would feign dumbfounded surprise, havingpreviously insisted it would not, despite my steadfast as-surance it would. At the Australia pavilion you walkedover a gangplank to an island inhabited by kangaroos thatsomehow did not escape. Even more baffling was thetiny pool in front of the Thai pavilion which contained amodel of the royal barge: how did the boat get there, andwhat was the point of having a boat in water when itclearly could not go anywhere?

I don’t mean to suggest that I came to understandanything significant about architecture and the built envi-ronment at Expo 67, but the seeds were planted.Understanding came later, during visits to the muchscaled-back but still intriguing fair of subsequent sum-mers. And when they finally closed the site in the ‘70syou could still take the minirail on long, silent tours of theabandoned grounds, allowing for an appreciation of struc-ture and layout that had been impossible when people andpedicabs ruled. As a teenager I would love to sit on theseslow, delicate trains, gazing down on chipping buildings,forlorn benches and water fountains, and empty plazas outof a Star Trek episode. The life had left the place, I real-ized; it stood awaiting demolition.

The Expo site, for all its glory, did not survive the‘60s. Neither Floralies, nor the Palais de la Civilization,nor the Biosphere succeeded as ‘anchor’ sights to drawpeople to the islands in anything like the numbers neces-sary for the place to work as a sight in its own right. TheCasino and the Grand Prix make money, but do so entire-ly at the expense of the site, which the one ignores and theother partially, and brutally, destroys. That wonderful en-vironment exists only in pieces today, but there are bits ofit you can still wander around: the canals are overgrown,but pretty, and there are plenty of places for quiet picnics.

And we have learned a great deal from Expo, archi-tecturally speaking. It made the Old Port possible, and forthat matter the Jazz Festival: we’ve learned to use ourstreets and open spaces as places to be in as well as travelthrough. We hang out in them, we eat in them, we walkaround them. We’ve learned that there is a place for largeopen areas, but also that good times are more likely to

happen when the scale is small—and where the backdropis interesting, which it is in Old Montreal and on St. Denisand Ste. Catherine streets. Architects and planners of the1950s and ‘60s would be horrified to see us using ourstreets the way we do—Le Corbusier declared “Death tothe Street” in the belief that it represented all that waswrong with humanity—but so what? We are better off to-day despite (and in many ways because of) the idiocies ofpast ‘experts.’ As Montrealers we may have lost somefine buildings, and even, alas, some fine neighbourhoods,but we’ve learned to build around brooding relics, to em-brace the city, to live in the streets, and somehow alongthe way, we have found our soul.

Rod MacLeod is president of QAHN

The island site where Expo 67 was held has been,over the years, transformed into a park and play-ground for Montrealers and visitors alike. NamedJean Drapeau Park in honour of the man who, as

mayor of the city, had the vision and the courage to see thisdream through to the great success so fondly remembered.In honour of the 40th anniversary of Expo 67, many activi-ties have been scheduled at the park through the whole pe-riod mirroring the dates that the fair was open, from April27 to October 29.

The Aquatic Complex on Ste. Helen’s Island hosts anexhibition entitled Expo 67, passport to the world made upof photomontages, artefacts, information capsules andvideos put together by the Centre d’histoire deMontréal. Itis open from June 23 to September 3.

From May 1 to November 1, the Biosphere’s museumof the environment features an exhibition of 30 large-scalephotos tracing the creation of the islands for Expo 67 andshows their impact on the environment.

The Stewart Museum has a retrospective with photo-graphs and documents of the living history programme thatthe museum pioneered. La Compagnie franche de laMarine and the Olde 78th Fraser Highlanders regimentswere reconstituted to stage re-enactments regularly duringthe fair. The exhibit is open from April 27 to October 30.

For a nostalgic tour of the site, hop on the miniaturetrain, the Balade. This free ride, lasting about 50 minutes,leaves from the Aquatic Complex and runs several days aweek through July and August.

In addition, there are a series of special events allthrough the season, ranging from concerts through art exhi-bitions and a wide range of spectator and participantsports. For complete information, check out the website ofJean Drapeau Park at http://www.parcjeand-rapeau.com orcall 514-872-6120.

- Sheila Eskenazi

Indulge your nostalgia


12View of the Canadian Pavilion, from a postcard collection of theBibliothèque & Archives Nationales du Quebec (BAnQ). CP 2761

The pros and cons of blowing it all on Man and His World

PARTY PALACE VISION

by Len Warshaw

An international exposition is a big party,not unlike a wedding reception or a spe-cial birthday, where the hosts invitefriends and neighbours from far and wide

to celebrate a special time in their collective lives.Like any big party, a lot of planning, work and

resources go into making this event as enjoyable andspecial as possible with the knowledge that when thelast dance is over all that remains are the memories,the pride and maybe some enduring gifts.

Expo 67 was planned as a big birthday bash towhich the world was invited. The theme was appro-priately and optimistically established as Terre deHommes or Man and His World, and guests wereasked to bring ‘gifts’ that would reflect their placeand their culture and their latest technology and todisplay them in a bazaar of kiosques of their own de-sign. They participated in the celebrations and con-tributed to the entertainment, learning from each oth-er, getting to know each other and taking with thema fresh appreciation of their hosts and the otherguests.

In all of these ways, Expo 67 was a huge suc-cess. Canada achieved new recognition and appreci-ation in the eyes of the world and our guests puttheir internal and international problems aside anddanced together for a happy summer. As the venue

for this big event, Montreal also established its placeas a world city of beauty, industry and culture.

Great kudos is owed to the minion of planners,architects and engineers that created Expo 67. Thetask was huge, the time was very limited and therewere many problems and obstacles, organizational,bureaucratic, physical and economical, but thisworld-class coming-of-age party went off on sched-ule, without a hitch and with an élan beyond all ex-pectations.

As a Montrealer, a Canadian and an architectand planner, I enjoyed the party in many ways andbenefited from it enormously. I should begin by say-ing that I had no role in its creation; in fact I was atearly stages critical of the entire concept.

Shortly after the planning committee wasformed an idea was put forward suggesting that, un-like previous expositions, the last one in Brussels in1956, perhaps the entire city could be used as thevenue with a multiplicity of pavilions and events tobe located in areas of Montreal that were ripe for re-newal or redevelopment, the whole linked by newcommunication and transportation systems. Ithought, and still think, this was an excellent, inno-vative idea that would have exploited the entirecity’s resources for the big show, while leaving itwith permanent urban benefits. I was sorry to see

JULY-AUGUST 2007

13View of the American Pavilion. Image from the postcard collection ofBibliothèque et Archives Nationales du Québec (BANQ). CP 2798.

this option dropped in favour of the creation of theExpo islands. I cannot help thinking, even to thisday, how much we could have benefited from thefallout of such a plan but I can only assume thatthose who were involved made the right decision atthe time.

To push my analogy, one could say that insteadof just making a big party for the couple, with giftsthat are often lost, some could have contributed to adowry or a down payment on a new home.

An engineering feat on it’s own, the islandswere adapted and created and, in short time, turnedinto an amazing agglomeration of exciting construc-tions, promenades, movement systems, sculptures,and exhibits that entertained and excited us all, alongwith all the infrastructure necessary to serve themand the millions of guests who enjoyed them.

Many visitors found inspiration in the pavilionsand the exhibits and as an architect and teacher Ibenefited beyond the temporal enjoyment of theevent. Even as Expo 67 was under way, the next fairin Osaka, Japan was being planned and I, togetherwith a colleague, Marcel Gagné, entered an architec-tural competi-tion for theCanadian pavil-ion there. Wesought inspira-tion and under-standing of ex-hibition space inmany strollsthrough themany and di-verse interna-tional pavilions.We were run-ners-up, losingto one ofCanada’s best,A r t h u rErickson. Iused Expo, and, later on, its traces and archives, inseveral aspects of my teaching in the school of archi-tecture at Université de Montréal. It was a valuablelaboratory for the study of thematic design, buildingmethods, prefabrication, materials, exhibition de-sign, environmental issues, lighting, among others.

Several architects, engineers and other profes-sionals made special, innovative contributions andenhanced or established their reputations. Notableamong these were Buckminster Fuller, whose workon geodesic structures led to the American domepavilion, and a young architect named Moshe Safdie,whose innovative approach to urban housing foundits expression in Habitat, a controversial projectamong architects, but one that looked at new housingtopology while experimenting with ambitious at-tempts at heavy prefabrication. Some exciting struc-

tures such as the large-scale space frame themepavilions derived from the ingenuity of engineerssuch as my teaching colleague Janos Baracs. Forother design professionals in Canada and abroadsuch as exhibition designers, graphic artists and de-signers, interior designers, lighting and audio ex-perts, Expo 67 was a unique opportunity to gain visi-bility and respect—and establish their credentials.

Architecturally, the international pavilions couldbe grouped into several categories namely: those thatstressed stylistic representation of their countries,those that were specialized containers for new exhi-bition technology including many cinematographicexperiences, those that made thematic statementsabout issues such as communications and environ-ment, and those that were largely influenced by morepragmatic concerns like cost, ease of constructionand even ease of removal and recycling, this being acondition of the exposition rules.

Besides these there were a myriad of supportbuildings, shelters and structures providing for theneeds and enjoyment of visitors. These included anamusement park, restaurants, transportation systems,

and landscapedopen areas forrelaxation, out-door theatresand informalh a p p e n i n gplaces.

Unlike amore enduringurban environ-ment, an expo-sition allows fora mélange ofunrelated archi-tectural expres-sions and build-ing forms andcolours to coex-ist. With the

help of the fine use of green spaces and water basinsthis worked to perfection at Man and His World.

So much for the architecture. The most impor-tant memories I cherish are those of mingling withthousands of people from all corners of this worldenjoying Montreal, Expo and each other in a bigbirthday party. The positive vibes were contagiousand all the invited dignitaries contributed to this withthe notable exception of French President Charles deGaulle who chose to take unfair advantage of his in-vitation to Canada’s birthday party to pander to thoseseeking this emerging nation’s disintegration.

Besides the memories and the opportunities andachievements I mentioned, what remains of Man andHis World?

Perhaps the most lasting physical traces are Citédu Havre, Habitat and the urban and regional infra-


14Habitat on Montreal’s Old Port. Image from a postcard collection of

the Bibliothèque & Archives nationales du Québec (BAnQ). CP 2760

“And the sun pours down like honey

on Our Lady of the Harbour”

-Leonard Cohen

Aseemingly random jumble of 354 identicalprefabricated concrete boxes, stacked in ir-regular pyramids, stretches for four blocksalong the St. Lawrence River, opposite the

Old Port of Montreal. This iconic structure, forming158 residences, is theonly building from the1967 World’s Fair, thatlast great hymn to thecult of global technolo-gy, still being used forits original purpose.

Habitat 67 wasconceived by MosheSafdie while he was a25-year-old architec-ture student at McGill,and planned as a proto-type for a system thatwould streamline thebuilding process and cut costs. Construction started in1964 and was completed in 1967.

My first exposure to Habitat 67 occurred duringExpo when, despite the fact that it was occupied bypaying tenants, Habitat was an exhibit to be visited likeany other. My initial impressions were that it was a bril-liant, functional design, and that it was beautiful. Manyothers, some of them very knowledgeable critics of ar-chitecture, held, and continue to hold, dissenting views,but in 40 years my opinion has never wavered.

Seen from a distance, Habitat’s irregular, pyrami-dal silhouette gives one the impression of a modernMediterranean hill town (or village - only 158 of a

planned 900 units were ever built). The units are con-nected by exterior walkways, unlike the common hall-ways of traditional apartment buildings, and every unithas a garden, growing on the roof of the unit below. Irecently spoke with Patricia Chang, an architect andwriter who has been living there for nearly 20 years.Ms. Chang told me the gardens have matured, adding toboth the “privacy and the sense of being out in nature”that Habitat affords its residents. She also spoke of the

“sunshine and sense ofopenness” that this“mid-density, outwardlooking” design pro-vides. Something I re-marked on was thebeauty of the openspaces among the mod-ules, where, looking upfrom ground level, adiffused light spillsdown on you, makingits way through con-crete canyons of juttingangles.

Ms. Chang explained that the well-designed andappointed interiors of the units, which incorporated in-novative modular elements, impart “a sense of beinglarger than they are” (most are around 1200 sq feet) per-haps in part because of the roof terraces. She observedalso that they have stood the test of time.

Safdie was commissioned to design other Habitatsaround the world but none was ever completed. Habitat67 is now a collection of expensive luxury residencesand the dream of affordable, humanistic, urban housingit promised is lost, lost like the extraordinary sense ofoptimism and faith in technology that lay at the heart ofExpo.

A Place Near the River

structures, notably the Metro, whose excavated ma-terial was used to create the islands and a new net-work of highways that were timed for Expo 67 andlater supported the 1976 Olympics. Cité du Havreand Habitat never achieved their full potential but doprovide unique urban housing with views of the riv-er and the city.

The islands offer a pleasant, easily accessiblerecreation area serving all of Montreal, including anamusement park, a beach, a racetrack, and a casino.I find it telling that the French pavilion, one of threeremaining pavilion structures, is now used by theQuebec government for the financing of its welfareand other deficits through its monopoly on legalizedgambling. The former Canadian pavilion is the ad-

ministration building for Jean Drapeau Park, whichencompasses the whole former Expo site.

The other remaining structure is the Americandome. This pavilion underwent several transforma-tions and lost its skin in a fire, but is now used bythe Canadian government as the Biosphere, a centrefor teaching young people about the environmentand its problems and challenges. It stands as a spi-dery epitaph to what was then an optimistic time forMan and His World but, at the same time, a smallstep towards new hope for the future.

Len Warshaw is a practising architect and professor

at the Université de Montréal.

by Julian Sargisson

JULY-AUGUST 2007

15The Burning of the Parliament Building in Montreal, attributed toJoseph Légaré (c.1849). McCord Museum. M11588

WHAT’S IN A NAME?

The long struggle for Canadian democracy

GRANDFATHERS OF CONFEDERATION

by Joseph Graham

The centennial celebrations of1967 left the impression withmany that Canada had sud-denly begun a hundred years

earlier, thanks to some benevolent far-sightedness on the part of the Britishgovernment. The real story, though,tells of the inspired men who foughtfor the responsible government that wetake for grantedtoday. It de-s c r i b e sCanadian inno-vation, daringand colour.

The idea ofg o v e r n i n gthrough consen-sus or majorityrule served theBritish aristoc-racy from thetime of theMagna Carta,but when theA m e r i c a ncolonists re-belled and cre-ated a demo-cratic republic,they were likelymotivated asmuch by thespirit and style of governance amongthe American Indians. After that, theidea of government by the peopleswept into France, and visions of re-sponsible government and republican-ism percolated through Europe and theremaining British North Americancolonies. By the time Napoleon wasdefeated in 1815, elected advisors werebeginning to challenge the status quoeven here. Louis-Joseph Papineau, aseigneur with his own agenda and theSpeaker of the elected Assembly ofLower Canada from that same year,constantly challenged the appointedLegislative Council; William LyonMackenzie led the same battle in

Upper Canada, and Joseph Howe man-aged to win responsible governmentfor Nova Scotia. These were greatmen, the dissenting grandfathers ofConfederation, to whom we owe notjust responsible government, but alsoreligious and civil freedom. Withoutthem, our Fathers of Confederationwould never have been shown the way,

yet some of the reforms that were con-templated during the turbulent years ofthe 1830s and later, such as those deal-ing with secular guarantees for publiceducation, have only just been realisedin our generation. Others await our at-tention.

Although events never turned vio-lent in Nova Scotia, both Upper andLower Canada incubated conspiraciesto overthrow British rule and imposeresponsible government in 1837-8.Compared to the American War ofIndependence, our rebels, or patriots,did not have a large base of support.The colonies, particularly LowerCanada, were besieged with plague,

struggling to accommodate floods ofnew immigrants and dealing with aneconomic meltdown under the weightof a banking crisis in the United States.Also, the British government was eco-nomically stable and approaching theheight of its world power. After thecollapse of the rebellion, the BritishCrown determined, through Lord

Durham’s rec-ommendat ion,to force Upperand LowerCanada to coex-ist as equal part-ners, with equalrepresentation,as the Provinceof Canada witha single electedassembly. WhileDurham foresawan EnglishProtestant-dom-inated colonythat would be-come stableenough for re-sponsible gov-ernment, theBritish authori-ties were notwilling to con-

cede the last part. It is worth remembering that Great

Britain was still an oligarchy. Whiledescribed as responsible government,the vote extended to a select number ofmales who had a stake in the economy,severely limiting the size of the elec-torate compared to today, or even tothe 1870s.

The patriots, Papineau andMackenzie, had much in common.Both shared a vision of a secular, self-governing society, one that may haveallowed for a healthy, growing econo-my capable of competing with theAmericans. Durham’s recommenda-tions left two very different and dis-


16

tinct peoples, the French Catholics andthe English-speaking mostlyProtestants, to struggle to get along,exacerbating their differences by guar-anteeing each an equal stake in theirmanagement. The English numberswere rising through immigration, whilethe French relied on their birthrate, andbecause Canada West, the new namefor Upper Canada (Ontario) was lesspopulated, the equal status of the twoCanadas initially played in favour ofthe smaller population in Canada West.Even though he proposed a version ofself-government, there seems to havebeen a cynicism in Durham’s actions.The image of “two nations warring inthe bosom of a single state” is attrib-uted to him, but one wonders how hejustified such an opinion. The rebelswere not divided on religious or lin-guistic lines and the only historical in-cident that describes them in thoseterms took place eight years later, in1849. In that incident, a protest againstthe Government Losses Bill, EnglishProtestant businessmen were so en-raged that they set fire to theParliament Buildings, then situated inMontreal. Judging from the coopera-tion between Mackenzie and Papineau,and subsequently between Baldwin andLafontaine, history suggests that theywere not warring at all. Durham setthem against each other, but they roseto the challenge and cooperated inways that sustained both, each after itsmanner,

Thanks to the rising power ofthe Catholic Church, the dem-ocratic structure in LowerCanada, or Canada East, was

built on a badly set cornerstone: theChurch controlled the French Canadianvote. Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine wasa patriot who opposed the uprisings of1837, and even though he knew thatDurham’s intentions were to weakenthe power of the French Catholics, heundertook to build an alliance withRobert Baldwin of the Canada WestReform Party and work towards re-sponsible government. As a patriot, hisvision of responsible governmentshould have included secular schoolsand a lot of the republican ideas thatwere espoused by Papineau. After therebellions were quelled, though, the

educated elite of Canada East split intwo, with one part, led by Lafontaine,seeking accommodation, while the oth-er, heir to Papineau, created the InstitutCanadien, a think-tank in today’sterms, that hoped to pursue the republi-can goals of their leaders. Papineauhimself, in exile at the beginning, hadbecome such an icon that songs andpoems were written about him. Eventoday, the ditty popularized by Bowserand Blue “C’est la faute du fédérale,”had a precursor from that period thatwent “C’est la faute de Papineau.” Inthe Church’s eyes, he was a bogeyman.

At that time the Catholic Churchwas under the influence of theUltramontanes, a group who felt thatthe Church was a world government ofCatholics ruled by the Pope, and that itgave or withheld its blessing of localpoliticians, delivering votes from thepulpit. Ignace Bourget, who becamethe bishop of Montreal in 1840, ag-gressively solicited and created newreligious orders that established them-selves throughout Canada East, sinkingtheir talons deep into the small parish-es that formed their power base. Oneof the causes for which the rebels hadfought was to make sure that educationbecame a government, or civil, and nota religious, responsibility. When theywere defeated, the most efficient or-ganisation still left for delivering pub-lic education was the Catholic Church,and by the time the children graduated,the pulpit had become the most effec-tive, efficient means of communicatingwith the electorate. Before 1840,French Canadians were nominallyCatholic, but not obsessively so. Bythe end of Bourget’s 40-year reign, thepeople had retreated into an almostmedieval dependence upon the Church.Bourget treated the Institut Canadienand its ideas as a public enemy andthreatened its members with excommu-nication. They could not be buried inthe Catholic cemeteries without re-nouncing their beliefs and acceptingabsolution. To get elected, Lafontaine,and later, George-Étienne Cartier, hadto oblige Bourget.

By the 1850s, most British NorthAmerican jurisdictions had achievedresponsible government. The twoCanadas, bound by Durham’s template,forming a single political unit led by a

pair of premiers, were born into thisnew era as Siamese twins. Its elec-torate was not based simply on repre-sentation by population, but on theguarantee of equality between the twoCanadas. With very different and di-verging societies, antagonism and mis-understandings were inevitable.George Brown, a Canada West re-former and a very influential advocateof responsible government, was paint-ed as a hater of the French Catholicssimply because he challenged the twinstatus. Canada East was an effectivedictatorship of the Church, whileCanada West was rapidly approachingthe levels of civil society then foundonly in the United States. They hadvery different values that would be-come increasingly difficult to manage.They needed to find a way to governthe divergent parts of their societiesseparately.

Great Britain was still administer-ing five colonies of vastly differentsizes, each with its own appointed lieu-tenant-governor dependant upon theCrown, but effectively answerable on amore quotidian basis to the premierand assembly. One of these lieutenant-governors, Arthur Gordon of NewBrunswick, newly appointed and in hismid-thirties, naively believing that hewas in charge, conceived the idea ofstudying a union comprising the threeMaritime colonies. Since he felt thatthe colonials were really an inferiorspecies, he probably imagined a moregentlemanly regime where he couldconsult with his peers, the other gover-nors, rather than with his colonial as-sembly. Responsible government wasstill so new that he did not seem to un-derstand to what extent the role of gov-ernor had changed. He organized ameeting in Charlottetown forSeptember 1864 for the lieutenant-gov-ernors and the premiers of NewBrunswick, Nova Scotia and PrinceEdward Island, at which he felt the sixof them could decide how to run thethree colonies. What was conceived asa meeting of old boys quickly spun outof control when Charles Tupper ofNova Scotia insisted that all politicalparties should be represented at themeeting. Gordon was incensed, butwhen the Province of Canada asked toparticipate as well, the whole confer-

JULY-AUGUST 2007

17

ence took on a new tone, well beyondthe purview of young Lieutenant-Governor Gordon. Canada, theSiamese twins, could see an opportuni-ty that would allow for its separationinto two jurisdictions, freeing themboth from Durham’s template in thecontext of a larger union.

The first convention was held inCharlottetown, Prince Edward Island,in September 1864, and all parties, in-cluding the opposition parties in eachjurisdiction and the governors, wereexpected to attend. WhileNewfoundland wished to participate aswell, its request came too late forCharlottetown and would have to waitfor the second convention held inQuebec the following month.

Great Britain at that time hada far-flung empire withlarge, unstable colonies andclient states that had no tra-

dition of British rights and privileges,while British North America presentedthe Empire with a place to strip vastresources and to dump old soldiersand excess people who could becomea problem at home. It was very muchin its interest to see the managers herebehave in a self-sustaining alliance,but they could not have imagined theparliamentary democracy that was be-ing forged by those managers.Between 1841 and 1867, these differ-ent colonies achieved responsible gov-ernment and set up a confederationthat would not only become an exam-ple for other British colonies, but alsofor other countries seeking responsiblegovernment. It would even have alarge impact on governance in GreatBritain itself, where the property own-ership qualification was loosened in1867 and again in 1885. In Canada,the proportion of citizens who couldvote was larger due to more extensiveland ownership and the rights of ten-ants.

Even so, the achievement of theDominion of Canada in 1867 wasfraught with structural defects. NovaScotia’s Howe opposed the union be-cause he felt that it disadvantaged hisprovince. He predicted that NovaScotia would become an economicbackwater, but his premier, CharlesTupper, who had set a high, democrat-

ic tone at the conventions, pushed thebill through without consultation. InQuebec, formerly Canada East, thesecular thinkers had been waylaid bythe Catholic Church, a problem thatwould come back to haunt the wholecountry a hundred years later, whenthe Church’s power finally began towane. Prince Edward Island andNewfoundland demurred, the formerbecause their most important issuewas not being addressed. In the 1860s,the hemorrhaging of capital to absen-tee landlords crippled its economy.The landlords would be bought out bythe Dominion government years lateras PEI’s condition of entry. OnlyOntario (Canada West) came outahead, freed from Durham’s bondsand with a favourable trade arrange-ment with the Maritimes. Their popu-lation was growing, and their influ-ence increasing.

Forty years ago, we celebrated thehundredth anniversary of these negoti-ations, but even today, early in the21st century, all the unresolved struc-tural problems remain visible, held to-gether under a thin, clear wrap that wetenuously call Canada. Let’s hope that

this new century provides us withwise children of Confederation whocan see back to the clear visions ofJoseph Howe, Louis-Joseph Papineauand William Lyon Mackenzie.

Sources:

Moore, C. 1867: How the Fathers Made

a Deal.

On-line:

Beck, J.M. ‘Joseph Howe’ Dictionary of

Canadian Biography;

Canada: A People’s History;

Canadian Heritage Gallery;

History of Great Britain;

Library and Archives Canada;Monet, Jacques, S.J., J.M. Careless andDavid Mills. (n.d.) The Canadian

Encyclopedia HISTOR!CA.Wallace, W. Stewart, ed. The

Encyclopedia of Canada, Vol. II, Toronto,University Associates of Canada, 1948.pp. 383-384.

For detailed sources seewww.qahn.org/document.aspx)

Special thanks to Patrick Donovan of

the Morrin Centre, Quebec City.


18

It carried at least one in every ten Canadians andwas operated jointly by the country’s two com-peting major railways. It celebrated the first onehundred years of Canada’s history and our hopes

for the future. The purple train was one of the mostsignificant parts of Canada’s centennial celebrations in1967, yet it is largely forgotten. Known as theConfederation Train, it sported a Canadian Pacific lo-comotive numbered 1867 fitted with a horn thatplayed the opening bars to O Canada, together with aC a n a d i a nNational loco-motive num-bered 1967 anda mixture of pas-senger-carryingequipment fromthe two compa-nies and theGovernment ofCanada.

The train,purportedly thebrainchild offormer PrimeMinister JohnD i e f e n b a k e r ,was launchedwith an inaugu-ral ceremony inOttawa onJanuary 1, 1967. From there, it headed to VancouverIsland, BC, arriving by ferry from Vancouver in theearly morning hours of January 6. According toWilliam E. Miller, a CPR telegraph operator at thattime, the train visited “eighty-three rail centres in themainland provinces by December 5, 1967.” In addi-tion to its busy schedule, between May and the middleof November eight trailer-truck ConfederationCaravans, each with eight vehicles, travelled throughthe provinces and territories to areas not covered bythe rail service.

The January 1st dedication ceremony in Ottawaincluded a declaration signed by representatives of 32religious faiths proclaiming Canada to be “a people ofmany origins ... sharing a common country.” PaulineVanier, wife of then Governor General GeorgesVanier, officially launched the train. She symbolicallyunlocked it and pressed a button to signal it to depart,leaving Ottawa’s Union station at 3:25 pm. The $6

million train trip was marketed in the newspapers thatday with the slogan, “You’ll see Canada as you’venever seen it before.”

The train began its journey east on January 9 fromVictoria and spent the first half of the year travellingeast through B.C., Alberta, Saskatchewan andManitoba. A crowd of a thousand people attended itsarrival in Toronto on July 29, 1967, and it stayed atExhibition Park for five days where it was open forpublic viewing from 9:00 in the morning to 11:00 at

night each day.At Leaside,one of its sev-eral Torontostops, theToronto TransitC o m m i s s i o nadded extraservice to helppeople get tosee it.

The trainwas not popu-lar with every-one, however.C e n t e n n i a lyear was threeyears beforethe OctoberCrisis andnearly a

decade before the Parti Québécois formed its first gov-ernment, but on September 7, 1967, there was ademonstration of around 500 people outside of theJean Talon station in Montreal where the train was lo-cated. The protesters, led by Pierre Bourgault, chanted“Maudit Canada” and denounced the exhibition ascontaining propaganda, lies about the deportation ofthe Acadians and the treatment of French speakers out-side of Quebec. During the protest, a group of 70 sep-aratists managed to get past security and tried to attackthe train, which resulted in paint being thrown on fourof the six display cars. The exhibition remained openunder RCMP guard while CP crews repaired the dam-age. In spite of this, the train marked its two millionthvisitor that week with an average of 10,000 visitorsper day in Montreal.

In Quebec City, a group of separatist protestorsblocked the entrance to the train and argued with visi-tors boarding it, telling them that they were traitors to

Millions journeyed through Canada’s past aboard the Confederation Train

SEA TO SHINING SEA

by David Graham & Laura New

JULY-AUGUST 2007

19Inside the Confederation Train exhibit. Photo by Gabor Szilasi(1967). From BAnQ online collection. Cote: E6, S7, SS1_P6729

Quebec. Gilles Lamontagne, mayor of Quebec City atthe time, said that both sides should be respected.

By the time it arrived in Montreal onDecember 5, 1967 to be retired and disman-tled, the Confederation Train had hosted2,739,700 visitors. The trailer-truck cara-

vans hosted a further 7,268,955 visitors, for a total ofaround half of the entire country’s population at a costof a mere $1 per visitor. The train itself consisted ofthe two locomotives, CP 1411, numbered 1867 for thetrip, and CN 6509, numbered 1967, a steam generator,baggage car, sleeper, dining car, two more sleepers, anelectric generator, and sixGovernment-owned display cars.Visitors entered the rear of the trainand walked forward, following thetour. The Centennial Commissiondistributed a flyer listing the dis-plays in each of the six exhibitioncars. “What is Canada?” asked theflyer, describing the train as a tour-ing exhibition with life-size models,sound effects, lighting, artefacts, andphotography to tell the story of thehistory of Canada. The first car cele-brated the end of the ice ages andthe early history of humanity, jump-ing to Canada’s aboriginal culture asits people crossed the Bering Strait.The display showed models ofIndian villages intended to transportvisitors’ minds “between past andpresent for comparisons of todaywith yesterday.”

The second car showcased theearly immigrants to and explorers of Canada, includ-ing the Vikings and a model of Jacques Cartier’s ship,along with a plank from the original ship’s hull.Samuel de Champlain, who established a first settle-ment in Nova Scotia, was modelled in life size. Thiscar sported a canoe and invited visitors to walkthrough a mock-up of the steerage-class of an earlysailing ship.

The third car commemorated the pre- and post-Confederation periods of Canadian history with a walkthrough a French seigniorial house. It also remindedviewers of the pressures felt from the United States inthe pre-Confederation confusion of what Canadawould become. The idea of confederation was cele-brated in this car and the Centennial symbol was dis-played, with four coloured triangles representing thefirst four provinces, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick,Quebec and Ontario.

The fourth car, the birth of a nation, featured theperiod from 1867 to 1876, saluting the prime ministersMacdonald and Mackenzie as well as the addition ofManitoba to confederation in 1870, British Columbiain 1871, and Prince Edward Island in 1873. It showed

the Hudson’s Bay Company grant, the Riel Rebellion,the Royal North West Mounted Police and theKlondike gold rush, before proceeding to introduceprime ministers Thompson, Abbott, Tupper, Bowell,and Laurier.

The end of the 19th century and the start ofCanada’s military role in the world with the Boer Warwere commemorated in the fifth car. Alberta andSaskatchewan were introduced to confederation in1905, represented in the car with images of horizon-to-horizon wheat. Next was Amundsen’s transit of theNorthwest Passage. The car took a darker turn as itmemorialized trench warfare during the First World

War, and then progressed to the 1920s and 1930s, end-ing at the start of the Second World War.

The sixth and final display car began with theSecond World War and a study of Canada’s graduationto an industrial nation as it mass-produced warplanes,tanks and ships for the war effort while volunteersfought and died overseas, progressing to MackenzieKing’s announcement of the end of the war. The post-war period brought to the fore Canada’s scientific, po-litical, medical, industrial, and general progress. In1949, Newfoundland joined confederation and theCentennial celebration’s Confederation symbol, amaple leaf made up of 11 triangles representing the 10provinces and the territories, was completed.

At the end of the tour was a hopeful questioninviting visitors to imagine our great future: “Who, butus, will create the future of Canada?”

Forty years on, it’s still a relevant question.

David Graham and Laura New own www.railfan.ca

Full references can be seen at www.qahn.org/docu-ment.aspx. Special thanks to William D. Miller.


20 Morin Flats (postcard), from Morin Heights Historical Society collection

by Sandra Stock

THE EDGE OF CHANGEHow a Laurentians village doused the fires of centennial fervour

In 1967 Canada celebrated 100 yearssince Confederation and Montrealhosted Expo 67, the World’s Fair.Although Morin Heights is only

about 80 kilometres northwest ofMontreal, forty years ago it was still verymuch a rural community with severalfamily farms in operation and two lumbermills still functioning as the major villageemployers. Morin Heights village hadfamily owned stores, three thrivingchurches and a school that by 1967 of-fered a complete English education fromKindergarten to Secondary V. The areawas also enriched by the presence of theLac St. Denis Radar Base (closed com-pletely by about 1980). This providedsome employment for local people, andat that time, also sent many children tothe school. The Morin Heights area alsohad two family run ski tows and a fewsmall hotels.

The Morin Heights population wasabout 1,200 permanent residents,swelling to about 2,000 in the summerand on holidays with the second-home

owners. At that time most second homeswere still cottages, not the fully equippedcity-style houses like we see now. Mostwere not winterized and some had noelectricity and very simple water systems.This was by choice—many cottagerswere well-off business people and profes-sionals, and a few were old-moneyMontreal families. They came to theLaurentians to enjoy nature, live plainlyand mingle with the ‘locals.’ The locals(of mostly Irish or Quebecois descent)were generally perceived as friendly, wel-coming agricultural folk, honest and reli-able, who would always be there to helpout city visitors who were perceived intheir turn as admirable achievers but ig-norant of country ways and fearful of theindigenous flora and fauna. The highlightof the city child’s summer could be a rideon a hay cart, adopting a farm kitten orhelping pick blueberries. There were feworganized activities for children and teensas we have now. Being in Morin Heightswas the activity.

However, the winds of change were

blowing—not very briskly, of course, butsome people felt things in this old ruralworld were somehow becoming obsoleteand out of step. A peppier vision ofMorin Heights started to be expressed byseveral newcomers to our community. InDecember of 1966, at a meeting of theMorin Heights town council, the munici-pality was asked by the newly formedChamber of Commerce to support itsproposed centennial project—the creationof a large lake in the village. It was sug-gested that council approach the federalmember for Argenteuil, at that time a Mr.Régimbal, to “use his good office to ob-tain a federal government grant…” Also,it was requested that the Municipalitymake some contribution towards con-structing and maintaining this project.The councillors did vote to agree to lookinto this proposal and even voted the thenrather princely sum of $25 to send one oftheir number to Ottawa with a request let-ter.

However, the issue of CentennialLake appears not to have been raised at

JULY-AUGUST 2007

21Morin Heights’ centennial project was a welcome sign. Photo by Sandra Stock.

council for several ensuing monthlymeetings. January, February and Marchof 1967 saw council meetings dealingwith the usual items of business thatMorin Heights had dealt with for the pastcentury: stray dogs, lost horses, poorroads, water systems and sewage,garbage pick-up and that old perennial,complaints about taxes.

The councillors and the public atten-dees at these meetings all knew each oth-er, in many cases had known each othertheir whole lives. The mayor at that timewas George Watchorn, who ran a farmthat had been in his family since first set-tlement. His grandfather had been GeorgeHamilton, the first mayor of MorinHeights when the town had been incorpo-rated in 1855. Although the population ofthe village was probably two-thirdsEnglish speaking in 1967 there were al-ways some French-speaking councillorsand the two linguistic groups worked to-gether very agreeably. It was, in someways, an old-fashioned, conservativeQuebec community that was slow toadopt new ideas and perhaps subcon-sciously, still a little suspicious ofstrangers: a possible Irish culturalholdover from the ‘old country.’

Centennial Lake seemed to be off toa very delayed start. The plan was to damthe Simon River that runs right throughthe village. At some points, the riverflows through thirty-foot high banks, atothers it flows through swamps thatspread out for several acres. In April theSimon can be a thundering torrent withthe spring runoff and had been known tospill its shores and flood low-lying partsof the town. In August and September,the Simon is a sluggish trickle that caneasily be forded on foot. There were al-ready three dammed-up parts of theSimon, the two lumber mill dams,Guénette’s and Seale’s, in the village, aswell as the dam in Christieville, a smallhamlet in the greater Morin Heights mu-nicipality. People could swim at thesedams as well as at a few other places onthe river. However, a large lake seemedto be the project of choice for theChamber of Commerce.

At the April 1967 meeting, the proj-ect was raised again and one of the coun-cillors asked if the lake would be dredgedout and what areas might be eventuallyaccessible for the public. It also becameknown that three of the council members

owned land that would be affected bysuch a lake. They felt this put them in an“odd position.” Also, the financing ofsuch a project was becoming worrisome.It was suggested that $25,000 be request-ed from Ottawa and the same sum fromthe provincial government. Then it wassuggested that another $25,000 comefrom the municipality itself. Given thesmall population at that time and the veryconservative nature of the residents, thisreally made them sit up and blink.Several people said this couldn’t be done

without a referendum from the wholepopulation, as it was seen, for the time, asan enormous sum. Also, someone men-tioned that about 65 per cent of Morin’spopulation did not live in, or near, the vil-lage. Many village residents at the meet-ing were concerned about where the highwater mark would be.

Then Mayor Watchorn offered to“lay $100 on the table” towards this proj-ect if each of the members of theChamber of Commerce would do thesame to help cover the cost of a prelimi-nary survey. One of the Chamber ofCommerce members stated that most ofhis fellow members could not meet thischallenge.

Then, finally, we learn from theApril minutes that a councillor said,“This lake project is just trying to pleasethe ten members of the Chamber ofCommerce instead of the other 1200 tax-payers of Morin Heights.”

At this point, another idea for aCentennial project is recorded in thecouncil minutes. The same Chamber ofCommerce had also proposed that an

archway be erected at the village en-trance. Mayor Watchorn stated that threelocal artists had investigated this matterand their findings were that…”until thevillage is cleaned up, they could not sup-port this project.” However, it was agreedto put up welcome signs. Shortly beforeMorin Heights celebrated its 150th an-niversary in 2005, very attractive signs,sporting the town logo, were placed at allthe entrance roads.

May, June and July of 1967 cameand went. The school children were takento Expo 67 for a day’s outing.Firecrackers were set off on Victoria Day,May 24, by a few private citizens, and St.Jean Baptiste was celebrated with a massat St. Eugene Church on June 24. Therewasn’t much on July 1, although a newflag was placed on the Town Hall inAugust. There were no official celebra-tions, no archway, and certainly no lake.

At July’s council meeting the big is-sue was that Morin Heights threatenednot to pay its electricity bill unlessHydro-Quebec repaired many brokenstreetlights. In August, the Chamber ofCommerce again sent a letter requestingany news about the progress of the lake.No response was recorded in the minutes.

September, October, November1967 came and went—no lake. All wasnot lost, however, as town council didvote to give the Chamber of Commerce$500 towards putting on a WinterCarnival. This money was to be for sea-sonal décor—Christmas tree lights.

In the minutes of the winter monthsof 1968, the Morin Heights council hadto deal with a new innovation - snowmo-biles. These were viewed as a noisy anddangerous nuisance. In the same spiritthat didn’t want Centennial Lake, or anarchway entrance, private snowmobileswere eventually banned, along with allother motorized sports vehicles, from theMunicipality of Morin Heights.

Morin Heights, now population over3,000, is still quiet and environmentallyfriendly in 2007. The village core isneater than in 1967 and retains its countryappearance and heritage buildings.Perhaps the old boys of the 1967 towncouncil were really ahead of their time.

Sandra Stock is a director of QAHN

Sources: Municipality of Morin Heights.

1967 Minutes. Morin Heights Historical

Association.


22All that’s left of Maplewood in the St. Francis River valley near

Richmond , is a collection of crumbling headstones. Photo: D. Wilkin.

by Cheryl Cornacchia

ORPHANS OF CIRCUMSTANCE

Rural decline is jeopardizing the future of heritage cemeteries

Whether in the Laurentians, the EasternTownships or even just outside Montreal,anyone who takes a drive on one ofQuebec’s picturesque rural roads is

bound to see one—an old cemetery with tombstonesdating back to the 1800s.

But these characteristic old cemeteries marking thefinal resting place of early English settlers are dying aslow death, victims of the march of time and demo-graphics—dwindling numbers of English-speaking resi-dents and an aging population unable to manage ceme-tery upkeep.

There are “literally hundreds of orphaned cemeter-ies,” many of them 200years old, now in jeop-ardy, according toDwane Wilkin, theExecutive Director ofQAHN (the QuebecAnglophone HeritageNetwork). The precipi-tous decline of Quebec’sEnglish-speaking popu-lation since the 1970s,especially outside ofMontreal, has exacerbat-ed the phenomenon inmany rural areasthroughout the province.

As executive direc-tor of QAHN, whichrepresents about 40 his-torical societies, her-itage associations and cultural groups, Wilkin is tryingto raise public awareness about the precarious state ofthe province’s cemetery heritage.

In an interview in his office in Lennoxville in theEastern Townships, Wilkin said if no action is taken, thecemeteries will be lost forever.

“They are vital links to our past,” said Wilkin. “Theremnants of Lower Canada.”

Although some are small family plots on ruralroads, he said, many more are larger cemeteries thatonce served thriving English communities. Every year,however, more of their tombstones topple and it be-comes harder to read their inscriptions.

In an attempt, to preserve this early English her-itage, QAHN has applied to the federal government fora $60,000 grant to assess the cemetery situation, startingwith four Quebec regions: the Eastern Townships, the

Montérégie, the Laurentians and Saguenay-Lac St. Jean.The project’s mandate is to locate old cemeteries in

each region, assess their condition, try to ascertainwhether there is money for their upkeep, track down ex-isting records and find living trustees.

“We need to know the scope of the problem,” saidWilkin, who eventually wants to see government policytowards historic burial grounds introduced.

In the Eastern Townships, a region boasting morethan 200 years of English-settlement history and whereanglophones once formed the majority, English-speak-ers make up only six per cent of the population todayand many of those anglophones are too old to mow

lawns and restore tomb-stones.

In Saguenay-LacSt. Jean, where threegenerations of Englishsettlers lived inKenogami, now part ofmodern-day Jonquière,there are no longer anycultural or heritagegroups left to take careof the cemetery. In1910, Kenogami was acompany town ownedand operated by thePrice Bros. lumber andpaper firm. TheCommunity Associationof Saguenay-Lac St.Jean was the last re-

maining anglophone group and it closed this winter.In the Laurentians, hard-working Irish immigrants

—both Protestants and Catholics—settled such towns asSt. Columban and Shrewsbury near Lachute in the1820s after the Napoleonic wars. But today few descen-dants of those original settlers remain in the area.

Unlike Quebec’s Roman Catholic cemeteries,which are affiliated with individual churches, theProtestant cemeteries tended to be operated as multi-de-nominational burial grounds, welcoming Anglicans,Methodists, Baptists, Lutherans and other Protestant de-nominations from the surrounding area. In their day,they were run as private corporations, complete withboards of trustees made up of people in the communitywho were given the responsibility for ground mainte-nance, burial records, finances and ‘perpetual care’—apromise no longer viable in many communities.

JULY-AUGUST 2007

23

In recent years, dedicated volunteers, many of themsupported by local heritage associations, have takenaction in order to save old cemeteries in their re-

spective areas. The Ascot Corner Protestant Cemetery near

Sherbrooke has been restored, thanks to the efforts ofPatrimoine Ascott Heritage. In June, a new monumentwas erected to mark the final resting place of 55 Englishpioneers. The group was led by Milt and Bev Loomis, aretired couple with long ties to the area and who alsohave ancestors buried in the cemetery. They cleaned andrestored dozens of old marble, slate and sandstonetombstones and erected a sign for visitors.

A committee of volunteers attached to the Catholiccemetery in the Laurentian town of St. Columban nearLachute, has raised $16,000 over the past two years forcemetery restoration there. Fergus Keyes, a 58-year-oldMontreal man who has an ancestor buried in the ceme-tery, said the group was motivated in 2005 after finding30 tombstones discarded “in the bush” behind thechurch. Keyes said the group is still raising money—their target is $25,000—and have yet to decide howthey will restore the cemetery. A Master’s student study-ing architecture at McGill University in Montreal isnow designing plans. “Maybe they weren’t famous butthey deserve some respect,” Keyes said of the IrishCatholic immigrants who settled the area in the 1820safter the Napoleonic Wars.

At St. John’s Anglican Church in Shrewsbury, an-other Laurentian town near Lachute, this one settled by

Irish Protestants, volunteers are trying to save theirchurch and adjoining cemetery from closing. In recentyears, church services have dwindled to one a year andtombstones in the cemetery have been vandalized.Church warden Jim Kyle, 45, said the local municipali-ty of Gore has offered to buy and restore the church—an idea now being considered by the church —and avolunteer committee is trying to raise funds for futurecemetery preservation. A $10,000 donation from a 100-year-old woman who was baptized in the church hasgiven the group a good start. “We want to offer eternalmaintenance,” said Kyle.

At Mount Royal Cemetery in Montreal, theprovince’s biggest and richest Protestant cemetery, athree-year restoration project is coming to an end thissummer. Myriam Cloutier, director of heritage pro-grams at the cemetery, said that in 2004 an inventorywas done of 8,670 tombstones and hundreds werefound to be in urgent need of repair. Over the past threesummers, Cloutier said, more than 350 tombstones havebeen repaired, two monuments rebuilt and eightwrought-iron fences restored. Although the cemeteryhas excellent records of everyone buried in there since itopened in 1852, as well as records of even olderProtestant cemeteries in Montreal, she said it’s impor-tant that the physical place be preserved for future gen-erations. “When you come here you see the history ofMontreal, of Canada,” she said.

Cheryl Cornacchia is a reporter with The Gazette

Heritage ties stir actionA survey of recent restoration efforts around Quebec


24

Paths of Glory: The Life and Death of General James Wolfe

By Stephen BrumwellMcGill-Queen’s University Press406 pages, $39.95

REVIEWS

In 2009, Quebecers will com-memorate the 250th Anniversaryof the Battle of the Plains ofAbraham. Our understanding of

what actually happened at this turningpoint in our history is muddled by ourmurky recollections of high schoolhistory lessons. It is cloaked furtherby centuries of romanticising fromour media and rhetoric from ourpoliticians. The Battle’s famous pro-tagonists, Wolfe and Montcalm, arethemselves rarely presented as morethan two-dimensional figures, theirlives overshadowed by their mythicdeaths. Luckily, at least in Wolfe’scase, Stephen Brumwell has come tothe rescue. Just as Brumwell disman-tled the stereotype of the British sol-dier in his masterful work Redcoats,the British author has set out to clearthe name of a man now often regard-ed as ‘bloodthirsty and priggish.’Paths of Glory: The Life and Death ofGeneral James Wolfe is the first full-length biography of the British com-mander in a half-century, and one thatis sure to delight readers.

Descending from martial stock,the Wolfes were a middle-class fami-ly eager to advance in social stand-ing. At fifteen, already gangly, unat-tractive and sickly, James Wolfewould have been an unlikely choiceto become an officer if it weren’t forhis father’s connections as colonel inthe Marines. Luckily, James acquittedhimself nicely in his teenage years.During the War of AustrianSuccession, Wolfe served admirablyas a subaltern in the Low Countries,

before returning to Britain as a staffofficer to help counter the Jacobitethreat at Culloden. He earned therecognition of his superiors: by twen-ty-three, he had achieved the rank ofcolonel.

This was no small feat, and de-pended in part on Wolfe’s ability tomake influential connections to en-sure his advancement. In peacetime,between boring stints of English riotsuppressing and Highland policing,Wolfe keenly visited France for itsimproving culture. He soon foundhimself rubbing shoulders with aris-tocratic Britons and French Royalsalike. And claims of Wolfe’s homo-sexuality, the author points out, seemnegated by the young officer’s pursuitof romance.

But Brumwell argues that Wolfe’srapid rise in the ranks also rested onthe skills of an impressively deter-mined, professional soldier: Wolfeused his battlefield experience to sim-plify his battalion’s drill; he con-cerned himself with the well-being ofhis rank-and-file; he set the exampleof healthy, sober living for his fellowofficers. All this would soon inspirethe whole of the British Army.

As simmering conflict in NorthAmerica boiled over into the SevenYears’ War, Wolfe was confident hewould be given a chance to prove hismettle. Finally, his network of patron-age cleared the way for a promotionto Brigadier-General. Wolfe was toassist in capturing the French fortressof Louisbourg in 1758. There, he dis-tinguished himself as particularly ac-

tive throughout the siege. He waschosen to lead the expedition againstQuebec the next year.

As Wolfe’s command duties in-crease, Brumwell’s biography shiftsappropriately to more of a narrativeof the military campaigns. As an ac-count of these battles, Paths of Glorywould be top-notch in itself, butBrumwell scrutinizes Wolfe in in-creasing detail, despite the fact thatthe increase in the general’s responsi-bilities results in fewer of the detailedjournal entries and letters that provedso richly insightful earlier in his ca-reer.

Of course, during the Quebeccampaign, Brumwell must rely muchmore on the words of Wolfe’s subor-dinates. One well-developed theme inthe book is of the cliques that existedin the British Army. Wolfe, himself ofrelatively modest beginnings, thoughtlittle of titles and instead promotedwith regard to merit. While this al-lowed Wolfe an entourage of loyaland able aides, the titled brigadecommanders, already named byWolfe’s superior, were openly criticalwhen his performance was poor.

While indeed the first months ofthe siege of Quebec were marred byhesitation and failures, Brumwell isquick to point out how difficult a sit-uation Wolfe’s army faced, with themajority of the French army well en-trenched along natural defences. Theauthor also stresses the importance ofcoordination between army and navy,made especially frustrating withQuebec’s contrary winds and tides.

JULY-AUGUST 2007

25 25

The Other Quebec:Microhistorical Essays on Nineteenth-Century Religion and Society

By J.I LittleUniversity of Toronto Press280 pages, $35.00

Only when conditions were rightcould Wolfe launch his last-ditch at-tempt to bring the French army out onthe open field, by landing at Anse-au-Foulon.

And as we all know, it worked. Inthe process, though, Wolfe dies, andbecomes what Brumwell describes asthe first trans-Atlantic British hero,appealing to both Americans andBritons, and spawning the ubiquitousBenjamin West painting. This wasvictory, despite continued illness,back-biting subordinates and an expe-rienced opponent in Montcalm.

As a book, Paths of Glory is bothrigorously researched and readable. Ifone can find fault with Brumwell’swork, it would be that he sometimesseems too willing to defend Wolfe’scharacter and behaviour. Such astance, however necessary it may beto counteract the recent trend to deni-grate the general, still may irk some.In particular, the author’s attempt toobjectively assess the scorched-earthcampaign against the inhabitants ofCanada may come up short for somehere in Quebec. Over all, though,Brumwell is earnest and convincing.

As Jacques Godbout’s wonderful1996 film, Le Sort de l’Amérique, ar-gues, Quebecers are so sure theyknow what happened during ‘TheConquest’ that we hardly feel theneed to discuss it. Ironically, thisleads to more confusion and disagree-ment over our past and, ultimately,our identity. With the commemora-tions looming, it is reassuring to seeStephen Brumwell take a sober lookat one of Canada’s great names, andsucceed at putting a face behind it.

Reviewed by Tyler Wood

Surrounded by a French-speaking majority and set-tled mainly by American andBritish immigrants, the

Eastern Townships of the nineteenth-century offers unique possibilitiesfor historical study. Indeed, as JackLittle explains, the region can be re-garded historically as a region in-be-tween identities: not French, notquite British or American, and in theearly nineteenth-century, not yetCanadian by modern standards.

It is in this state of in-betweenwhere Little’s Other Quebec beginsto delve. Building upon his previouswork, Borderland Religion, where heexamines the relationship betweenreligion and the early makings of anEnglish-Canadian identity in theTownships, The Other Quebec usesthis theme of religion loosely to tietogether its eight “micro-histories”—small, seemingly insignificant storiesand first-hand accounts of nine-teenth-century Townships life, vary-ing from the temperance movement,

to ideas on marriage and gender, tothe emergence of outward-lookingcapitalism. However, the study forLittle is not the religious institution,but how religion affected the every-day experience. In the Townships ofthe nineteenth-century, religion func-tions outside its institutional walls,directing and contradicting many as-pects of every-day life.

And it is this focus on the quo-tidian that makes Little’s efforts suc-cessful and most interesting. Hestarts small and builds these historiesfrom the inside. Little takes journalentries, letters, and other recordedevents, which, to an untrained histo-rian, may seem merely anecdotal;then he prods, contextualizes, andexpands upon them, giving the readera sense of how the simplest of ac-tions can illustrate the largest of his-torical ideas.

Little has written profuselyabout rural Canada and the EasternTownships. It is, therefore, no sur-prise that this book is meticulous in

its detail. But, despite this emphasison the factual, Little’s analysismakes the seemingly mundane as-pects of rural life an intriguing read.However, Little’s analysis is by nomeans simple. And, if one is to faulthis efforts, it can only be done sosimply because his book is obsessedwith the specific and obscure.

Make no mistake, The Other

Quebec is, at times, alienating due toits methodical approach. Little canonly justify the importance of theselesser known histories by using acomplex framework of analysis.But, for the student interested inTownships history to overlook thisbook because it may be written foracademics would be a mistake. Thecolour and depth of Little’sTownships is approachable despiteits academic reach and introduces theserious reader to wide-ranging andpreviously unpublished material.

Reviewed by Dan Pinese


26

HINDSIGHT

by Rod MacLeod

Coming of Age

I’m sure you remember the song.“Caaaa-Naaaa-Daaaa! Weee LoveTheee!” and then the quaint popula-tion statistic added in an undertone:

“Now we are twenty million!” Onemight have thought that in 1967 the na-tion hardly needed another unofficial an-them, yet there it was—everywhere.Research reveals that it was written byBobby Gimby, a Saskatchewan-born jin-gle writer and novelty song smith whopromoted its potential as a unifier of abilingual country. Canada’s CentennialCommission purchased the rights to itand had it recorded by a very enthusiasticchildren’s choir for use in a documentary.Then advertisers had the idea of putting iton TV in regular commercial slots with abackground image of schoolchildrenmarching joyfully across the landscape.This is probably the reason you remem-ber it.

Like me, you may also have ac-quired the record, a curious 45 with thesong sung in English on the side with thered label and in French on the other sidewith the blue label. In truth, the red-sidesingers came from Toronto and the blue-side ones were from Montreal - but Iwas convinced they were the same kids,and this gave me an eerie feeling.Bilingualism was a new concept to me inthose days, but it was more than that:this red-blue flipside business seemed tosuggest some kind of split personality. Ihad the feeling that by turning the recordover I was passing, Alice-style, into alooking-glass country where things wereexactly the same but fundamentally dif-ferent. O brave new world!

We now look back on 1967 withconsiderable nostalgia. In part this is be-cause it was “The Last Normal Year,” asmy colleague Kevin O’Donnell called itin a discussion some weeks back. From1968 we had Trudeaumania, riots in St.Leonard, the FLQ, bombs in mailboxes,language laws, referenda in the offing,constitutional accords, sponsorship scan-dals, etc. In our centennial year it waspossible to think that Bilingualism andBiculturalism would actually solveCanada’s problems of identity instead of

merely adding to the fascinating plate ofstew that our country is. In some circlestoday, attempts to promote national unityseem decidedly uncool. We’ve lost ourinnocence—at least when it comes toCanada.

Our attitude now is ironic, becausethere was no trace of nostalgia in the1967 festivities. In the years leading upto the centennial, communities acrossCanada saw an occasion to create newthings, not only to celebrate the nationbut also to express confidence in the fu-ture. Canada’s 100th birthday was a timeto look not back but forward, not to pre-serve, but to build. The most spectacularprojects were those spanking newCentennial or Confederation centreswhich rose like cathedrals out of the con-ventional small-town neighbourhoodsaround them. Charlottetown comes im-mediately to mind, where the permanenthome of Anne of Green Gables stilldwarfs the rest of downtown, but Placedes Arts, the National Arts Centre, andthe Manitoba Centennial Centre certainlyappeared within, and vastly improved,some fairly humble surroundings. On aless ambitious scale, countless new li-braries, gyms and ice rinks sprouted upwith ‘centennial’ or ‘confederation’ intheir names which might never have beenbuilt if the occasion, and in many casesthe funding, had not presented itself.

Institutions were equally skilled atusing the occasion to name a recentstructure. For example, the designers ofthe sprawling mall-like campus of thepolyvalent Massey-Vanier Regional HighSchool in Cowansville put the facilitiesthat were common to the school’s twodistinct linguistic populations into thecentral Centennial building, a nod to thespirit of bilingualism. Not all such planswere realized, in some cases thankfullyso: in 1967 the Mount Royal Cemeterytrustees seriously considered replacing itscentury-old John William Hopkins en-trance gates with a new steel structure.Four decades later the old gates are notonly revered for their wrought-iron beau-ty but have become the cemetery’s verysuccessful trademark image, an example

of how heritage can most definitely beprofitable.

The jewel in the centennial crownwas of course Expo. Forty years ago,most Canadians and a great many otherpeople around the world were either atExpo or wishing very much that theywere. Millions came from every part ofthe globe (a great many of them, itseemed to me, slept in my attic) to takein the magical world we’d created onsome improvised islands in the St.Lawrence. There were endless things tosee, do, eat, drink, ride, feel, hear, andlearn. And there was nothing provincialor colonial about it. Expo let us show theworld what Canadians could do whenthey weren’t obsessing with the languageon cereal boxes.

Expo 67 marked Canada’s com-ing-of-age (if turning 100 canbe considered coming-of-age)more decisively than any of the

previous markers historians love to trum-pet. It brought us out of our little shellsinto a world of multiplicity. If the next40 years were rougher, well, that’s part ofgrowing up. If these days we occasional-ly despair at the endless wrangling overidentity that have characterized the lastfour decades, we should also acknowl-edge that harmony and unity aren’t nec-essarily all that great. I am never moreproud of Canada than when it is conspic-uously not self-assured, when it isn’tquite certain what it should do, and whenit can make fun of itself for being thatway. There are plenty of nations aroundthe world that are self-assured and wouldnever make fun of themselves, and lookat the messes they get into.

Sure, there’s a time and place forTrue Patriot Love, but there’s also a timeand place for Caaaa-Naaaa-Daaaa—awonderfully, unashamedly silly song inboth red and blue versions. Canada is onoccasion a wonderful, unashamedly sillycountry—and we should be proud ofthat.

Now we are thirty-three million.

Rod MacLeod is president of QAHN

JULY-AUGUST 2007

27

EVENT LISTINGS

Aylmer

August 19

Aylmer Heritage AssociationGuided Walking Tours of Old AylmerLocal heritage buildings and the earlyhistory of AylmerInfo: 819-684-6809

Laurentians

August 5, 1 p.m.-5 p.m.

Morin Heights Historical Association

Open HouseCultural room of the Morin HieghtsLibrary, 823 du VillageInfo: 450-226-2618

Eastern Townships

Until Labour Day, 1 p.m.-4:30 p.m.

Lennoxville-Ascot Historical

& Museum Society

‘Chores of Yore: Blue Monday’Exhibition of a variety of objects relat-ing to the family laundry chores.Info: 819-564-0409

August 11, 10 a.m. - 2 p.m.

Compton County Historical Museum

Society: Old Fashioned Day Tea &Scones plus demonstrations of heritagecrafts and trades; quilt raffle. At theCookshire FairgroundsInfo: 819-875-5256 or 819-875-3182

Potton Heritage Association Inc.

August 11

Multicultural Festival Info: Gilles Provost: 450-292-4479

August 18, 10 a.m.

Organic Garden Visit, in Dunkin withGwynne Easen TV speaker from VisionTV Info: 450-292-3754

August 25, 9:30 a.m.

Intermediate walk on Peevee MountainMeet at corner of Sugar Loaf Road &Domaine Sugar LoafLeader: Ralph MilotInfo: 450-292-0430

September 8 - 9, 9:30 a.m.

Mushroom identification and pickingwith Dr. Peter Neumann, mycologistLeader: Èdith SmeestersInfo: 450-292-0547

September 15, 11:30 a.m.

Guided tour of the St-Agnes Vineyard.Picnic and possibility of buying wineTasting: 10$Leader: Carol BishopInfo: 450-292-4844www.vindeglace.com Carpooling from Bridge road in GlenSutton

September 22,. 9:30 a.m.

Owl’s Head Ski parking lotIntermediate walk on Owl’s Head andvisit of the Masonic meeting placeLeader: Carol BishopInfo: 450-292-4844

August 18, 2007, 11:30 a.m.

Sir John Johnson Centennial Branch of

the United Empire Loyalist Association

of Canada marks its 40th anniversarywith a birthday gala featuring a presen-tation by Michel Racicot, president ofthe Cowansville Historical Society.Luncheon: choice of duck or pasta pri-mavera. Everyone invited. Cost: $25.00RSVP to one of these members: CoraHazard, 450-538-2708; Jean McCaw,450 538-234 or Adelaide Lanktree,450-293-6342.

Colby-Curtis Museum, Stanstead

August 18, 10:30 a.m.

Fall Lecture SeriesMarguerite Van Die, Medical Science,Spiritualism and Gender: theEncounters of Drs. Moses Colby andSusanna Kilborn. Info: 819-876-7322

September 29, 10:30 a.m.

Speaker: Sharon McCullyThe history and culture of Englishnewspapers in the region.Info: 819-876-7322

Brome County Historical Society, Knowlton

July 28-Aug. 6

Marc Fortier ExhibitionAugust 15-20

Rhonda Price ExhibitionAugust 19

Antique and Craft Market on the muse-um groundsAugust 24-September 4

Susan Pepler ExhibitionInfo: 450-243-6782

Hudson

Greenwood Centre for Living HistoryJune 17, July 1, & 15 & 29 and

August 12, 1:30 p.m.-3 p.m.

Home and Garden ToursInfo: 450-458-5396 or Email:[email protected] 29, 11 a.m.-4 p.m.

St. James ChurchTreasures in the AtticInfo: 450-458-5396 or Email:[email protected]

Québec City

August 26, 8 p.m.

Morrin Centre

The Role of Military Music. A memberof the 78th Fraser Highlanders speakson the historic role and use of militarymusic. Members & Students: 8$Non-members, 10$Info: 418-694-9147

August 31st , 7 p.m. to 10 p.m.

Quebec City Celtic Festival

The Morrin Centre presents a CelticFestival over the Labour Day weekend.Activities include a whiskey tasting,dancing and music performances Formore information please visit http://fes-tivalceltique.morrin.org. Info: 418-694-9147

Gaspé

April 4 to November 10

Gaspé-Jersey-Guernsey AssociationEmail: [email protected] temporaryExhibitionChasing the Cod: Jerseymen in CanadaJersey “Museum, St Helier

HeritageQuebec

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