Category Archives: Quebec

Genealogy, Quebec

Christmases Remembered

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Christmas 1955

As Christmas approaches, there aren’t visions of sugar plums dancing in my head, but flashes of my childhood Christmases in Montreal in the 1950s and 60s. There were a few green Christmases but mostly there was snow on the ground.

On my second Christmas, I got a baby brother for a present. He was born on December 19th, and in those days, mothers typically stayed in the hospital for a week. The doctor let my mother out a day early, so she came home with Donnie on Christmas Eve. One had to pay for the stay beforehand, so she received a refund!

Christmas Brother


Excitement mounted as Christmas approached. There was the Santa Claus parade, followed by visits to Santa at Eaton’s Department Store, a ride on the little train with a gift, and then lunch in the 9th-floor restaurant. I still remember the sandwich plate, chicken and egg and clown ice cream (a scoop of ice cream decorated as a face with a little ice cream cone upside down as a hat.) My mother would take the children two by two. First, the older ones and then the younger ones. We knew that the real Santa was at Eaton’s because he climbed down a chimney there at the end of the parade.

Visiting Santa at Eaton’s

We didn’t have a television but listened to a show on the radio where a list of good girls and boys was read from the North Pole. Mary was usually mentioned being a common name but not my friend Dilys’s name. One year we watched Amal and the Night Visitors, an opera by Gian Carlo Menotti on TV at my Grandmother’s. Listening to the record every Christmas became a tradition.


As my mother bought presents, she put them in the linen cupboard and locked the door. We knew that the key was on the moulding above. So, a curious child could climb on a chair, unlock the door and check on the presents. As I got older, the anticipation and surprises were better than sneaking a peek.

The tree was only decorated a day or two before Christmas. Dad would set up the tree and add the lights. My mother would always put on the tinsel, not throwing on handfuls but putting pieces on one by one, as her father had done. We could put on some ornaments. We had some large fragile balls and lights that had bubbling red liquid and everyone’s favourite Sack Santa.

Sack Santa

We could ask Santa for only one thing, as he needed to have presents for all the good boys and girls. That present came unwrapped. Mrs Claus didn’t have time to wrap all the toys. We could play with our Santa present while Mom made breakfast.

We made and bought presents for aunts and uncles. One Christmas I made sachets embroidered with branches and filled with spruce needles for the aunts. My brother once gave everyone a comb from the big package he bought. One uncle was a teacher and he always got a red pencil.

My father didn’t cook but every Christmas he would make chocolate fudge for his Aunt in Toronto.

The years we were in the Junior Choir, we sang at the midnight service. Snowy Flakes are Falling Softly, was a favourite carol. This was a special event as we got to stay up really late. My parents probably didn’t mind tired children, as perhaps we slept in a little on Christmas morning.

What did Mom want for Christmas? Maybe a paring knife or a new wooden spoon. Now I understand her not wanting more stuff.

This Christmas my mother received three wooden spoons.

We didn’t rip into the presents because Mom saved the larger pieces of wrapping paper and ribbons for the next year. We tried to make the opening of presents last but no matter how large the pile of presents was, it was soon demolished.

We were usually six plus Grandma on Christmas day. We had dinner at 1:00 pm. For a few years we went to Chateauguay in the evening, to my mother’s sister’s house because Grannie and Grandfather were there. They preferred a quieter Christmas with fewer children! In later years we often had friends or colleagues who were alone over for dinner.

One Christmas, we were going to spend it at our cottage in the Laurentians, north of Montreal. Dad went up and turned on the heat, then a huge snowstorm prevented us from going. A long, unplowed road led to the house. Later, he had to go back and turn off the heat. We never attempted this again and continued with our traditional Christmases.

Merry Christmas to All!

Notes:

Another Christmas Story

https://genealogyensemble.com/2021/01/20/sugarplum-tree/

Eaton’s department store on Saint Catherine Street in Montreal was a destination. It was one of three department stores, the others being Morgan’s, which became The Bay and Simpson’s. The restaurant on the 9th floor was opened in 1931. It was in Art Deco style, inspired by the dining rooms of luxury ocean liners. After Eaton’s went bankrupt in 1999, the restaurant remained locked up for a quarter-century. It reopened in 2024, restored to its original style. The dining room has been converted into an event space, with a restaurant located in the outer corridor.

The dining room in its former glory

Snowy Flakes are Falling Softly https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svfu6WcIh84

Amahl and the Night Visitor by Gian Carlo Menotti

Genealogy, Quebec

The Man Behind the Black Cross Temperance Society

What made my ancestor think of using a black cross to mark homes of temperance?

Edouard Quertier (Cartier) launched Quebec’s first official temperance society in 1842 by placing a giant black cross on the top of the escarpment in Saint-Denis-de-Kamouraska. So began an organization that would encompass 400,000 of 900,000 Canadian Catholics eight years later.(1)

The symbol created a tradition that continues in Quebec to this day. If you ever go into a home with a bare black cross hanging in the middle of the living room wall, you’ll know you’re in the house of people who do not drink alcohol.

But what gave him the idea?

1842 Arrival in St Denis

Quertier certainly wasn’t feeling inspired when he first arrived in the tiny hamlet or between 10 and 15 families at the edge of a cliff on the Saint Lawrence’s south shore.

How did I accept this arid rock?,” he wrote. “When I arrived [in October], there was not even a piece of board on which to place a bed or a table. I had to go down the slope and rent a small house, or rather a cabin. No matter! I waited there, until my lodging was acceptable.”(2)

Still, Quertier was no youngster when he arrived in Saint-Denis-de-Kamouraska. At 43 years old, he had had four previous jobs before his priesthood and 12 years of experience serving communities.

Le révérend Édouard Quertier, 1864, Fonds J. E. Livernois Ltée, http://numerique.banq.qc.ca/patrimoine/details/52327/3114297

Previous Jobs

Both of his previous roles as parish priest were stressful.

As curate and then parish priest of Saint-Antoine in Montmagmy, he argued frequently with his patron, Father Charles Francois Painchaud.

His bishop got him out of that situation by appointing him parish priest of Sainte-Georges of Cacouna. There, a new church and presbytery were required, but building them was difficult due to arguments between residents who wanted religious leadership and those who believed in the strong separation of Church and State. Despite the conflict, Quertier was able to build a new church and presbytery within the village. He oversaw the presbytery stonemasons and carpenters and got the church walls well underway before resigning the post. His departure halted the building of the church for a time, but it resumed in 1845 and opened for worship in 1848. The belfry didn’t get added until 1892 and full consecration delayed until 1897, but that’s another story.(3)

The experience simply makes clear that Quertier knew he had to do something important quickly to make an impact on his new neighbourhood.

He decided to promote temperance as a movement.

Temperance in Quebec

The issue already had some momentum in Quebec. Popular people like Bishop Charles-August-Marie-Joseph de Forbin-Janson and Charels-Paschal-Télesphore Chiniquy had been telling stories about the evils of alcoholism in weekly masses since 1839. Community residents saw that frequent imbibing often led to fighting, lethargy, poverty, spousal abuse, theft and neighbourhood violence.

Unlike his predecessors, however, Quertier decided to formalize the movement with an official association he called “The Society of the Black Cross.” He created statutes, oaths for members and procedures for joining the society, including the requirement that each member display a plain black cross on the wall of the family living room.

For the next 15 years, Quertier’s campaign for temperance spread. So many French Canadian families displayed the black cross, it became a decor tradition. The Quebecois de Souche society includes a photo that shows the once prevalent look.(4)

Growth and Departure as Leader

In the meantime, Quertier continued building his parish. The wooden chapel that originally opened on December 24, 1841 got replaced by a stone gothic church in 1850.

Seven years after that, Quertier retired. By then, the Society of the Black Cross included believers in almost every parish in Quebec and Quertier’s own parish had grown to encompass 100 families containing “625 souls.”(5)

Temperance continued to be a key issue, not only in Quebec but across Canada. In Quebec, however, the secularism movement also had great strength in many communities. To avoid angering these groups, the Province of Canada passed the Canada Temperance Act that allowed any county or city to hold referendums to consider whether or not to forbid the sale of liquor. This would ensure that communities who wanted to stay dry could do so without forcing prohibition on the entire country.

Life after Death

Quertier spent the rest of his life in Saint-Denis-de-Kamouraska, which became Saint-Denis-de-la Bouteillerie in 2013. After his death in 1879 at 73 years old, the church entombed his body under the crypt of the church. A tombstone says in French:

Here lies lord Edouard Quertier, first parish priest of St. Denis, one of the first apostles of temperance. Died July 17, 1873, aged 73 years, 10 months, 12 days. For 15 years, he lived for you. Pray for him.”(6)

Quertier’s remains continued to draw enough visitors that the church got entirely rebuilt after a fire damaged it on March 9, 1886. Initially, they built a belfry to hold a 2027-pound bell that cost $425,000 the following spring, and new walls on those of the former church by October. Later, they’d add two more bells to the tower.

Quertiers’ campaign for temperance didn’t end when he died. Members of his Black Cross Society were among 20% of Quebec’s population that supported a federal referendum on prohibition in 1898.
The movement grew substantially during World War I.

Temperance, not Prohibition

The Quebec Government declared prohibition in 1919. Then it made several exceptions by legalizing the sale of light beer, cider, and wine in hotels, taverns, cafes, clubs and corner stores.

The prohibition law got repealed entirely to enable liquor sales through a government-run commission in 1921.

In many ways, by choosing control over strict adherence to abstinence, the government duplicated the practicality Quertier included within the original functioning of the Society of the Black Cross.
Any household that became a member of the temperance organization could get a special dispensation to serve alcohol during celebrations, such as baptisms, birthdays and weddings. If the parish priest agreed that a special occasion merited an exception, he would temporarily replace the plain black cross in a home with a white one. The white cross hung on the wall during the celebration. After the celebration ended, the priest would visit to exchange the white cross with a black one and return the home to a liquor-free location.(7)

This kind of flexibility enabled temperance to continue growing within Catholic communities in Quebec even after 1921. Some of its proponents resurrected Quertier in the form of a statue in front of his former church in 1925. The statue remains in place today.

Sources

(1) Ferland, Jean-Baptiste Antoine, in a report to the Holy See, 1850 as written in section 8, part 98 of Canada and its provinces, edited by Adam Short and Arthur G. Doughty, Glasgow, 1914, https://archive.org/stream/canadaitsprovinc11shoruoft/canadaitsprovinc11shoruoft_djvu.txt, accessed July 19, 2020.

(2) Julienne Barnard, “QUERTIER, ÉDOUARD,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 10, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–,written in 1972, http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/quertier_edouard_10E.html, accessed on July 18, 2020.

(3) Ouellet, Jean-Baptiste, Municipalité de Saint-Denis-De La Bouteillerie. https://munstdenis.com/municipalit%c3%a9/historique/, accessed July 18, 2020.

(4) Fédération des Québécois de souche, https://quebecoisdesouche.info/la-croix-noire-croix-de-temperance/, accessed July 18, 2020

(5) La Corporation de développement de Mont-Carmel, https://www.mont-carmel.ca/histoire/, accessed July 18, 2020.

(6) Généalogie Abitibi-Témiscamingue, https://www.genat.org/cimetieres/photo.php?idPhoto=2c0bf0249a01fd83b57322e7b7cb3362, accessed July 18, 2020.

(7) Fédération des Québécois de souche, https://quebecoisdesouche.info/la-croix-noire-croix-de-temperance/, accessed July 18, 2020.

Genealogy, Quebec

Discovering Family Connections Through Obituaries

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Somerled School Kindergarten class 1957/1958

I recently discovered that I am related to my kindergarten teacher’s husband! There are certainly tangled webs of relationships all through our family histories. Following direct ancestor lines often leads you to people you might know about. Exploring other branches of siblings, aunts, and uncles can uncover connections you never knew you had. This is how this one was untangled.

The online death notice for Shirley Harris (1927-2025) in the Montreal Gazette caught my eye. Her name sounded familiar so I started reading her obituary. It mentioned she was 98, had a brother, John and sister, Ann. These names didn’t ring a bell, so I closed it just as my eyes caught the name Paul von Colditz. I remembered that there was a connection with a Shirley von Colditz and our family.

Ida Bruneau, one of my mother’s cousins, wrote a family history, “The Short History of the Bruneaus and Girods”. In it, Ida mentions Shirley von Colditz as a very dear friend of hers. They discovered they were distant cousins. Shirley descended from Medard Bruneau (1811-1892) and Ida and I from his brother Barnabé. They were the sons of Antoine Bruneau (1773-1847) and Marie Robidoux (1775-1847). This meant that Shirley and Ida were third cousins once removed.

My husband and I used to be members of the Montreal Badminton Squash Club. An Eric von Colditz also played badminton there. Years ago, I read Ida’s book. After that, I asked Eric if he thought we were very distant cousins. He said no. Shirley was his stepmother.

I carefully reread the obituary. “Shirley was the devoted wife of the late Paul von Colditz and the loving sister of the late John Harris ( the late Patricia Reynolds).” Patricia Harris was the name of my kindergarten teacher. I knew her maiden name was Reynolds, as my mother knew her sister Moyra Reynolds. Pat’s obituary confirmed she had sisters-in-laws Shirley and Ann. So I was related to her husband John.

Mrs. Harris and Miss Gael were my two kindergarten teachers at Somerled School in Notre Dame de Grace, Montreal. I started there in the fall of 1957. This school just opened in January 1957. I was in the first class to go through all the grades at Somerled School. I enjoyed kindergarten and remembered my teachers fondly.

John and Pat Harris had two children, Kathy and John. At one time, their son John lived on Percival Ave. in Montreal West, where I also lived. During a street-wide garage sale, my husband returned from down the street. He said, “One of your teachers is selling tea cups in front of a house.” I went and had a chat with Mrs Harris. Her son was someone I recognized but never talked to. He had a wife, three daughters and a dog. I figure John and I are fourth cousins once removed. Unfortunately, he no longer lives on Percival. I can’t tell him of our connection. Not even six degrees of separation.

Notes:

A Short History of the Bruneau Girod Families by Ida Bruneau. Ste. Agathe des Monts, Quebec, May 1993. Page 8. A copy in the hands of the author.

https://montrealgazette.remembering.ca/obituary/shirley-harris-1092955467

https://montrealgazette.remembering.ca/obituary/patricia-harris-1065848692

Shirley Harris was the daughter of Irene Bruneau (1901-1987) and Herbert Harris. 

Irene was the daughter of Eugene Albert Bruneau (1875-1939) and Eliza W. Thompson

Albert was the son of Ophir Bruneau (1848-1920) and Hermaline Piche (1949-1901)

Ophir was the son of Medard Bruneau (1811-1892) and Marie S. Megrette (1822-1853)

Medard was the son of Antoine Bruneau (1773-1847) and Marie J. Robidoux 1775-1847)

Barnabé and Medard were brothers:

Barnabé was the son of Antoine Bruneau (1773-1847) and Marie J. Robidoux 1775-1847).

Ismael was the son of Barnabe (1807-1880) and Sophie Marie Louise Prud’homme (1812-1892).

Sydney was the son of Ismael Bruneau (1852-1918) and Ida Girod ( 1862-1927).

Sydney was my grandmother Beatrice’s brother

Ida Bruneau was the daughter of Sydney Bruneau ( 1893-1979) and Ruth Dawson ( 1894-1971).

This makes Ida and Shirley 3rd cousins once removed!

Moyra Reynolds was on the women’s executive at the Catherine Booth Hospital. She worked alongside my mother, who was also a cousin of John Harris. Moyra and her friend Eileen glued my mother’s little tatted flowers onto hasty notes. These cards were sold for the benefit of the Catherine Booth Hospital. Moyra was living in the Montclair Residence when my mother moved in. They lived on the same floor. Moyra was excited that my mother was coming and hoped to make more hasty notes. Unfortunately, she soon suffered a stroke and was in hospital for a while. She came back to the Montclair. However, her needs were too great for them to handle and she moved to another residence.

One time when I was visiting my mother, a young woman was clearing out Moyra’s room. I thought afterwards that she might have been Moyra’s niece and my kindergarten teacher’s daughter. I am sorry I didn’t speak to her.

There was a family connection with Somerled School and another connection to Percival Avenue. Percival Ave is a street of just three blocks in the town of Montreal West. Ida’s sister Mary Bruneau and her husband George Davidson once lived on Percival. Their home was just across the street from where John Harris later lived. Ed Hawkes married my mother’s cousin Ephese Jousse, also related to John Harris. His parents lived a block south on Percival. I live on Percival now!

Dundee, Quebec, Scotland

The Cipher

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When I say that my grandfather, Thomas McHugh, worked as a cipher, Bletchley Park, MI5, Russian spies immediately come to mind. He was neither a Russian spy nor did he work as a cipher during the war. His employer was the Bank of Montreal, and it was his first job when he came to Canada in 1912.

The decision to immigrate to Canada was not easy for Thomas. He was in his mid-30s and already had seven children, between the ages of one and fifteen. For over 40 years, the jute manufacturers of Dundee, Scotland, had been providing employment for his parents, aunts, uncles, siblings, wife, and for him. However, by the early 1900s, he was facing a precarious future for his children.

By that time, Dundee had suffered a serious decline in the textile industry and more significantly, the jute industry. Jute was imported from India; however, the mill owners realized that it would lower production costs to open mills in India to prepare the jute and import the finished product to Scotland. Once mills were established in India, the jute production in the mills in Dundee decreased substantially.1

So when Thomas arrived in Canada, a little ahead of his wife and his children, he was eager and prepared to do any job that he could. The Bank of Montreal had its headquarters in Montreal, Quebec. At the beginning of the 20th century, the bank had significant dealings with Great Britain and there were correspondence and banking instructions back and forth between Canada and Great Britain daily. These instructions were mainly sent by telegraph overnight.  Some of these instructions were confidential, and it was preferred that they remain so. Overnight instructions reduced the number of people who would have access to them. And the time difference between Montreal and the United Kingdom meant that the banks in London and Edinburgh were open for business while Montreal was still asleep.

Thomas with Pal in Verdun

Even in those days, the banks were concerned about security, privacy and confidentiality. The banking instructions and transactions that were transmitted by telegraph were encrypted. It was the job of the cipher clerk to decipher them so that the bank staff could then ensure that the instructions were carried out as required.

To be a cipher clerk, one had to be reliable, meticulous and honest, and maintain the confidentiality of the bank’s business above all else. To decipher the information, the clerk used a cipher handbook and worked overnight, making it a difficult job for a man with a family.

So while my grandfather, the cipher, did not work in espionage, I still think that his first job in Canada was rather interesting.2

  1. Wikipedia web site, The History of Dundee, online<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Dundee>, accessed February 19, 2017.
  2. McHugh, Edward. Personal knowledge. [Father of writer].
Genealogy, Montreal, Quebec

Mile End Farm: the Origins of a Neighbourhood

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with additional research by Justin Bur

The Mile End neighbourhood of Montreal is famous as the home of Montreal bagels and of novelist Mordecai Richler. Its iconic architecture features outside staircases attached to two- and three-storey rowhouses, next door to churches, synagogues, shops, cafés and renovated manufacturing buildings. But Mile End’s history goes back to one small tavern at a crossroads in the countryside more than 200 years ago.

The Mile End Tavern was located at today’s northwest corner of Saint Laurent Boulevard and Mount Royal Avenue,1 now the starting point of the Mile End neighbourhood. In turn, Mile End is on the Plateau, an elevated plain lying north of Sherbrooke Street and east of Mount Royal.

The first known reference to Mile End was dated April 21, 1808, when landowner John Clark placed a notice in the Gazette advertising Mile End Farm as providing “good pasture for horses and cows at the head of the Faubourg [suburb] Saint-Laurent.”

Screenshot

Clark (1767-1827), an English-born butcher, acquired the land he would call Mile End Farm in several transactions, including purchase agreements and leases, between 1804 and 1810.2 Like most farms in Quebec, it was long and narrow. At its greatest extent in 1810, it measured 2.5 kilometers from south to north, and between 400 and 550 meters wide. Clark was almost certainly the one who chose the name Mile End. The centre of his property was about a mile north of the small city of Montreal, and the area might have reminded him of another Mile End, a mile east of London, England. The name caught on and has been in use ever since.

John Clark, a butcher from Durham, England, settled in Montreal around 1797. Portrait in a private collection.

When Montreal was founded in 1642, Mile End was probably uninhabited. The ground was too rocky for settlements or agriculture, and few Indigenous artefacts have been found there. The northeastern region of the Island of Montreal was covered by a vast cedar forest. The heart of Mile End was also forested, but there, both cedar and ash trees were the dominant species. This forest was still intact when the Sulpician priests mapped the area in 1702, but as the city’s population grew — it stood at around 1,200 residents in 1700 – more and more trees were cut to provide firewood.   

By 1780, most trees had disappeared from the foot of the mountain, replaced by houses, farm buildings, hay fields and pastures. In the Mile End area, livestock pastures, vegetable crops, tanneries and quarries dominated the countryside, and orchards were planted in the mid-1800s.

In 1663, the Sulpician priests became the seigneurs, or feudal lords, of the entire island. In 1701, the Hôpital Général acquired an extensive piece of land from the Sulpicians in the future Mile End area, and the Grey Nuns took over the hospital and all its lands in 1747. In 1803, the nuns sold the piece of land that would become Mile End Farm to two masons, Jean-Baptiste Boutonne and Joseph Chevalier. They wanted to quarry its stone and sand for building materials.

The masons had to pay the Grey Nuns a rente constituée (annual interest), as well as yearly seigneurial dues to the Sulpicians. So when John Clark bought the property – the first part of his Mile End Farm — in 18044 and gave Boutonne and Chevalier the right to continue collecting building materials for seven years after the sale, they must have been relieved. Meanwhile, Clark found another use for the land, first advertising pasture for other peoples’ cows in 1808.

When the same ad for livestock pasturing at Mile End Farm appeared the following year, it was placed by Phineas Bagg (c.1751-1823) and his son Stanley Bagg (1788-1853), my four-times and three-times great-grandfathers. A farmer from western Massachusetts, Phineas had brought his family to Canada around 1795. Initially he worked as an innkeeper in LaPrairie, near Montreal, and then the family moved onto the island. In 1810, Phineas and Stanley signed a lease with John Clark.5 Paying an annual rent of 112 pounds, 10 shillings, they ran the Mile End Tavern and managed the farm for the next seven years before subletting to another innkeeper.

description below.

The lease described the property as having a two-storey house (which at some point must have been converted into the tavern), a barn, stable and outbuildings. The Baggs were required to sufficiently manure the pastures and arable land, to cultivate and to perform road maintenance and other required duties. They were permitted to cut wood for fencing and firewood, but they had to preserve the maple grove. They were also permitted to cut and remove stone.

No doubt the tavern brought them a good income since it was located at an important, if somewhat remote, intersection. Stanley must have attracted many additional customers after he built a racetrack nearby. In May 1811, he signed an agreement with the Jockey Club of Montreal, subletting a piece of land to the club and promising to build the track within five weeks. The club supervised the races. The track, partially on land leased from the Sisters of the Hôtel-Dieu, was about a mile in circumference and what is now Jeanne Mance Park, extending east to Saint-Laurent. It was most likely the first racetrack in Montreal.6

Another reference to Mile End appeared in the Gazette on August 4, 1815 when Stanley Bagg, Mile End Tavern, placed a notice offering a reward for information about a lost bay horse, about 10 years old, with a white face and some white about the feet.7

In 1819, Stanley married John Clark’s daughter, Mary Ann (John Clark was also my four-times great-grandfather). Their son, Stanley Clark Bagg (1820-1873), eventually inherited the Mile End Farm, as well as other properties Clark had owned nearby.

In the second half of the 19th century, Stanley Clark Bagg began subdividing and selling the properties he had inherited from his father and grandfather. He died in 1873 and the next generation of the family continued to sell building lots from the Stanley Clark Bagg Estate.

In 1891, they sold most of the Mile End Farm property to McCuaig and Mainwaring, a pair of promoters from Toronto who envisioned a high-end residential suburb they called Montreal Annex.8 The project got off to a slow start because basic services such as water, sewers and streetlights were nonexistent and a promised electric tramway did not materialize in time. A recession that started in 1893 put an end to their dreams. A few years later another group of investors, the Montreal Investment & Freehold Company, took over the property and the area developed as a mixture of duplexes, triplexes and commercial buildings.

Meanwhile, the Mile End Hotel continued to appear in city directories at the corner of Saint- Laurent and Mount Royal until 1900. The property was expropriated for road widening in 1902 and the building was demolished. A department store had replaced it by 1906.

Description of Map: The areas with a greyish tinge are the areas that John Clark held by lease rather than owning them; none of them ever came back to Clark-Bagg possession after the leases ended. The yellow areas are cutouts belonging to and reserved by other people, excluded from the rectangles describing the property leased to P & S Bagg in 1810. Mile End Farm was bounded by the modern Saint-Laurent Blvd. in the east, while the future Park Avenue was just to the west and Pine Ave. would have been the southern boundary. RHSJ refers to the Religieuses Hospitalières de Saint-Joseph de Montréal, a religious order dedicated to caring for the sick.

This article also appears in my personal family history blog, www.writinguptheancestors.ca.

See also:

Janice Hamilton, John Clark, 19th Century Real-Estate Visionary, Writing Up the Ancestors, May 22, 2019, https://www.writinguptheancestors.ca/2019/05/john-clark-19th-century-real-estate.html

Janice Hamilton, The Life and Times of Phineas Bagg, Writing Up the Ancestors, Oct. 17, 2018, https://www.writinguptheancestors.ca/2018/10/the-life-and-times-of-phineas-bagg.html

Janice Hamilton, The Life and Times of Stanley Bagg (1788-1853), Writing Up the Ancestors, Oct. 5, 2016, https://www.writinguptheancestors.ca/2016/10/the-life-and-times-of-stanley-bagg-1788.html

Notes and Sources

1.  Mount Royal Avenue is the continuation of Côte Sainte-Catherine Road, which traverses the northeast slope of Mount Royal and continues east of Saint-Laurent Boulevard. Saint- Laurent, now a busy commercial street, was at one time the only road leading north from city to the Rivière des Prairies, on the north shore of Montreal Island. Built by the Sulpician priests in 1717, Saint Laurent was initially known as Le grand chemin du Roy – the Great King’s Highway. Over the years it has been known by many names, English and French, including Chemin Saint-Laurent, St. Lawrence Street and “the Main”. Since 1905, its official name has been Boulevard Saint-Laurent.

2.  Yves Desjardins, Histoire du Mile End, Québec: Les Ēditions du Septentrion, 2017, p.  22.

3.  Island of Montreal property owners were required to pay dues to the Sulpicians every year until the seigneurial system was gradually abolished there, starting in 1840. The system was abolished in the rest of Quebec in a gradual process starting in 1854.

4.       Louis Chaboillez, n.p. no 6090, 30 May 1804. A reference to the purchase also appears in J.A. Labadie, n.p. no 16733, 7 June 1875. This was the inventory of Stanley Clark Bagg’s Estate. It includes the name of the seller, the date of the sale and the notary who prepared the deed. This part of Mile End Farm is item #264.

5.  Jonathan A. Gray, n.p. no 2874, 17 Oct. 1810.

6.  Justin Bur, Yves Desjardins, Jean-Claude Robert, Bernard Vallée, Joshua Wolfe, Dictionnaire historique du Plateau Mont-Royal (Montreal, Éditions Écosociété, 2017), p 107.

7.  Justin Bur, “À la recherche du cheval perdu de Stanley Bagg, et des origines du Mile End.” A la recherche du savoir: nouveaux échanges sur les collections du Musée McCord; Collecting Knowledge: New Dialogues on McCord Museum Collections. Joanne Burgess, Cynthia Cooper, Celine Widmer, Natasha Zwarich. Montreal: Éditions MultiMondes, 2015, p. 143.

8.  Justin Bur, Yves Desjardins, Jean-Claude Robert, Bernard Vallée, Joshua Wolfe, Dictionnaire historique du Plateau Mont-Royal (Montreal, Éditions Écosociété, 2017), p 271.

Genealogy, Quebec

Mom’s Recipe Book

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One of my favourite recipes in Mom’s recipe book is for chilli con carne. It has only a few ingredients: hamburger, kidney beans, onions, Heinz tomato soup, salt, pepper and chilli powder but only if desired. With fresh rolls and tomato slices, it was a meal we often had at the cottage, without the chilli powder. I was surprised to see that there was no Campbell’s tomato soup in the recipe.

Mom’s famous Chilli Con Carne!

Mom started this book when she got married in 1948. It contains recipes cut out of magazines and newspapers, her handwritten recipes and ones collected from friends and family. In her later years, she mostly cooked from memory but sometimes would open the book just to check.

The indes page

The book is now falling apart. It has been taped and covered with mactac but those adhesives don’t hold forever. The favourite recipes are worn, smudged with sticky fingerprints and ingredients. The newspaper clippings are starting to disintegrate.

A favourite Christmas treat

My mother’s recipe book used to travel back and forth from Montreal to our cottage in the Laurentians. When Mom moved into a senior residence, it remained in Dunany. I then took charge of it, not wanting to leave it to the mice over the winter.

I thought I would make a book or calendar of some of the recipes as they all have stories to tell. Funny how most of them are for sweets. Main dishes at home were mostly roasted meat and boiled potatoes, which didn’t require recipes.

As kids, we would ask Mom what was for supper but all we really wanted to know was what was for dessert. Would it be a cake, a pie, a pudding, a cobbler, squares, cookies and ice cream or my least favourite, canned fruit? We had to eat our dinner before we got dessert but we always had dessert.

Inside front cover and sweets

Mom’s planned menus were similar each week. She would make a list and only buy what was on the list. On Sundays, we had a roast at noon with potatoes, vegetables, gravy and then omelet, pancakes or bread broiled with cheese and bacon for supper. Monday was usually chicken, with one cut up for six people. Tuesdays meant leftover roast and on Wednesdays the menu varied with veal patties, liver, sausages or pork chops. We ate leftover roast again on Thursdays, sometimes being shepherd’s pie. On Fridays, we always ate fish even though we were not Catholic. This was our least favourite meal as it mostly consisted of frozen white fish, sometimes with a soup sauce. On Saturdays, we had hamburgers, usually without buns.

Our meals didn’t look like these pictures

Mrs McNally’s cookie recipe came from the mother of a university friend of mine. Eileen’s mother used to send cookies back with her daughter, much to the enjoyment of her roommates. It is a basic oatmeal cookie with raisins, nuts, chocolate chips, cinnamon and nutmeg. It became my mother’s go-to recipe and she added whatever was in her pantry. The cookies were often stored in a ceramic cookie jar in the kitchen. Dexterity was needed to quietly raise the top and sneak a cookie.

Mrs McNally’s Cookies

There are many pictures of decorated cakes. Mom took a class but only made a few very fancy cakes. Most were just plain iced layer cakes. She made some doll cakes with a Tammy or Debbie doll (we never had a Barbie doll) in the center of an angel food cake with fancy icing for her skirt. She also put money between the layers of cake, wrapped in wax paper. Pennies, nickels and dimes with one quarter. She would mark on the cake plate where to find the quarter and show the Birthday person.

Very fancy decorated cakes

Rhubarb upside-down cake replaced pineapple upside-down cake when my mother got the recipe from her sister. We always had this dessert in the spring and summer with rhubarb from the garden. Rhubarb and chives were the only edible things my mother grew.

Mom was an excellent pie maker. Her book does contain a booklet on how to make pie crust. She mastered this skill in no time. She would make all her fruit pies without looking at a recipe. I preferred blueberry and raspberry pies made from berries she picked around our cottage. Apple was my father’s favourite. One day, she anxiously watched as he cut into a pie and asked if it was ok. “When is your pie not alright? ” answered my father.

There would often be a little sugar pie made with the leftover pie crust sprinkled with sugar, cinnamon and little pats of butter. Pieces were eaten right out of the oven if you were lucky enough to be around.

There were definitely things we didn’t like, such as porridge every morning before school but we were well fed!

Montreal, Quebec

A Spontaneous Act of Kindness

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A World of Education, page from a pamphlet given out to school children in 1967 about Expo 67.

My mother, Mary-Marthe, would put herself out for people. At the check-out counter of the grocery store; on the bus; in the park my mother was not shy about helping out others. She sometimes forced spontaneous acts of kindness on complete strangers, often to my childish embarrassment.

This habit, I imagine, she picked up from her own mother, Maria, a pious French Canadian who married well in 1901 and was generous with food and home-remedies.

The story goes that in the 1920’s my mother’s Sherbrooke Street West grey stone had a mark on the gate that indicated to homeless men, or ‘tramps’ as they called them, that a hearty meal was in store for them should they knock at the back door.

I most vividly recall an incident that unfolded in the summer of 1967, the year of Expo 67, the World’s Fair, when I was a young adolescent and because of my prickly age extra prone to being embarrassed by my mother.

My family lived in Montreal and we all had ‘ passports’ so we could visit the nearby World’s Fair anytime we wanted.

The Canadian section of Expo 67. The Western Provinces Pavilion, a forest, smelled so wonderful compared to smoggy city air!

I was 12 years old and I sometimes took the number 65 bus to those blissfully bright Expo isles alone, likely skipping school, and the bus stop was right under my 6th grade classroom window! I wasn’t too afraid to be found out. Didn’t my teacher say we’d learn more at Expo than at school?

Over that six month period from May to October 1967 I travelled the short bus and metro route to Expo 50 times, sometimes alone, sometimes with my brothers or other relations and sometimes with friends and their families. I recall that one mom was so afraid of losing her many tweenage charges in the swelling sea of thrill seekers she looped a long rope around our waists to keep us contained. How embarrassing!

I wandered to the Expo site in all weather with a packed lunch since I had no extra money to spend.3 I liked the wide open Canadian and Ontario pavilions the best. I’d eat my sandwich on the Katimavik watching the rusty monster emerge from the lake adjacent. I experienced their exhilarating movies1 over and over again. The five Expo theme pavilions were a hit with me, too. 4I mostly avoided the popular national pavilions: the American, Russian, Czech and British pavilions with their long long line ups.

The movie We are Young in the Cominco Pavilion another favourite haunt of mine in the summer of 67. The exhibits explored the five senses. See link below that includes info about The Eighth Day at the Christian Pavilion and all the other landmark films that prepared us well for the future of media.

But I did like escaping to the sculpture garden behind the American pavilion. It was uncrowded, cool and peaceful in that place and all the avant-garde works of art, both life-like and abstract, were exciting to behold.2

One installation at the Sculpture Garden. The Watchers.Lynn Chadwick, UK 1960. No wonder I felt safe.

My older brother, a cutting-edge type, liked the Cuban pavilion for the vibes so we went there together, feeling slightly rebellious. He dragged me into the Christian pavilion one day and we saw a film with a monk setting himself on fire that depressed me for a days. And together we saw Harvard’s famous all-male Hasty Pudding troupe at an outdoor bandstand in a play called a Hit and a Myth that was quite bawdy. Although a good fit for my brother, it was bit mature (sic) for my tastes. I recall the energetic finale, Acalpulco, with a group of ‘grown men’ dressed like Carmen Miranda dancing in a conga line. Their unanchored brassieres kept riding up to their necks.

The list of songs inside this programme reveals that Acapulco was the penultimate song in the play, not the last. Characters in the play included Xerox and Tenintius and there were also Vestal Virgins. The Montreal Gazette said the play was written by the sons of Pulitzer Prize winning playwrights and would be of interest to anyone willing to get into the panty raid spirt. (I checked on Wikipedia: one writer, Timothy Crouse, became a journalist for Rolling Stone. The other, John Weidman, wrote for Sesame Street.)

Yes, I went alone to those glittering Expo Isles in the St. Lawrence, despite the fact that in the spring a policeman had visited our sixth grade classroom to tell us about the dangers lurking there. He said a girl could be drugged in a bathroom and then sold into white slavery. I’m guessing I never mentioned this to my father and mother. I wasn’t too worried being used to walking the big city streets on my own and not understanding the term white slavery – something to do with snow, I imagined. However, I did keep a look out for any suspicious Boris Badenof types around the Russian Pavilion.

Yardley paintbox eye liner from the era. So obviously aimed at little girls like me. I still want one!

My father worked for Expo as a comptroller but I never visited the fair with him. He obviously was too busy. I did go with my mother, though, a few memorable times. On one occasion we saw Bobby Kennedy walk by surrounded by his team of FBI agents in dark glasses, and on another day we witnessed Haille Selassie, the Emperor of Ethiopia. He had a little dog following him. (I assume this wasn’t a coincidence. My mother wanted to see these famous figures.)

And on one very hot day my mom decided to visit the British pavilion. That place, more than any other, always had an especially long line up. This was the era of Swinging London, after all, and the pavilion included a MOD London exhibit with the Beatles (remember them?) and a Mini Minor Car. I was excited to go. I was a big fan of The Avengers with gorgeous Emma Peel karate-chopping Cold War baddies in her colourful Carnaby Street attire and of the Monkees TV show that featured Yardley commercials and “the London Look.”

The long line up at the British Pavilion. No shade. Wikipedia Commons.

My mom and I queued up realizing we probably had a very long time to wait. It was a hot day and in the line you couldn’t escape the sun. The person ahead of us was an ‘older’ woman with a young child – perhaps around 15 months old -who was not happy in the heat. The baby girl was kicking up a big fuss the whole time and would not be pacified, not in her stroller, not in her mother’s arms.

As was her way, my mother struck up a conversation with this woman.

She was British but this is where the similarity to Emma Peel or any other British ‘bird’ ended.

She was tall and thin, yes, but with wispy light brown hair and lots of stress lines around her eyes. Dowdy would be a good way to describe her attire. She was self-conscious about it, too. “I must look like the wreck of the Hesperus,” she said, combing back a rogue lock of hair with her hand.

This statement impressed me. Here was a smart British lady, just like my 6th grade teacher. And yes, in fact, this beleaguered mom was a teacher but in Toronto. She also had a 15 year old son who was off somewhere exploring the grounds – and she was divorced.

I started to feel sorry for her. She said she had driven to Montreal for just one day so her son could visit the Fair. Just one paltry day to see Expo, how sad! And all she wanted was to visit the pavilion of her homeland. Minutes, maybe hours ticked by and the long line inched forward. The little girl squirmed wildly in her mother’s arms, her shiny face getting redder and redder.

We were getting closer to the entrance and then my mother offered to do something very generous. She said WE would watch the baby for the woman in a shady area nearby so that she could visit the British pavilion in peace. (Our own visit would have to wait for another day.) And, what do you know, the woman took her up on the offer. I guess all that time in the line had made us seem safe and familiar to her.

The harried British mother passed through the turnstiles by herself and my mother and I and the baby found a big tree to sit under.

Detail of Mod Britain exhibit British Pathe video.

Then the lady returned and we said our goodbyes.

At Christmas she sent us a card with a long thank-you note written in impeccable teacher handwriting. (She had told us she didn’t have a phone. Too expensive.) I remember the note was on blue paper, maybe one of those aerograms popular in the day for overseas correspondence.

So, it seems, this overwhelmed mother did, indeed, appreciate my mother’s spontaneous act of kindness, as outrageous as it was – even for the 1960’s. I, myself, don’t recall being embarrassed at all.

  1. http://cinemaexpo67.ca/reimagining-cinema-film-at-expo-67/ https://www.nfb.ca/film/in_the_labyrinth

2. https://expo67.ncf.ca/expo_sculpture_index.html

3. ” Take a bag of ham sandwiches and a thermos of coffee to Expo- where there are 146 restaurants and snack bars, 46 food shops and 500 automatic vending machines to serve you,” says the opening line of the article “Easting Exotically and otherwise at Expo,” in the Star Weekly insert for February 11, 1967. The pic shows Indian, Japanese, Italian and Mexican chefs with their exotic fare: tacos, pizza, sushi and a meal with pilau and nan. (I think I ate all these things this past weekend.) A pic on the next page caption says :A snack bar in Expo terminology means glamorous dining, indeed. (So, no real cheap food at Expo.) Oddly, the advert in this article was for KLIK and Kam luncheon meat with a pic of little squares of this ‘meat’ on toothpicks on a pickle. How ironic.

4. Man the Explorer; Man the Producer; Man the Creator; Man the Provider. I recall Man and the Community had a revolving exhibit (Czech artist) with little wooden models of a man and a woman in bed and all their needs revolving around them on a belt. “The cause of all progress is laziness.” Reading a list of that place’s exhibits, it sounds amazing. I want to go back!

The Star Weekly insert wrote about the Man out of Control? exhibit in Man the Producer with it’s “maze of signs showing man besieged by the information explosion.” The article continues: “The question mark in the title is no accident. Will the devices of man swallow him up or will he remain in control?” Hmm. Why do I feel this question to be extremely timely?

Genealogy, Quebec

Henriette Feller

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A young Protestant widow from Switzerland came to Canada in 1835 to convert the heathens. If it wasn’t for Henriette Feller, my family might still be speaking French and attending Roman Catholic services.

Henriette Odin (1800 – 1867) was born in Montagny, a village, outside of Lausanne, Switzerland. Her Protestant ancestors had been driven out of France when Louis XIV revoked religious freedoms and many took refuge in Switzerland. Her father was the director of the Vantonal Hospital at Lausanne.

“Wisdom and love distinguished both parents and their influence on the family was of the happiest kind.”

As a teenager, Henriette began visiting in the hospital and her tender and gentle demeanour was a comfort to the patients. She learned to change dressings and considered becoming a nurse but then she had a religious awakening.

Henriette married Louis Feller, a widower, in 1822. He was the head of a prison and had a son and two daughters. Their daughter Elize died as a young child and soon after, Louis died of typhoid fever. Louis Feller left all his assets to Henriette. They both gave their lives to a Christian Evangelical sect that wanted to spread the love of Jesus Christ. If you loved Jesus, everything else would be alright. The Swiss government didn’t approve and persecuted those who espoused the evangelical faith.

At an opportune time, Monsieur Henri Olivier and his wife came to Henriette’s Church, Henri as a pastor. He held missionary prayer meetings and under the Société des Missions d’Evangeliques de Lausanne, instructed young men for missionary service.

 “Whose business is it to go to the heathen for whom we pray and give?” 

The North American Indians became their prime missionary endeavour. Soon Henri, his wife and two young men were sent to Canada to convert the indigenous population to Protestantism using the word of Jesus from the New Testament. The young men went west but the Oliviers preferred to stay in Montreal and work on converting the French Roman Catholics. Henriette corresponded regularly with Mme Olivier, who encouraged her to follow them to Canada. In 1835, Henriette and a young missionary, Louis Roussy, sailed to New York, a journey of 33 days. They then travelled up the Hudson River to Lake Champlain, on the Richelieu River to St Jean, a long tedious journey to La Prairie in an old coach and finally across the St Lawrence River in a primitive boat to be met in Montreal by the Oliviers.

Converting Catholics was hard work, with very limited success because of the strong position of the clergy in the everyday lives of the French Canadians. Henriette thought they could do more good in the rural areas south of Montreal, where the priests and the churches were far apart. Henri Olivier soon returned to Switzerland but Henriette Feller and Louis Roussy stayed.

The Levecque family, in Grand Ligne, south of Montreal, offered Henriette their attic space with a room for her to live in and another for the school. She taught the children during the day using the bible and at night, the adults climbed to her room and read and discussed the New Testament.

The Leveque family house used as Henriette’s first school

Troubles escalated with the local Catholics during the rebellion of 1837. Those at the mission were threatened and forced into exile in the United States. They found sympathy for their cause in Champlain, New York and were able to raise money and received continued support from the Americans.

When things quieted down, they returned to Grande Ligne to find the houses emptied, animals taken and crops gone. With the help of several friends of the Mission, they rebuilt. The new construction, a much larger, substantial stone building, housing the mission and the school, opened in 1840. This was the begining of the Feller Institute.

While Henriette, known as Mere (Mother), continued to teach, Louis Roussy, as a colporteur, spread the word of God through the distribution of Bibles. My family lore said that one day, he and Eloi Roy visited my great-great grand mother, Sophie Marie Prudhomme Bruneau. She was interested in what they told her and invited them to stay the night. Her husband Barnabé Bruneau then joined in the discussions and eventually, my great-great grandparents and all their 13 children converted to Protestantism.

Henriette Feller

The hard work took its toll on Henriette’s health, which was a constant source of anxiety for her close associates. She had pneumonia several times and never completely recovered, even after a trip home to Switzerland. She suffered a stroke in 1865 and although bedridden, was still the driving force for the school until her death in 1868. Henriette Feller is buried in the Grande Ligne Cemetery with many of her converts, including some of my ancestors. Most of my family is protestant to this day.

“Although Madame Feller occupied a somewhat anomalous position, for her influence was well-nigh all-powerful, and few ventured to contradict or oppose one in whom the tenderness of woman and the firmness of man were so happily united, she never overstepped apostolic limits.”

Notes:

Walter N. Wyeth, D.D. Henrietta Feller and The Grand Ligne Mission, Philadelphia, PA. 1898. printed and Bound by C.J. Krehbeil & Co. Cincinnati, Ohio.

Paul Villard M.A., M. D., D. D. Up to the Light the story of French Protestantism in Canada. 1928. Ryerson Press, Toronto, Canada.

PHILIP G.A. GRIFFIN-ALLWOOD Wesley Memorial United Church  Cramp Memoir of Madame Feller 244. Mère Henriette Feller (1800-1868) of La Grande Ligne and Ordered Ministry in Canada.

Historical Sketch of the Grande Linge Mission by the President 1893

https://www.findagrave.com/cemetery/2457971/saint-blaise-baptist-cemetery

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feller_College

Ensemble Feller
Ensemble Feller
Greece, Quebec

Easter Celebrations

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I am spending this week madly rushing around to get ready for Easter Sunday. My husband is Greek and we celebrate Easter with Greek traditions on this day. Forty guests are expected at our house for the celebrations.

The star of the show will be a lamb on a spit. The “lamb team” starts early in the morning to prepare the lamb, filling the inside cavity with herbs, onions, and lemon, and then sewing it up. It will turn on the spit for many hours. We used to take turns turning the lamb but now we have an electric motor to do the job.

Courtesy Greek Boston

My husband and his uncle will also prepare the kokoretisi early Sunday morning. Kokoretsi is also roasted on the spit. Kokoretsi is a traditional dish of lamb intestines wrapped around seasoned offal, including sweetbreads, hearts, lungs, and kidneys.1 Everyone loves it, although I have to confess that I do not find it appetizing. Surprisingly none of the younger people in our family are interested in learning how to make it.  In a decade or so, kokoretsi may no longer be served.

I found a picture of kokoretsi on the My Greek Food Recipes blog, one of my favourite sites for Greek recipes:

Courtesy My Greek Food Recipes©. All Rights Reserved.

Of course, the lamb will be accompanied by many Greek favourites such as tzatziki, spanakopita, lemon potatoes in the oven, and more.

Another highlight of the day will be the Tsougrisma, a game played by bashing eggs together. Easter eggs are dyed red, representing the blood of Christ shed on the cross.2 Once dyed, red eggs are woven and baked into tsoureki, a three-braided Easter bread representing the Holy Trinity.3 The rest of the eggs are used as a table decoration and are used to play Tsougrisma, which means “clashing” and “cracking” in Greek. The cracking tradition symbolizes the resurrection of Christ and birth into eternal life.4

Courtesy Greek City Times

To play the game, each players holds an egg, finds another player and taps the end of the egg lightly against the other player’s egg. They then tap together the ends that are not broken. They then move on to other players until both ends of their egg are broken. The person who has an unbroken egg at the end wins the game.5

Of course, the Easter Bunny also visits us on this important day. The children are always very excited to hunt for Easter eggs in the back yard.

I am really looking forward to this day of celebration with our family and friends.

  1. Wikipedia, Kokoretsi, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kokoretsi, accessed 16 April 2025
  2. The Greek Food Shop, How to play the red egg game, 13 April 2019, https://greek-food-shop.com/2019/04/13/the-best-greek-easter-tradition-how-to-play-the-red-egg-game/?srsltid=AfmBOop0byvUV9-0uNZ0blsMeOGivhbWh8gIqWrTxx9w3PV9Rd6qTRcE, accessed 16 April 2025
  3. The Spruce Eats, Greek Easter Egg Game, https://www.thespruceeats.com/greek-easter-egg-game-1705738, accessed 16 April 2025
  4. The Spruce Eats, Greek Easter Egg Game, https://www.thespruceeats.com/greek-easter-egg-game-1705738, accessed 16 April 2025
  5. The Spruce Eats, Greek Easter Egg Game, https://www.thespruceeats.com/greek-easter-egg-game-1705738, accessed 16 April 2025

Ireland, Lunatic Asylums, Montreal, Ontario, Quebec

Benjamin Workman, MD: Leading the Way

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One spring day in 1819, a young man named Benjamin Workman stood on the dock at Belfast, Ireland, trying to decide where he should immigrate to in North America. He had relatives in the United States, but before he booked his passage, he wanted to check on the safety of the vessels that were scheduled to leave soon.

He noted that the captain of the New Orleans-bound ship appeared to be drunk, the mate of the ship going to New York swore profusely, and the crew of vessel going to Philadelphia ignored his questions, but the captain of the Sally, bound for Quebec, impressed him favourably, so that’s the ship he chose. He later noted that this had been a lucky choice since yellow fever was widespread in American port cities that year.1

Benjamin left Ireland on April 27 and arrived in Montreal a few weeks later. He was 25 years old and had 25 guineas (a coin worth one pound, one shilling) in his pocket.

This photo of Dr. Ben Workman appears in Christine Johnston’s book The Father of Canadian Psychiatry, Joseph Workman. 

His choice of Canada turned out to be a good decision: within 10 years, all of his eight younger siblings and both of their parents had followed him. The Workmans were all hard-working, ambitious and smart, and they took advantage of the opportunities available to them in their new homeland. Four of Ben’s brothers (Alexander, Joseph, William and Thomas) became prominent in business, medicine and politics. His only sister, Ann (1809-1882), married Irish-born Montreal hardware merchant Henry Mulholland and was my great-great-grandmother.

Benjamin’s parents were Joseph Workman (1759-1848) and Catherine Gowdey (1769-1872). Ben was born on Nov. 4, 17942 in the village of Ballymacash, County Antrim, near Lisburn, where the family lived in a small house near the top of a hill.  

Joesph was a teacher in Ballymacash, but he left teaching for a job as a manager for a local landowner, and as a deputy clerk of the peace for the area. Without its only teacher, the local school had to close, so young Ben started studying on his own, reading the Bible and geography books while his father helped him with arithmetic. When Ben was 11, Joseph apprenticed him to a linen weaver, but it soon became clear that Ben had no talent in that field. What he really wanted to do was study. Eventually, Ben went back to school, where he excelled in grammar and the classics. After he graduated, he found a teaching job in Belfast, then another position near Lisburn.   

Ben’s decision to leave Ireland was influenced by an event that took place in 1817. As he was eating his evening meal at his parents’ home, a dozen beggars came in the gate and asked for food and money. Perhaps realizing how widespread poverty was in Ireland, he began to think about going to North America.3

Montreal suited Ben well: other Irish and Scottish immigrants arrived there around the same time, and there were work opportunities for all. He immediately found a teaching job, but after that school’s owner disappeared with its funds, several parents who had noticed what a good teacher Ben was started a new school, with Ben as headmaster.

The Union School, as it was called, was unique. For one thing, girls were admitted, although they were taught separately by a female teacher. It was also successful. By the spring of 1820, it had 120 pupils, and it remained the largest English school in Canada for 20 years.4 Several of its graduates went on to have distinguished careers in business and politics. In 1824, Ben became the sole owner of the school, but he eventually turned over the responsibility of running it to his brother Alexander, who had come to Montreal in 1820.

In 1829, Benjamin switched careers and became a newspaper editor, partnering with a friend to purchase a weekly Montreal newspaper, the Canadian Courant. It had been founded in 1807 as the Canadian Courant and Montreal Advertiser. Ben published the newspaper until 1834, using it to promote his liberal religious views, social welfare issues, and the temperance movement. When the paper ceased publication, Ben blamed distillers, saying that their advertising had dried up because of his support for temperance.

Meanwhile, Ben experienced several tragedies in his personal life, as he was married twice and became a widower twice. He married Margaret Manson, a teacher at the Union School, in 1823. The couple had no children and Margaret died seven years later. He married Mary Ann Mills on October 14, 1838, in Franklin, Michigan, and the couple had three children: Mary Matilda, born in July 1840; a son, Joseph, who was born in November 1841 and died at age 10 months; and Annie, born in July 1843. Mary Ann died two months after Annie’s birth, and Ben’s mother, Catherine, looked after his two daughters.

Soon after that, Ben took up his third career — as a druggist. For several years in the 1840s, Lovell’s city directory of Montreal listed “B. Workman & Co., chemists and druggists”, located at 172 St. Paul Street, corner Customs House Square.5 Meanwhile, he studied medicine at McGill University, graduating in 1853, at age 59. He was henceforth known as Benjamin Workman M.D., which helps differentiate him from several other Benjamins in the family.

During these years as a pharmacist and doctor, Ben demonstrated compassion and generosity, often providing care to people who were too poor to pay. Then, in 1856, he reinvented himself again and moved to Toronto, where he assisted his brother Joseph run the Provincial Lunatic Asylum, the largest and most progressive psychiatric hospital in Canada at the time.

Benjamin is buried in Montreal’s Mount Royal Cemetery, near the Workman family plot. JH photo.

Benjamin Workman is probably best remembered as the founder of the Unitarian Congregation in Montreal.  In Ireland, the Workman family had attended the Non-Subscribing Presbyterian Church of Ireland in Dunmurry. Its members strongly believed in freedom of thought in religion.6

When Ben first arrived in Montreal, there were not enough Unitarians to organize a congregation, so he attended the St. Gabriel Street Presbyterian Church. When the city’s Unitarian congregation was permanently established in 1842, he played a key role.7

In 1855, Ben got into a disagreement with the congregation’s minister, Rev. John Cordner, a man he himself had recruited for the job. Benjamin argued that Cordner had excessive authority, and when the rest of the congregation sided with their minister, Ben withdrew from the church. Soon after, he moved to Toronto, joining the Unitarian congregation his brother Joseph had helped to found there. He got along well with the Toronto congregation’s members and their minister, and he ran the Sunday School there for many years.

Ben lived with his daughter Anne in Uxbridge Ontario at the end of his life, dying there on Sept. 26, 1878, several weeks short of his 84th birthday. He was buried a few days later next to the large Workman family plot at Montreal’s Mount Royal Cemetery.

This article is also posted on http://www.writinguptheancestors.ca.

See also:

Janice Hamilton, “Dr. Joseph Workman, Pioneer in the Treatment of Mental Illness” Writing Up the Ancestors, Oct 26, 2017, https://www.writinguptheancestors.ca/2017/10/dr-joseph-workman-mental-health-pioneer.html

Janice Hamilton, “Henry Mulholland, Hardware Merchant” Writing Up the Ancestors, March 17, 2016,  https://www.writinguptheancestors.ca/2016/03/henry-mulholland-montreal-hardware.html

Notes:

The children of Joseph and Catherine Workman were: Benjamin (1794-1878), Alexander (1798-1891), John (1803-1829), Joseph (1805-1894), William (1807-1878). Ann (1809-1882), Samuel (1811-1869), Thomas (1813-1889), Matthew Francis (1815-1839).

Benjamin kept a journal in which he recorded his memories of growing up in Ballymacash, and an account of the Workman family’s 200-year history in Ireland.  A large online database called A Family Orchard: Leaves from the Workman Tree, https://freepages.rootsweb.com/~database/misc/WORKMAN.htm, includes a family history going back to the 1600s, that was part of Ben’s journal. The late Calgary researcher Frederick Hunter prepared this site and database. 

Catherine Gowdey’s name has been spelled in various ways, including Gowdie and Gowdy.

Thank you to Christine Johnston, former archivist and historian of the First Unitarian Congregation of Toronto, and author of a biography of Ben’s brother Joseph.

Sources: 

1. Christine I. M. Johnston, The Father of Canadian Psychiatry: Joseph Workman, Victoria: The Ogden Press, 2000, p. 16.

2. A Family Orchard: Leaves from the Workman Tree, https://freepages.rootsweb.com/~database/misc/WORKMAN.htm, accessed Jan. 31, 2025.

3. The Digger, One Family’s Journey from Ballymacash to Canada, Lisburn.com, http://lisburn.com/history/digger/Digger-2011/digger-19-08-2011.html, accessed Jan. 31, 2024.

4. Nicholas Flood Davin, The Irishman in Canada, London: S. Low, Marston, 1877, p. 334, Internet Archive, https://archive.org/details/irishmanincanada00daviuoft/page/334/mode/2up, accessed Jan. 31, 2025.

5. Lovells Montreal Directory, 1849, p. 246, Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec (BAnQ), https://numerique.banq.qc.ca/patrimoine/details/52327/3652392, accessed Jan. 31, 2024.

6. Christine Johnston, The Father of Canadian Psychiatry: Joseph Workman, p. 15.

7. Christine Johnston. “The Irish Connection: Benjamin and Joseph and Their Brothers and Their Coats of Many Colours,” CUUHS Meeting, May 1982, Paper #4, p. 2.