In This Vicinity, Vaudreuil, In 1759, Planted A
Battery.
The old Custom House (now the Department of Marine), was built on this
site in 1833.
In 1815 the Custom House was on McCallum's wharf. The
Cul-de-Sac recalls "the first chapel which served as a Parish
Church at Quebec," that which Champlain caused to be built in the Lower
Town in 1615, where the name of Champlain is identified with the street
which was bounded by this chapel. The Revd. Fathers Recollets there
performed their clerical functions up to the period of the taking of
Quebec by the brothers Kertk, that is from 1615 to 1629, (Laverdiere.)
Nothing less than the urgent necessity of providing the public with a
convenient market-place, and the small coasting steamers with suitable
wharves, could move the municipal authorities to construct the wharves now
existing, and there, in 1856, to erect out of the materials of the old
Parliament House, the spacious Champlain Hall, so conspicuous at present.
The king's wharf and the king's stores, two hundred and fifty feet in
length, with a guard house, built on the same site in 1821, possess also
their marine and military traditions. The "Queen's Own" volunteers, Capt.
Rayside, were quartered there during the stirring times of 1837-38, when
"Bob Symes" dreamed each night of a new conspiracy against the British
crown, and M. Aubin perpetuated, in his famous journal "Le Fantasque"
the memory of this loyal magistrate.
How many saucy frigates, how many proud English Admirals, have made fast
their boats at the steps of this wharf! Jacques Cartier, Champlain,
Nelson, Bourgainville, Cook, Vauclain, Montgomery, Boxer, Sir Rodney
Mundy, poor Captain Burgoyne, of the ill-fated iron-clad Captain,
Sir Leopold McClintock, [103] have, one after the other, trodden over this
picturesque landing place, commanded as it is by the guns of Cape Diamond.
Since about a century, the street which bears the venerated name of the
founder of Quebec, Champlain street, unmindful of its ancient Gallic
traditions, is almost exclusively the headquarters of our Hibernian
population. An ominous-looking black-board, affixed to one of the
projecting rocks of the Cape, indicates the spot below where one of their
countrymen, Brigadier-General Richard Montgomery, with his two aides-
de-camp, Cheeseman and McPherson, received their death wounds during a
violent snow storm about five o'clock in the morning, the 31st December,
1775. On this disastrous morning the post was guarded by Canadian
militiamen, Messieurs Chabot and Picard. Captain Barnesfare, an English
mariner, had pointed the cannon; Coffin and Sergeant Hugh McQuarters
applied the match. At the eastern extremity, under the stairs, now styled
"Breakneck Steps," according to Messrs. Casgrain and Laverdiere, was
discovered Champlain's tomb, though a rival antiquary, M. S. Drapeau, says
that he is not certain of this. [104]
A little to the west is Cap Blanc, inhabited by a small knot of French-
Canadians and some Irish; near by, was launched in October, 1750, the
Orignal, a King's ship, built at Quebec; at that period the lily flag of
France floated over the bastions of Cape Diamond; the Orignal, in being
launched, broke her back and sank.
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