Jacques
Cartier Who, In 1535-6, Wintered In The Vicinity Of Saint Roch, Left His
Name To An Entire Municipal Division Of This Rich Suburb, As Well As To A
Spacious Market Hall.
(The Jacques Cartier Market Hall.) The first secular
priest, who landed in Quebec on the 8th August, 1634, and
Who closed his
days in the Hotel-Dieu on the 29th November, 1668, Jean le Sueur de Saint
Sauveur, left his name to what now constitutes the populous municipality
of Saint Sauveur. (Casgrain, Historie de l'Hotel-Dieu, p. 81.)
On the spot on which the General Hospital Convent was erected, in 1691,
the four first Franciscan Friars, Peres Jamay, D'Olbeau, LeCaron and Frere
Pacifique Du Plessis, who had landed at Quebec on the 2nd June, 1615, soon
set to work to erect the first Church, the first Convent and the first
Seminary in New France, and on the 3rd June, 1620, Father d'Olbeau, in the
absence of Father Jamay, the Superior of the Mission, placed the first
stone of the church, under the name of Notre Dame des Anges, on the
25th May, 1625. This was on the bank of the river which Jacques Cartier
had called the River Ste. Croix, because he had landed there on the 14th
September, 1535, the day of the exaltation of the Holy Cross: the Friars
changed the name to that of St. Charles, in honor of "Monsieur Charles de
Boues, Grand Vicaire de Pontoise," one of the most distinguished
benefactors of their Order.
St. Vallier street, leading to ancient and Indian Lorette, over the Little
River Road, at present so well built up and echoing to the shrill whistle
of the Q. M. O. & O. Railway, until a few years back was a lone
thoroughfare, beyond the toll-bar, lined with bare, open meadows. Here,
also, has been felt the march of progress.
In the genial summer months passers-by are admonished by a pungent, not
unhealthy, odor of tannin, an effluvia of tamarac bark, that tanners and
curriers have selected their head-quarters in St. Vallier street. History
also lends its attractions to the venerable thoroughfare.
Our forefathers would tell of many cosy little dinners, closed, of course,
with whist or loo - of many recherche pic-nics in days of yore, kept
up until the "sma' hours" at two renowned hostelries, only recently
removed - the BLUE HOUSE and the RED HOUSE, - chiefly at that festive and
crowning season of the year, when
"The snow, the beautiful snow,"
called forth the City Driving Club and its silvery, tinkling sleigh bells.
A steward - once famous as a caterer - on closing his term of service at the
Chateau, with a departing Governor, more than a century back, was
the Boniface at the Blue House: Alexandre Menut. A veritable Soyer was
Monsieur Menut. During the American invasion, in the autumn of 1775,
Monsieur Menut, owing to a vis major, was forced to entertain a rather
boisterous and wilful class of customers: Richard Montgomery and his
warlike Continentals.
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