Quebec and The Lower St. Lawrence Valley
The eastern gateway to Canada is the vast waterway of the St Lawrence. Here came Cartier and Champlain, and that long line of noble discoverers, adventurers, and ecclesiastics; founding historic…
Location: Quebec, Canada
Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.
“Quebec and The Lower St. Lawrence Valley” from Canada by Wilfred Campbell, 1907.
The eastern gateway to Canada is the vast waterway of the St Lawrence. Here came Cartier and Champlain, and that long line of noble discoverers, adventurers, and ecclesiastics; founding historic Quebec and the famed Mount Royal, which now gives one of his titles to one of the greatest Scotchmen and Canadians of the nineteenth century.
Parkman, the great American historian, has immortalised the history of this famous stream, and has made the early French explorers stand out among the most interesting and heroic figures in all history.
When one reads Parkman, Canada ceases to be a mere northern, desolate region of iron-bound, inhospitable coasts, trackless forests, and lonely lakes and rivers. It becomes at once a romantic and enchanted land, the theatre of incidents and events both heroic and historic, and as beautiful and sublime in its vast background as the glamour which heroism, religion, the charm of race, and love of adventure can throw over the characters and communities which made it their stage of action and ideal.
It is remarkable, and a strong rebuke to those narrow theoretical nationalists who make national patriotism a profession, that the truest and most noted writers who have dealt with our history and legend have been outsiders, and not of our country at all. Genius cannot be limited; imagination knows no boundaries. It is the petty professional writer who boasts that all his subjects for literary purposes shall be limited to his own country. We have in Canada, and have had in the past, a very few such writers and cliques, exploiters of our new nationalism for the advantages which it may bring them. But the best answer to all such is the fact that the three leading American historians are famous because of their interest in outside countries and nationalities. Motley has given to the world his Dutch Republic, Prescott his noted History of Mexico, and Parkman is famous for his beautiful studies of French Canada.
The two most famous Canadian poems, Evangeline and Hiawatha, were written by Longfellow, the American poet. The scene of Hawthorne's finest novel, The Marble Faun, is laid in Italy. Washington Irving's Bracebridge Hall deals with rural England. Whittier's most popular ballad is The Siege of Lucknow, Some of Emerson's most noted poems deal with mediaeval history and the East. On the other hand, the finest American novel is The Virginians, by Thackeray. Charles Reade's greatest novel, The Cloister and the Hearth, deals with Germany of the days of Erasmus.
This all shows that there can be no limit to genius. No class of men can dictate to the writer as to the choice of his subject. But it will be found that most of our writers have had a special interest in the rich civilisations of the past, as more attractive than the crude, material present. Because of this, French Canada, with its romantic atmosphere, has been the chief theatre for our Canadian literature.
In reality, the history of French Canada is more alien from the Ontario writer, whose parents or grandparents have come from England, Ireland, or Scotland, than is the history of those homes of his ancestors; and it is an affectation to say that it should not be so. The truth is that the greater portion of the people of Canada, up to the present, have known little of each other; and where people have been living, as in Lower and Upper Canada, separated by race, religion, and language, it is absurd to expect that they should have anything in common. It is quite natural that the settler in Canada from Scotland should know much of Scottish history and literature, and nothing whatever of the history of French Canada.
In fact, had it not been for an American, Parkman, and the common school history, the people of Ontario would know practically nothing of early French Canadian history. And much as we may admire the deeds performed, and the characters who walked the stage, it is all as foreign history to us, in so far as we are concerned, as is the history of Peru or the Dutch Republic.
As well ask the inhabitants of Kent to call the early history of Ireland or Scotland theirs, as ask the Ontario man or the Manitoban to become enthusiastic over the early French regime. It would be as absurd as to ask the French Canadian to regard as his own the United Loyalist history, or that of the settlement of St John by the British.
It should be realised by the outsider that Canada is a vast country, including the larger northern part of one of the greatest continents on the globe; that its territory stretches from ocean to ocean; and that it is now but the result of the union of several scattered colonies with a common history dating only since about forty years back. In this way, only, will it be realised that the amalgamation of the Canada of the future is as difficult a matter as was the union of the British peoples in the remote past. Even to-day the French Canadian calls his fellow English Canadians English, and regards himself as the only Canadian; and in some parts of the Maritime Provinces I have heard people talk of going up to Canada.
It may be acknowledged that the union of the Canadas in the 'sixties, like the union of the American States and the separation from Britain, was no simply unanimous and spontaneous matter. There was much opposition and bickering; and in some of the provinces for years there existed a class who never recognised the Federation. In a town in New Brunswick I saw a strange sight—the chimneys of a man's house were painted black; and I was told that he had done this on the day of Confederation, it being his peculiar way of going into mourning for provincial independence; and he would never until the day of his death acknowledge himself as a Canadian.
When we realise that for more than half of the nineteenth century the whole of Canada meant merely Quebec and the province of Ontario, it cannot be wondered at that the French Canadian, who is separated in language, law, religion, and social habits, and who was the first inhabitant, should yet regard himself as the original and only Canadian.
No person coming to Canada should fail to come by the St Lawrence route. Not only is the scenery of the gulf and river beautiful, but the sight of the French villages on the river banks, with their large churches quaintly topped with tin spires, and their small whitewashed houses, is one not soon forgotten.
The habitant of the present day in the rural districts is much the same as he was a century since. He is happy and contented by nature, and not fond of change or very desirous of progress. Faithful to his church, his language, and his traditions, he tills his land much as his forefathers did, indifferent to modern improvements and the American vortex about him.
But, in spite of this conservative trend of mind in the mass of her people, French Canada has produced a group of statesmen, ecclesiastics, and litterateurs of which any country might be proud. From the very first she has had picturesque figures in her history; and the French Canadian should have good reason to be proud of his province in this respect. In the early days such names as Cartier, Champlain, La Salle, Brebeuf, and Frontenac were famous in history. Since British rule, Lafontaine, Cartier, Papineau, Chapleau, and Laurier stand out, especially the first two and the last, as rivals of any political leaders on either continent. But it is interesting to note that the spirit which has animated these leaders has led them away from the contentment and conservativism already mentioned, and in the direction of British and American institutions and ideals.
There is, however, a quality in French Canada which marks her out from the rest of America. It is associated somewhat with her heroic history, with the sad and ideal, if mistaken, spirit of her early clergy. She is no doubt, in many senses, the most poetic people on this continent, and she has managed, in spite of all her weaknesses—and she has had many,—to ennoble and place a glamour upon the land she has occupied as has none other of the American peoples. That French Canada owes much to Parkman is true; but there is a charm, a quaintness, an artistic quality, a real love of life and its happiness, among her people, which seems sadly wanting elsewhere upon this continent.
In visiting Quebec province one notices a thing that is remarkable, and it is the flag flown everywhere, the tricolour of modern France. This seems strange and inconsistent, as of course the official flag is the British, and the old flag under which the French came to Canada was the royal flag of the golden lilies. Added to this that the modern French republic has ever been, and now is, antagonistic to the Roman Church, which is all-powerful and the State Church of Quebec; it is the more surprising that the tricolour should be the favourite flag of the people.
There have been several explanations of this replacement of the old flag by the tricolour. One is that the English brought it into Quebec after the Crimean War, as a tribute to the fact that France and England had fought side by side against Russia. But the true reason is that the strongest influence in Quebec is Nationalism, as is evinced by the jealousy of the people regarding their language. This is a very natural feeling, and it is an evidence that the race-idea is the most lasting one; and those who foolishly hope to destroy all race-ideals will find the spirit of the French Canadian one not to be crushed in that manner. The Quebec people are quite willing that all in Canada should be Canadian in their own way. They may smash their own or anyone else's race-traditions; but they must not interfere with the Quebec man's peculiar Canadianism. In other words, they may graft the new Canadianism on the old French Canadian stock; but the old trunk—that is, his ideals and his race-traditions, his loyalty to all that is French—must be left alone. Now, one cannot but admire this attitude on the part of the French Canadian; but it should also teach that the British Canadian on his part has sacred race-traditions, which must not be effaced, and which will be necessary to the highest development of the future Canadian people.
Entering the Gulf of St Lawrence, we reach Anticosti, an island with an interesting history, and now owned by Menier, the French chocolate-king. Passing the south shore, a series of gloomy mountain-ranges, with fishing villages nestled here and there amid sparse farm-lands in bays on the shore-line, we reach Rimouski on the south shore, the place where the European mails are landed. Farther up, as the river narrows. Green Isle or Isle Verte is reached; and opposite, on the north shore, is Tadousac, and the mouth of the great river Saguenay, the waterway to what is called the Lake St John district.
The Saguenay is one of the most remarkable streams on this continent. It is gloomy, forbidding, and lonely in its character; the shores often rise in high crags; and Cape Eternity, whose sheer cliff rises hundreds of feet from the river’s edge, is one of the most majestic and famous rocks in America. The following sonnet gives a description of its gloomy grandeur:—
Cape Eternity
"About thy head, where dawning wakes and dies,
Sublimity, betwixt thine awful rifts,
'Mid mists and gloom and shattered lights, uplifts,
Hiding in height the measure of the skies.
Here pallid Awe for ever lifts her eyes.
Through veiling haze, across thy rugged clefts.
Where, far and faint, the sombre sunlight sifts,
'Mid loneliness and gloom and dread surmise.
Here nature to this ancient silence froze,
When from the deeps thy mighty shoulders rose,
And hid the sun and moon and starry light;
Where based in shadow of thy sunless floods.
And iron bastions vast, for ever broods
Winter, eternal stillness, death and night."
The Saguenay river has always been held by the inhabitants of the province in a good deal of awe, and, as a stream, it has been associated with a mysterious and sombre fate.
It was up this stream, says legend, that the morose and unhappy Roberval disappeared into its desolate vasts. The tradition adds that, suspecting great mineral wealth in the interior, he sailed up its gloomy waters and vanished completely from the knowledge of men.
Another legend is associated with Tadousac, which is situated at the mouth of the Saguenay. It is the marvellous story of the Pere Brosse, and is told in Lemoyne's Chronicle of the St Lawrence, Pere Brosse was the priest stationed at this place, and the story concerns his death, which was accompanied, so the legend states, by several miraculous happenings. The good father, having knowledge of his approaching death, bade his people go for the neighbouring cure, Pere Compain, who was on the island of Aux Coudis, and bring him to perform the funeral offices. He prophesied that there would be a storm, but they were not to heed this, for he guaranteed them protection, and that they would find Compain awaiting them. All happened as he had prophesied, and, on their return, the Pere Brosse was found at midnight in his church, dead, leaning against the altar; and it is added that the church-bells were tolled without men's hands on the occasion of his death.
Near this locality is St Anne de Beaupré, the famous Canadian shrine, where, it is claimed, thousands of pilgrims have been cured of their diseases through the intervention of the good saint. It has been for years the Mecca for all sorts of ill folk, of the Roman faith, who go there in crowded excursion trains, in hopes of being cured. In the church is a great pyramid of crutches and other evidences of disease and physical disability, left by the pilgrims as testimony of the miraculous cures worked.
The Saguenay is considered one of the best salmon regions in Canada, and attracts yearly large numbers of American and other sportsmen.
Above Green Isle is Cacouna Bay and Cacouna, one of the most noted watering-places on the St Lawrence. From here up, on both sides of the river, are many summer resorts, among them being Murray Bay, one of the most popular. Near Quebec is the historic island of Orleans, well known in early French history; and after this a bend in the river is turned, and the city of Quebec is reached.
Quebec is the most famous of the Canadian cities. It is called the Gibraltar of the West, though its present fortification is, to all intents and purposes, a farce. It was the key to French Canada, and when Wolfe went up its scarp and surprised Montcalm in his hold, he changed the rule of the northern half of the continent. But at the cession Britain, virtually, while freeing the country from French rule, handed the government back to the people, and gave them privileges which were not only hurtful to themselves, but caused jealousy in the colonies to the south; and ever since Quebec has remained, as she is to-day, French Canada.
The city stands on the lake-like expansion of the St Lawrence, at the junction of that river and the river Charles. It is gradually becoming the leading seaport of the St Lawrence route; and the great iron bridge, now being constructed across the river just above the city, will bring it into close touch with the leading railway systems.
Quebec was founded by Champlain, the great discoverer of the St Lawrence, in 1608. Parkman rightly calls him "the Æneas of a destined people."
Here he defied Kirke, and finally had to surrender Canada; but his name is associated for ever with the history of this country.
In Champlain's time there was an energetic effort made to colonise the banks of the St Lawrence; and, while the Roman Church prevailed, there was a sharp struggle on the part of Protestantism to Christianize this region. Parkman tells of the quarrels between the Huguenots and the Roman clergy. There is a famous picture depicting the fierce controversy that was waged on shipboard between the Jesuits and the Huguenot ministers, on the way out to Canada. Each religious party is represented as occupying one side of the deck, and in front of each, a fierce theological leader belonging to that side, in threatening attitude and angry disputation. Near them are seen the sailors and shipmen, grouped together and enjoying the spectacle; and the satirical title of the picture is, "And They Disputed by the Way."
De Monts was a Huguenot, and brought out both priests and ministers of his own clergy.
"I have seen our cure and the minister," says Champlain, "fall to it with their fists on questions of faith. I cannot say which had the more pluck, or which hit the harder; but I know the minister complained to the Sieur de Monts that he had been beaten."
An interesting episode in the history of Quebec is that of the British flag which was captured by the French in 1690. Sir William Phipps, after taking Port Royal, advanced up the St Lawrence and arrived at Quebec in October. Here, he summoned the city to surrender; but the valiant Frontenac, who was governor, refused to do so, though he was taken at a disadvantage by the sudden arrival of Phipps. A battle ensued, and Phipps had to return, leaving behind him some cannon and his flag, which was shot off in the action, and which was captured by an enterprising Frenchman who swam out and secured it.
The finest pen-portrait I have seen of this old-world city in the new world is that given in his verse by the Duke of Argyll, and written by him when, as Marquis of Lome, he was Governor-General of Canada. It is, as will be seen, not only a splendid description of the old city, its surroundings, and its historical splendour; but it also contains many stanzas and single lines of rare poetry, as when he apostrophises the mighty Key to the St Lawrence in the following lines:—
"O fortress city, bathed by streams
Majestic as thy memories great.
Where mountain-floods and forests mate
The grandeur of the glorious dreams.
Born of the hero-hearts who died
In founding here an empire's pride.
Who hath not known delight, whose feet
Hath paced thy streets, thy terrace way;
From rampart sod or bastion grey
Hath marked thy sea-like river greet
The bright and peopled banks which shine
In front of the far mountain's line;
Thy glittering roofs below, the play
Of currents where the ships entwine
Their spars, or laden pass away.
As we who joyously once rode
Past guarded gates to trumpet sound.
Along the devious ways that wound
O'er drawbridges, through moats, and showed
The vast St Lawrence flowing, belt
The Orleans Isle, and seaward melt;
Then by old walls by cannon crowned,
Down stair-like streets, to where we felt
The soft winds blown o'er meadow ground.
Where flows the Charles past wharf and dock.
And Learning from Laval looks down.
And quiet convents grace the town;
There swift to meet the battle shock,
Montcalm rushed on; and eddying back
Red slaughter marked the bridge's track;
See now the shores with lumber brown.
And girt with happy lands which lack
No loveliness of summer's crown.
Quiet hamlet alleys, border-filled
With purple lilacs, poplars tall.
Where flits the yellow-bird, and fall
The deep eave-shadows. There, when tilled
The peasant's field or garden bed.
He rests content if o'er his head.
From silver spires, the church bells call
To gorgeous shrines, and prayers that gild
The simple hopes and lives of all."
Here we have the quality of the true poet, who, a fine artist, gives us a delightful picture of this old bastioned town above its flowing tides not only by depiction, but also by suggestion. In this poem we not only see the
"Fortress city, bathed by streams
Majestic as her memories great";
but we also revive those memories, and once more feel the thrill of old battle-call and the romance of her past and present.
But this poet has also given us a description of the environs of Quebec, and in delicate language describes the coming of the seasons, and shows how bounteous nature is in this often bleak and iron-bound region. He pictures how—
"In the dank grass at our knee,
Shone pearls of our green forest sea.
The white star-flowers of triple leaf.
Which love around the brooks to be."
He also gives us a picture of a thunder-storm; and in some beautiful lines refers to the historic battle, and the resultant peace, which made this old fortress famous:
"Before the blasts and rains forth poured.
And slow o'er mighty landscapes drew
The grandest pageant of the Lord.
The threatening march of flashing cloud.
With tumults of embattled air.
Blest conflicts for the good they bear;
A century has God allowed
None other, since the day He gave
Unequal fortune to the brave.
Comrades in death! you live to share
An equal honour, for your grave
Bade Enmity take Love as heir!"
The line, "With tumults of embattled air," is very beautiful, and the final apostrophe to Wolfe and Montcalm is noble and heroic.
Near Quebec are the famous falls of Montmorenci, one of the most majestic cataracts on this continent. The river of that name literally tumbles over an immense cliff into the St Lawrence. Lord Lorne describes its beauty in exquisite verse:
''We watched, when gone day's quivering haze,
The loops of plunging foam that beat
The rocks at Mont Morenci's feet.
Stab the deep gloom with moonlit rays."
The view from the citadel is one of the finest in the whole world. Far below and out to the distant horizon stretches the vast river, "sea-like"; and beyond rise the dim, purpled peaks of the bleak mountain-ranges against the Canadian sky. Lord Lome describes this scene by night, with the ancient city sleeping below:
"Or from the fortress saw the streams
Sweep swiftly o'er the pillared beams;
White shone the roofs and anchored fleets
And grassy slopes where nod in dreams
Pale hosts of sleeping marguerites."
The winter sports and the winter landscape of Quebec are widely known and appreciated. Indeed, our Canadian winter has been too much praised abroad to the detriment of the character of our climate. It is not so widely advertised that Canada, especially Ontario, is in many parts quite tropical in its summer heat, and the title "The Lady of the Snows" has scarcely been justified.
Yet our winter season is a delightful and bracing one, and Canadians sadly miss what is called the good old-time Canadian winter, when, as in some years of late, it has failed to appear.
The Marquis of Lorne has given a very delicate picture of the winter life, the winter atmosphere and landscape at Quebec:
''Or when the dazzling Frost-King mailed
Would clasp the wilful waterfall,
Fast leaping to her snowy hall
She fled; and where her rainbow hailed
Her freedom, painting all her home,
We climbed her spray-built palace dome.
Shot down the radiant glassy wall.
Until we reached the snowdrift's foam.
Then homeward, hearing song or tale.
With chime of harness-bells, we sped,
Above the frozen river-bed.
The city, through a misty veil.
Gleamed from her cape, where sunset fire
Touched Louvre and cathedral spire."
Canada has produced many writers who have described her natural and historic glories, and have pointed out to the world her splendid resources. But it is remarkable that it was one of her Governors-General who was the first to picture her historic fort in such fine classic verse as is here quoted; and nowhere in all our poetic literature is Quebec city so truly and artistically depicted as in this poem.
The Quebec of to-day is much improved in a utilitarian sense, and the fine Canadian Pacific Hotel, the Chateau Frontenac, a stately pile, adds to the picturesque charm of the upper city.
But its ancient glories are still its chief ones. Its old university, "where Learning from Laval looks down," is the great Roman Catholic university of Canada, and was founded by the famous ecclesiastic of that name.
Quebec's churches are interesting because of their history and association with the early struggles of the pioneer days, and not least among them is the Anglican cathedral of St James, the second oldest Anglican church in Canada.
Other picturesque features of this city were its old historic gates, some of which have fallen into decay, but which helped to give it the air of an old-world town. It would be a delightful city were it cleaner. The approaches from the steamers through the lower town are a disgrace to a place of such world-wide renown.
Beneath its bastioned cliffs there stretches a long row of houses, facing a single street or road on the edge of the river. These buildings have an ancient, weather-beaten, time-stained appearance, that suggests the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries rather than the twentieth. Here, a few years ago, a part of the cliff came tumbling down destroying a number of houses and endangering the lives of the inhabitants.
The citadel walls on the top of the cliff are in but an indifferent state of repair, and are slowly crumbling away.
Below here, and up the swift stream, stemming its tides, came the early discoverers, Cartier and Champlain, seeking, as they thought, Cathay and farther Ind. Here, on this rock, ruled in turn Church and king. Here dwelt that iron soul, Laval. Here Frontenac defied Phipps; and here, later, up this stream, came Wolfe that fated night, musing on Gray's Elegy, and
“The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power";
and, scaling the grim cliffs, surprised the French general Montcalm, and fell with him in a common glorious death, and whose common grave
"Bade Enmity take Love to heir."
Here, in the old days of the early settlement, were landed "the king's girls," as they were called. These were the young women who were intended to be the wives of the early inhabitants. This manner of providing for the growth of the early French colony was one of the most interesting episodes in colonial history. The infant community was not one of families, but of adventurous single men; so that, in order to encourage them to settle on the land and become permanent residents, and also to increase the population, the Church and king undertook to provide wives for them.
These young women were sent out in ship-loads at a time, and were consigned, in the care of some good women of the Church, to the governor, who undertook to find them suitable mates among the male inhabitants. They were for the most part peasant girls from the country districts, chiefly from Brittany, as the men had objected to the class of girl from the towns, who were delicate and could not work in the fields and endure the hardships which the early pioneer life entailed. A few ladies were sent out to be married to some of the officers at Quebec and Mount Royal, but the number was limited.
The convent of the Ursuline nuns was an important institution at Quebec in those early days, and Mary of the Incarnation and other women of religion were prominent characters, and took an active part in the early life of the colony.
Campbell, Wilfred. Canada. A. & C. Black, 1907.
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