Montréal, Québec, Canada (Sault-au-Récollet) (Côte-St-Michel) (Côte-St-Paul)
1882-84 - Montreal / Mount Royal

THERE is no more beau-tiful city on the continent of America than the commercial metropolis of the Dominion of Canada. The geographical features of the place at once suggest a city. Ocean-going steamers can navigate the river St. Lawrence no farther inland, but here, where insuperable difficulties stop navigation, nature has made it possible for human skill to produce a magnificent harbour. Lying between the river and Mount Royal, rarely has it been the good fortune of any city to have so fine a background. The flat part, situated at the base by the river side, makes it easy for business; the sloping sides of the mountain are intended, perhaps, to meet the modern idea that prosperity shall build in the west end, and abundance in some overlooking heights. That which was natural happened; the city has extended westward and along the mountain side — that is to say, wealth used its undoubted right to erect its dwelling-places up the river where the water is clear, and up the mountain where the air is pure.

Reaching the city by way of the St. Lawrence, the eye rests upon a scene of rare beauty ; three miles of river frontage turned into wharves ; shipping of every kind and description, from the enormous steamship to the tiny pleasure yacht ; back of that, long lines of warehouses; then, great public and private buildings, church spires and towers asserting their right to be higher than all other structures, and thus bid the busy world pause at times and look up. But the finest view of the city can be had from the mountain...

Montreal abounds with striking contrasts. The city is comparatively small — less than one hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants—as what was called "the census" has declared. It has had only one or two hundred years of history; and yet everything is here—the antique and the modern—while hostile oddities lie cheek-by-jowl on every hand. Here are frame houses, some of them scarcely better than an Irishman's hovel on his native bog, and ignorance and squalour and dirt ; close at hand are great streets of great houses, all of finest stone. Here are thousands of French who cannot speak one word of English, and thousands of English who cannot speak one word of French. Unthrift and thrift come along the same thoroughfares. Some are content with a bare existence and some are not content with colossal fortunes. In social life we have the old French families with their Old World refinement pressed upon and almost pushed out of existence by the loud manners of the nouveaux riches...

We have the same striking contrasts in the appearance of the people on the streets. Here are unmistakable descendants of the ancient Iroquois Indians; at a turn we come upon a company who, by their dress and talk, take us back to the peasant classes of older France ; while crowding everywhere are ladies and gentlemen of the most approved modern type, according to the fashions of London, Paris, and New York...

Picturesque Canada: The Country as it was and is Lucius Richard O'Brien, Publisher - J. Clarke, 1882

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