Golden Square Mile - Montreal's Mercantile Community (1760-1930)

Montreal's Mercantile Community (1760-1930)

In 1862, the novelist Anthony Trollope remarked, "Government has selected Ottawa as the Capital of Canada, but commerce has already made Montreal the capital, and Montreal will be the chief city of Canada, let government do what it may to foster the other town".

By the latter half of the 19th century, with great wealth and titles to their names, the commercial elite of the considerably smaller Montreal was as strong as any in Glasgow or Edinburgh. In the 1760s, following the British Conquest of New France, the men of the Beaver Club provided the financial backing and necessary management to take control of the French fur trade. The merchants that were associated with the North West Company and the Hudson's Bay Company (who merged in 1821) cornered the import-export market of most of British North America; as Washington Irving put it, "forming a kind of commercial aristocracy, living in lordly and hospitable style". In 1794, after a "splendid" dinner given at John Forsyth's, Jacob Mountain observed that "people here are fond of good living and take care to want no luxury". In 1820, John Bigsby related in more detail his experience of Montreal:

I found, but did not expect to find, at Montreal a pleasing transcript of the best form of London life - even in the circle beneath the very first class of official families. But I may be pardoned; for I had seen in the capital of another great colony (Cape Town) considerable primitiveness of manners.. (In Montreal) at an evening party at Mr Richardson's the appointments and service were admirable; the dress, manners, and conversation of the guests, in excellent taste. Most of the persons there, though country-born, had been educated in England (Britain), and everything savoured of Kensington. There was much good music.. Some of the show-shops rival those of London in their plate-glass windows, and it's inns are as remarkable for their palatial exterior as they are for their excellent accommodation within.. Montreal is a stirring and opulent town.. Few places have so advanced in all the luxuries and comforts of high civilisation as Montreal.

After the Conquest, unlike earlier British immigrants who came to North America to escape religious or political persecution, those who came to Montreal tended to be from well-connected families and were there to seek fame and fortune for themselves and the Empire. In 1795, Isaac Weld observed that most of these British merchants spoke French, but few of their French counterparts spoke English, showing signs that the French Canadians were retreating into their own culture. By 1829, La Minerve lamented that "Canadiens formerly engaged in business have gradually retired". Though not excluded from commerce as is often thought, the talented among the Canadiens preferred to pursue gentlemen's professions of the Ancien Régime; remaining on their Seigneuries or entering law, politics and the Church. Many made money from investing in the companies being formed around them, but apart from a handful of men like Joseph Masson and F-A Quesnel, the French Canadians left 'trade' to Les Anglais: Napoleon's "nation of shopkeepers".

Les Anglais, which for the most part meant the Scots, now had increasingly free rein to purchase vast tracts of land on the cheap, build factories and take control of the banking and finance of the new Dominion while serving in government posts at a time when few questioned the wrongs of vested interest. Unsurprisingly, this led to the social divide that would become nowhere more apparent than from the slopes of the Square Mile itself, where the business leaders built their city homes. Their growing fortunes were linked through marriage and company mergers, and after the collapse of the fur trade in the 1850s they turned their interest to railways and shipping, bringing forth another surge of wealth their way.

Indisputably the economic masters of Canada, the residents of the Square Mile had by the latter half of the 19th century become a tightly-knit Anglophone community. With the imbalance of power, they had become thoroughly unpopular with francophone Quebecers, but their key role in the development of not just Montreal, but the whole of Canada, was undeniable. Between them, these men were responsible for opening up and connecting Canada from coast to coast, while Montreal remained the principal port through which immigrants arrived and Canada's produce was shipped out to Britain and the Empire.

To mention only a few, the Square Milers established and then funded such Montreal institutions as: McGill University; McCord Museum; Royal Victoria Hospital; Montreal General Hospital; Montreal Museum of Fine Arts; Mount Royal Park; Mount Royal Cemetery; Campbell Concerts and Parks; Notre-Dame Basilica; Ritz-Carlton Montreal; Redpath Library; Redpath Museum; Allan Memorial Institute; Macdonald Campus; Mount Royal Tennis Club and the Victoria Skating Rink. Socially they created the Royal Montreal Curling Club; Montreal Hunt; Montreal Snow Shoe Club; Montreal Lacrosse Club; Royal Montreal Golf Club; Montreal Victorias; Montreal AAA, and Montreal Winter Carnival.