Have you ever wondered how Ottawa became Canada’s capital rather than Montreal which was the largest and most populous city at the time?
In 1857, Queen Victoria chose the small lumber town as the new capital of the Province of Canada. Over Montreal, which had the history, direct access to the St. Lawrence River and one of the busiest harbours on the continent surrounded by grand buildings, and a modern infrastructure perfectly suited to be the capital.
Ottawa was more of a frontier town, with small buildings and population So, why not Montreal?
The thing is…Montreal had once been the capital.
I’m Craig Baird, this is Canadian History Ehx and today I’m sharing the story of how Montreal ruined its chances of ever being the capital after there was an attack on the Governor General, had a shootout with the premier and burned the Parliament Building.
In the 1840s Canada was taking its first baby steps towards Confederation.
We often think of our road to nationhood as smooth with signing of papers and a handshake.
That is what happened in1867, the year we became a nation, but it is not the whole story of how we got there.
For three decades prior to Confederation, there were rebellions and violence as Canadians struggled to separate themselves from the far-away power of the United Kingdom.
After the War of 1812, Canadians began to feel a sense of pride in their successful resistance to an American invasion, and there was a growing call for political reform spreading from Lower Canada to Upper Canada,
Citizens wanted to govern themselves.
Lower Canada, which is now Quebec, had the strongest calls for reform because for decades, the majority population made up of Francophones came to resent the power the Anglophones – a minority – had over them.
At first, they tried to bring change through political means as the concept of responsible government emerged.
Responsible government is one that is accountable to the people not a monarch, based on the Westminster system of a parliamentary democracy.
In Canada, it depends on the support of an elected assembly. Francophones drafted petitions, resolutions and protested for responsible government.
It went nowhere.
After years of not seeing change, some Francophones decided that the only way to bring about change was through rebellion.
And that is exactly what they did.
on Nov. 6, 1837, The Lower Canada Rebellion began as 30,000 rebels fought for Lower Canada against 11,000 British regulars and 33,000 Canadian militia.
Lasting just over one year, it ended on Nov. 10, 1838, at the Battle of Beauharnois with the final defeat of Lower Canada rebels.
By the time it was over, over 200 people had died and 1,600 were wounded on both sides.
Upper Canada inspired by the Lower Canada rebels also took up arms in December 1837, in the Upper Canada Rebellion which was defeated in less than a month.
The leader was William Lyon Mackenzie, the first mayor of Toronto and grandfather of our longest serving prime minister, William Lyon Mackenzie King.
I will be covering the Lower and Upper Canada Rebellions in much more detail later this year for now what you need to know is that following these events the British Government dispatched Lord Durham to investigate.
His report in 1839 recommended that Lower and Upper Canada be united into one as the Province of Canada and ruled by responsible government.
On Feb. 10, 1841, the two Canadas became one, but it was divided into Canada East, and Canada West, both were given an equal number of seats in Parliament.
But a responsible government was not implemented.
The Governor General answered only to the British Government, not the Province of Canada Parliament or its people.
The first capital was in Kingston, albeit temporarily and a vote to make it permanent was rejected in 1842 and a new city had to be found.
Montreal was recommended as the suitable choice since it was the largest city and in 1844 it became the capital.
To prepare, architect John Ostell renovated St. Anne’s Market in Montreal to serve as the Parliament Building.
Built in 1832, St. Anne’s Market was a 100-metre-long Georgian style building that housed the first indoor market in Montreal. Underneath were the first enclosed sewers in Canada.
As part of the decision to make Montreal the capital 23,000 books from the parliamentary library, legislative assembly and legislative council were moved from Kingston to Montreal.
But in the background a political crisis was brewing.
The British Parliament had recently passed the Canadian Corn Act, which favoured Canadian wheat and corn in English markets by reducing duties.
This upset farmers elsewhere in the British Empire and they pressured the government to repeal the Act.
That happened in 1846 and immediately caused a recession in Canada as the corn and wheat market dried up.
The Canadian government pressured the Colonial Secretary, Earl Grey, to have the United Kingdom negotiate lower duties on Canadian products going into the United States. This was a growing market f and lower duties would allow for more profit for farmers and merchants.
When the United Kingdom refused, the political crisis deepened as property values fell and bankruptcies grew.
With the growing tension, the Province of Canada set up a commission to determine if residents of what was previously Lower Canada were owed any damages from the rebellion.
Released in April 1846, the report stated that only those who did not participate in the Rebellion were owed.
The report gave a figure of £241,965 but stated it did not expect more than £100,000 to be awarded after claims were investigated further.
On June 9, 1846, the Assembly of the Province of Canada authorized only £9,986 to be awarded but before anything else could be done, the province headed into an election.
The ruling Tories were out, and the Reformers were in.
Robert Baldwin and Louis-Hippolyte LaFontaine became-premiers of the Province of Canada.
Baldwin managed Canada West, LaFontaine led Canada East and they agreed to work together to bring responsible government to Canadians.
In February 1849, LaFontaine introduced the Rebellion Losses Bill to further compensate residents of former Lower Canada who were caught in the crossfire and suffered property damage during the conflict.
LaFontaine saw it as a way to heal wounds left by the rebellion and show French-Canadians they were treated equally by the government.
The Tories, who were in Opposition, did not see it that way they saw it as a sign of French domination, and they did not want to pay those they saw as being disloyal to the Crown.
Tories Henry Sherwood and Allan MacNab charged that the bill was an insult to loyal subjects.
The heated debate on the bill began on Feb. 13, 1849., and more than once it turned from verbal attacks to physical attacks between members of the Assembly.
William Blake, the Solicitor-General, said the Tories were the true rebels.
When asked to apologize, he refused, and a fight broke out in the spectator gallery.
Blake and MacNab came to blows and had to be separated.
In the media, Anglophone newspapers opposed the bill and any payment to those in Lower Canada, while Francophone newspapers supported the bill and the compensation it would provide.
On Feb. 17, 1849, Tory politicians held a public meeting where a petition was prepared, asking Governor General Lord Elgin to dissolve Parliament and call new elections.
Attendees also burned LaFontaine in effigy.
Lord Elgin became Governor General in 1847 and seemed to support responsible government which was a marked departure from the previous Governors General who refused to consider it.
But then he distanced himself from the Province of Canada political affairs and focused on immigration instead.
Because he refused to meddle in parliamentary affairs, the Tory petition had no effect and Parliament was not dissolved.
Elgin said,
“The Tory Party are doing what they can by menace, intimidation and appeals to drive me to a coup d’etat.”
On March 9, 1849, the bill passed the Legislative Assembly.
Canada West members voted 47 in favour and 18 against. Canada East members were overwhelmingly in favour, 30 voting in favour and four against.
Six days later on March 15, the Legislative Council passed the bill 20 to 14.
On March 22, a crowd carried effigies of Baldwin, William Blake and rebel leader William Lyon Mackenzie and set them on fire.
This was a powder-keg environment, and now it fell to Lord Elgin to give it Royal Assent and with that simple stroke of a pen everything changed.
On April 25, 1849, just over a month after the government passed the bill, Lord Elgin made his way to the Parliament Building to give his assent to a new tariff bill.
At 5 p.m. he signed the bill and since he was at Parliament, he decided he might as well sign another 41 bills waiting for Royal Assent including the Rebellion Losses Bill.
As he signed, the spectator gallery became agitated, but signing passed with little fanfare inside the building while outside the building word spread, and a crowd formed.
At 6 p.m., Lord Elgin left the building and was met by a crowd that threw eggs and rocks at him when they saw him.
He rushed to his carriage and ordered his driver to get him home as quickly as possible.
As his carriage bounded down the road, the crowd pursued him.
Meanwhile, the Montreal Gazette, a newspaper that opposed the Rebellion Losses Bill, decried it and called for those in opposition to assemble at Place d’Armes. The newspaper wrote,
“Anglo Saxons! You must live for the future. Your blood and race will now be supreme, if true to yourselves. You will be English at the expense of not being British. To whom and what, is your allegiance now?”
Over 1,500 people showed up at the square in Old Montreal in protest. They heard speakers criticize Lord Elgin for signing the bill and called for Queen Victoria to remove him from his position.
Among the group was Alfred Perry, a local man who told the crowd,
“The time for petitions is over, but if men who are present here are serious, let them follow me to the Parliament Building.”
After instigating the crowd Perry and his followers made the ten-minute walk to the Parliament Building.
Along the way, they smashed the windows of the Montreal Pilot — the only English language newspaper in Montreal that supported the bill.
Once they reached the Parliament Building, Perry and his followers joined the smaller crowd that threw rocks and eggs at Lord Elgin.
Together, they broke windows then entered the building and vandalized it.
A man, only identified as O’Connor, tried to stop the crowd and got hit in the head with an axe handle for doing so.
Nearby there was an unattended fire truck and rioters took its 11-metre ladder to use as a battering ram on the building doors.
Once the doors broke, rioters flooded into the building.
They smashed desks and chairs, took a portrait of Papineau off the wall and stomped on it.
In an image very reminiscent of the January 6, 2021, United States Capitol Building attack… where a mob of supporters of then-U.S. president Donald Trump, …
One rioter sat in the Speaker’s Chair and declared that Parliament was now dissolved.
The Montreal Gazette wrote,
“The mob proceeded to demolish everything in the hall. One fellow took possession of the Speaker’s Chair and declared, in a solemn voice, that he dissolved Parliament in the Queen’s name.”
Then… the smell of smoke filled the air.
Alfred Perry was responsible… and years later he said he threw a brick at a clock but hit a lit gas lamp by accident which caused the fire to spread Newspapers reported that rioters, after smashing windows, threw torches into the building.
A reporter with the Montreal Gazette said he saw men light papers in a storeroom and then threw them around the room.
Regardless of how the fire started it quickly grew as broken gas lamps and lines fueled it as it spread through the building.
Soon it was an uncontrollable inferno The Montreal Gazette reported,
“The wind was high and in a very few moments, the wooden gallery and a canvas covering were enveloped by flames.”
When the fire department arrived, rioters prevented them from entering the building but when the blaze spread to a nearby house and the Grey Nuns Hospital, rioters did not interfere.
In the Parliamentary Library, 23,000 books went up in flames and only 200 were saved along with a portrait of Queen Victoria which was taken off the wall by four men and rescued from the blaze.
The Montreal Gazette reported,
“A beautiful full-length portrait of our most gracious sovereign, The Queen, had been saved and this simple act told eloquently of the loyal feeling of the crowd.”
One of those men was Sandford Fleming, a Scottish Canadian engineer and inventor.
Later in life he created our first postage stamp and promoted the worldwide use of standard time zones, a prime meridian and a 24-hour clock as key elements to communicating the accurate time.
Meanwhile the Parliament Building burned to the ground and losses were estimated to be $400,000.
The Montreal Gazette wrote,
“The 25th of April will be looked upon henceforth as a black day for Canada. The House lies in smoking ruins. The stone of which it was built being blue limestone, the walls are whitened, crumbled and tottering in a very dangerous state.”
On April 26 arrests were made, among those incarcerated were James Frerres, the publisher of the Montreal Gazette, William Mack, the secretary of the British American League, Hugh Montgomery, Augustus Heward and Alfred Perry.
Soon after, Attorney General Louis-Hippolyte LaFontaine ordered that the men be released to release the tension still brewing in the city.
The evening after the blaze, rioters returned to the streets and vandalized the homes of politicians who supported the Rebellion Losses Bill including LaFontaine’s home and stable which was set on fire.
The fire spread and destroyed much of LaFontaine’s library before it was brought under control.
LaFontaine’s counterpart Robert Baldwin was also a target.
Rioters vandalized one of his boarding houses even though he didn’t participate in the debate over the bill. Tory Opposition saw that things were getting out of control.
On April 28, a group of Tories convened a Friends of Peace meeting where they attempted to soothe followers by petitioning Queen Victoria to remove Lord Elgin from office.
That same day at 6 p.m., over 800 men, mostly Francophones showed up at the armoury to receive weapons as the government called for a special police force to keep the peace.
A group of rioters arrived soon after and threw rocks at them.
The newly armed police force fought back and injured three rioters.
General Charles Gore who had fought in the Battle of Saint-Denis during the Lower Canada Rebellion stepped in to calm rioters by swearing the new constables would be disarmed by the next morning.
He kept his word and less than 24 hours after it was formed; the new police force was demobilized.
Over the next two days people looked for someone to blame for the fire and subsequent riots and Lord Elgin became the scapegoat for The Thistle Society and the Saint Andrew’s Society who both struck his name from their list of benefactors.
The Montreal Gazette reported,
“They have no sympathy with his actions and regret that he should hail from Scotland.”
On April 30, Lord Elgin left his home to attend a meeting of the Legislative Assembly at its new and temporary location of Bonsecour Market.
As he journeyed through the city, people threw rocks and eggs at his carriage.
Upon arrival at the Legislative Assembly, Elgin and other representatives had to enter the building under an armed escort.
After the meeting, Lord Elgin made his way home as protesters again threw rocks at his carriage and a man sitting with the driver was struck in the head and seriously injured.
Wanting for the violence to stop Lord Elgin spoke to Colonial Secretary Earl Grey and asked that he be removed from his post.
Earl Grey refused, because he felt that agreeing to rioter demands would only encourage future unrest.
For the next month, Parliament dealt with the aftermath of the Parliament fire and the first order of business was to get the government out of Montreal.
On May 19, Henry Sherwood, a Tory politician, put forward a motion to have the capital alternate between Toronto and Quebec City which was approved by a vote of 34 to 29.
Montreal’s time as the Province of Canada’ capital had come to an end.
But that was not quite the end of the troubles for the city.
In August, several arson suspects were rounded up by police which sparked new riots in Montreal.
On Aug. 18, a mob attacked the home of Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine but this time he was alerted k beforehand and had friends on hand to defend his home.
In the small skirmish that ensued, a young blacksmith named William Mason was killed.
When an inquest was held days later into Mason’s death, rioters set fire to the building, but the fire department was able to respond quickly and save it.
There were now calls for Lord Elgin to call in the army to restore order.
Elgin refused as he believed it would only inflame more riots.
This choice was a relatively new concept for the time, but it worked.
Over the next few weeks, the fury of the mob slowly died down and things went back to normal in the former capital.
Meanwhile Parliament was prorogued until it was called back into session on May 14, 1850, in Toronto where English was the common language of all main ethnic and religious groups.
Toronto was the capital from 1849 to 1851 then it moved to Quebec City until 1855, then back to Toronto until 1859 when it moved to Quebec City until 1865.
During this time Queen Victoria chose Ottawa as the new and current capital in 1857.The small lumber town was chosen for two main reasons.
The first was that it was isolated, and far from the American border as living veterans of the War of 1812 still remembered and were concerned about an American invasion.
The second reason was logistical, Ottawa was halfway between Toronto and Kingston and Montreal and Quebec City. The first stage of construction on the Parliament Buildings in Ottawa was completed in 1865, just as the final session of the last parliament of the Province of Canada was held before Canadian Confederation in 1867.
Construction of the present library began a few years earlier in 1859. Georges-Barthelemi Faribault was hired to rebuild the collection and spent two years, and £4,400 to purchase new volumes in London and Paris. The collection arrived in Ottawa in 1866, and the library was completed in 1876, when the 47,000 volumes—including several donated by Queen Victoria—were installed.
The site of the Parliament Building in Montreal became a market again, but that was destroyed by another fire in 1901. Eventually, it was turned into a parking lot but since 2010, the lot has been the site of an archaeological excavation by the Pointe-à-Callière Museum, unearthing artifacts lost during the 1849 fire.
Robert Baldwin and Louis Hippolyte-LaFontaine continued to serve as co-premiers of the Province of Canada until 1851. Baldwin died in 1858, and LaFontaine died in 1864.
Neither man lived long enough to see Canadian Confederation.
As for Alfred Perry, the man who supposedly started the fire, he went on to become, very ironically, the fire commissioner for Montreal.
He passed away in 1900 at the age of 80.
While the Parliament Building fire robbed us of many books and papers now lost to history, it also may have preserved a few.
In 2011, archeological excavations dug 1.5 metres under the site where the Parliament Building once stood where, archeologists came across dozens of burned books carbonized and preserved by the fire itself.
This allowed historians and archeologists to get a glimpse into books from200 years ago.
They also found two sealing stamps, one from the council library and one from the Legislative Assembly along with many items used by the government of the Province of Canada.
This is why the site has been called Canada’s Pompeii.
[OUTRO]
