Ingrid Peritz

Montreal — From Wednesday's Globe and Mail
Published on Tuesday, May. 04, 2010 10:12PM EDT

Last updated on Tuesday, May. 04, 2010 10:20PM EDT


It may be the most historic parking lot in all of Canada.

Tucked away in Old Montreal amid the quarter’s quaint greystones is an asphalt expanse that covers up some significant ashes – the vestiges of an early Canadian Parliament building.

The site has been ignored by generations of schoolchildren, overlooked by tourists, and left to languish without a marker or plaque.

But this summer, work gets under way to dig up the dirt on Parliament, at last.

Montreal’s Pointe-à-Callière Museum of Archeology and History, with $22-million in newly announced funding, is set to begin unearthing the remains of the Parliament of United Canada, created in 1844. The building marked Montreal’s time as capital of Canada, although the status was short lived: A mob stormed it in 1849 and burned it down.

Some might say that a landmark destroyed by anger-fuelled hordes deserves to be abandoned to the ashes of history. But the site has passionate advocates.

Essayist John Ralston Saul says the Montreal site has major national importance and has been overlooked for too long.

“I think it’s about time,” he said in an interview yesterday. “All the best things about Canada were formalized first in that Parliament building. This is where Canada became a democracy.”

The Parliament building was witness to the adoption of key pieces of legislation, including the act establishing “responsible government” in Canada in 1848.

The Parliament was created in 1844 in the grand St. Ann’s Market building in Youville Square on the western edge of Old Montreal. On April 25, 1849, incensed by passage of the Rebellion Losses Bill, which would compensate rebels of the 1837-38 uprisings, a largely English-speaking mob set upon the building and torched it.

Some records say the only thing saved was a portrait of Queen Victoria. Others report the mob carried it outside and shredded it.


Christine Muschi for the Globe and Mail
Francine Lelièvre, executive director of Montreal's Pointe-à-Callière Museum of Archeology and History, says she doesn't know what archeologists will dig up when Canada's early Parliament site is excavated.


It was an inglorious episode for Montreal, but it’s not seen as all bad. Mr. Saul said the way the government responded – with restraint and conciliation rather than force – was a turning point in Canada’s history.

“The burning down of it is a great drama, but in a sense the response was a make-or-break moment,” he said. “And in a terrible crisis, they responded with enormous care and calm. By not responding with violence, it allowed the breathing space for people to figure out how to live together.”

Work on the Parliament site begins this summer with archeological exploration probes; full digs are scheduled for next summer, said Francine Lelièvre, executive director of the museum. The $22-million in funding, which comes from Quebec and the city of Montreal, also covers the cost of expanding the museum.

And while the riot destroyed historical treasures – including an estimated 12,000 books and archives containing the records of British North America – Ms. Lelièvre is hopeful that some tantalizing remnants may have survived. She said anything could be discovered in the debris, from clocks to porcelain pieces to other vanished treasures.

“What can we find? I don’t know,” she said. But at least the site, in all its blazing history, will be explored. “We built Canada here,” she said. “True, some of it is not a glorious history. But it’s history.”