This Gate, Being Of
Quite Recent Construction And Of Massive, As Well As Passably
Handsome, Appearance, Is Not Included In The General Scheme Of
Improvement.
The erection of a life-size statue of Samuel Champlain,
the founder of Quebec, upon its summit, is, however, talked of.
Palace or the Palais gate is the third and last of the old French
portals of the city, and derives its title from the fact that the
highway which passed through it led to the palace or residence of the
Intendants of New France, which has also given its name to the present
quarter of the city lying beneath the cliff on the northern face of
the fortress, where its crumbling ruins are still visible in the
immediate neighborhood of the passenger terminus of the North Shore
Railway. Erected under French rule, during which it is believed to
have been the most fashionable and the most used, it bade a final
farewell to the last of its gallant, but unfortunate French defenders,
and to that imperial power which, for more than one hundred and fifty
years, had swayed the colonial destinies of the Canadas and contested
inch by inch with England, the supremacy of the New World, when a
portion of Montcalm's defeated troops passed out beneath its darkening
shadows on the fatal 13th September, 1759. After the capitulation of
Quebec, General Murray devoted himself at once to the work of
strengthening the defences of the city, and the attention in this
respect paid to Palace gate appears to have stood him in good stead
during the following year's campaign, when the British invaders,
defeated in the battle of St. Foye, were compelled to take shelter
behind the walls of the town and sustain a short siege at the Hands of
the victorious French under deLevis. In 1791, the old French
structure, now a decayed ruin, was razed by the English, but, in the
meanwhile, during 1775, it had gallantly withstood the assaults and
siege of the American invaders under Montgomery and Benedict Arnold.
The somewhat ornate substitute, by which it was replaced is said to
have resembled one of the gates of Pompeii, and seems to have been
erected as late as the year 1830 or 1831, as, in the course of its
demolition, in 1874, an inscription was laid bare, attesting the fact
that at least the timbers and planking had been put up by local
workmen in 1831. It is not intended to rebuild this gate under the
Dufferin plan, on account of the great volume of traffic, more
especially since the completion of the North Shore Railway, to whose
terminus the roadway which leads over its site is the most direct
route. To mark that memorable spot, however, it is intended to flank
it on either side with picturesque Norman turrets rising above the
line of the fortification wall.
Hope Gate, also on the northern face of the ramparts, was the first of
the two purely British gates of Quebec, and was erected in 1786 by
Colonel Henry Hope, Commandant of the Forces and Administrator of the
Province, from whom it takes its name. It was demolished in 1874 for
no especial reason, this gate being no obstacle whatever to the
growing requirements of traffic, as will be readily understood from
its situation. Like Palace Gate, too, it is not to be rebuilt - its
approaches being easily commanded and its position on the rugged,
lofty cliff being naturally very strong.
Its site, however, will be marked in the carrying out of the Dufferin
Improvements by flanking Norman turrets.
The last of the city gates proper, wholly of British origin, but the
first that grimly confronted in by-gone days the visitor approaching
the city from the water-side and entering the fortress, is, or rather
was, Prescott Gate, which commanded the steep approach known as
Mountain Hill. This gate, which was more commonly known as the Lower
Town gate, because it led to that part - the oldest - of the city known
by that name, was erected in 1797, (to replace a rough structure of
pickets which existed at this point from the time of the siege by the
Americans in 1775) by General Robert Prescott, who served in America
during the revolutionary war, and, after further service in the West
Indies, succeeded Lord Dorchester as the British Governor-General in
Lower Canada in 1796, dying in 1815, at the age of 89 years, and
giving his name to this memento of his administration, as well as to
Prescott, Ontario. Old Prescott Gate was unquestionably a great public
nuisance in times of peace, its demolition, in 1871, consequently
provoked the least regret of all in connection with the obliteration
of those curious relics of Quebec's historic past. For reasons, which
are obvious, it would be impossible to replace Prescott Gate with any
structure of a like character, without impeding seriously the flow of
traffic by way of such a leading artery as Mountain Hill. It will,
however, be replaced by a light and handsome iron bridge of a single
span over the roadway with flanking Norman turrets.
KENT GATE.
For the information of our visitors and strangers generally, we may
explain that, a few years since, the western fortification wall
between St. John's gate and the military exercising ground in past
years, known as the Esplanade, was cut through to form a roadway
communicating between the higher levels of the Upper Town and the St.
Louis suburbs, now styled Montcalm Ward.
It consequently became necessary, in keeping with the aesthetic spirit
of the whole Dufferin scheme, to fill up in some way this unsightly
gap without interfering with the traffic. It was finally decided to
erect here one of the proposed memorial gates, which is altogether
therefore an addition to the number of the existing gates or their
intended substitutes. This edifice, has been designed to do homage to
the memory of Edward, Duke of Kent, the father of Queen Victoria.
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