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.
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