[78]
The Esplanade Is Still Used As A Parade Ground, If Not By Our City Militia
By Our Provincial Troops.
Right well can we recall the manly form of the
Commander of the "B" Battery, Lieut.-Colonel T. B. Strange, bestriding a
noble charger, putting his splendid, though not numerous corps, through
their drill on the Esplanade.
We have also sometimes caught sight there of
our gay Volunteers. Occasionally these grounds are used by the divers
lacrosse clubs for their athletic games - the doyen of our city
litterateurs, the Hon. P. J. O. Chauveau, in a graphic portraiture
of the "Quebec of the Past," has most feelingly retraced the vanished
glories, the military pageants, the practical jokers, the City Watch, the
social gatherings, which his youthful eyes witnessed of yore on the
Esplanade and on Durham Terrace. We have attempted to render in English a
striking chapter of this sparkling effusion: -
OLDEN TIMES IN THE ANCIENT CAPITAL.
"There is not only the quaint city of Champlain - of Montmagny - of
Frontenac - of Bishop Laval - of Governor de Vaudreuil and Montcalm - of
Lord Dorchester and Colonel Dambourges - that is rapidly fading away;
there is not merely the grim fortress of the French regime, the
city of early English rule, disappearing piecemeal in the dissolving
shadows of the past. A much more modern town - newer even than that so
graphically pictured by our old friend Monsieur de Gaspe - the Quebec
of our boyhood - of our youth - the Quebec embalmed in the haunted
chambers of memory prior to 1837 - it also each day seems retreating -
crumbling - evanescing.
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![Picturesque Quebec, By James Macpherson Le Moine
- [78]
The Esplanade is still used as a parade ground, if not by our city militia
by our provincial troops - Page 228](../images/travel.jpg)
