The Place d'Armes, down in the old part of the city, where is the
original Seminary of St. Sulpice, is surrounded by famous structures.
Here are the chief banks and insurance buildings and the head office
of the Canadian Pacific Railway. The most noted of them is the
Grecian-fronted Bank of Montreal, the largest financial institution in
Canada, and believed, with the Canadian Pacific management, who are
closely connected, to be the most potential force in the Dominion.
Adjoining the old Seminary, and facing the square, is Montreal's most
famous church--Notre Dame--its lofty front rising into the twin spires
that overlook all the country round. Its pews seat ten thousand, and
when crowded it accommodates fifteen thousand people. In one of the
towers hangs "Le Gros Bourdon," the largest bell in America, called
Jean Baptiste, and weighing nearly fifteen tons. The church is
mediæval Gothic, built of cut limestone, the spires rising two hundred
and twenty-seven feet, and containing ten bells, making a chime upon
which, on great occasions, tunes are played. The interior, like all
the French Catholic churches, is brilliantly decorated, for the
religious development is the same as that of France in the seventeenth
century, everything contributing to the intensity of the devotion and
the elaborateness of decoration and paraphernalia of the service. At
High Mass, when crowded by worshippers, the choir filled with robed
ecclesiastics officiating in the stately ceremonial, the effect is
imposing. The original church of Notre Dame was built in 1671, a long,
low structure with a high pitched roof. It was pulled down in 1824 and
replaced by the present church, which was five years building, and is
one of the largest churches in America, two hundred and fifty-five
feet long. We are told that the architect, James O'Donnell, who is
buried in the crypt, was a Protestant, but during the work became so
impressed by his religious surroundings that he was converted to a
Roman Catholic. The church is never closed, and at any time one can
enter, and with the silent worshippers kneel at the shrine in a solemn
stillness, in sharp contrast with the activity of the business quarter
without. This remarkable contrast deeply impressed the ascetic
Thoreau, whose boast was that he never attended church. "I soon found
my way to the Church of Notre Dame," he writes. "I saw that it was of
great size and signified something. Coming from the hurrahing mob and
the rattling carriages, we pushed back the listed door of this church
and found ourselves instantly in an atmosphere which might be sacred
to thought and religion, if one had any. It was a great cave in the
midst of a city, and what were the altars and the tinsel but the
sparkling stalactites into which you entered in a moment, and where
the still atmosphere and the sombre light disposed to serious and
profitable thought? Such a cave at hand, which you can enter any day,
is worth a thousand of our churches which are open only Sundays." When
General Montgomery's American army captured Montreal in 1775, the
square in front of Notre Dame was his parade-ground, and thus it got
the name of Place d'Armes.
The greatest church of Montreal is the new Cathedral of St. James,
popularly known as St. Peter's, as yet incomplete, designed to
reproduce, on a scale of one-half the dimensions, the grand Basilica
at Rome. It is three hundred and thirty-three feet long, the transepts
two hundred and twenty-five feet wide, and the stone dome two hundred
and fifty feet high, making it the largest church in Canada. Four huge
stone piers, each thirty-six feet thick, and thirty-two Corinthian
columns, support this grand dome. The outside walls, built of the
universal gray limestone, are massive but rough, and the roof, on
account of the heavy snows, is sloping, but otherwise it reproduces
all the special features of St. Peter's at Rome, including the
portico, to be surmounted by colossal statues of the Apostles. The
interior is being decorated with brilliant paintings representing
scenes in the life of St. James. It is located on Dominion Square, and
the Bishop's Palace adjoins it. One of the remarkable churches, though
small, is Notre Dame de Lourdes, built and adorned with the single
idea of expressing in visible form the dogma of the Immaculate
Conception, with the appearance of the Virgin to the maiden in the
grotto at Lourdes. It is superbly decorated, and is the only church of
the kind in America, being well described as "like an illuminated
Missal, which to a Protestant has interest as a work of art, and to a
Catholic has the superadded interest of a work of devotion." Adjoining
the Jesuit St. Mary's College is their solid stone Church of the Gesu,
its lofty nave bounded by rich columns, and with the long transepts
adorned by fine frescoes, some giving representations of scenes in
Jesuit history and martyrdom. The great Episcopal Cathedral of Christ
Church, a Latin cross in Early English architecture, reproduces the
Salisbury Cathedral of England, with a spire two hundred and
twenty-four feet high. There are also many other fine Protestant
churches; and when it is realized that Montreal has a church for about
every two thousand inhabitants, the care for its religious welfare
will be realized. The Royal Victoria Hospital, a gift to the city in
honor of the Queen's Jubilee, cost $1,000,000.
The largest public square in the city is the Champ de Mars, formerly a
parade-ground, adjoining which are two noble public buildings, the
handsome Court-house, three hundred feet long, and the adjacent Hotel
de Ville, nearly five hundred feet long. The Victoria Skating Rink,
the largest in the world, is the most noted amusement structure. The
city is noted for athletic sports, and toboggan slides abound, some of
enormous length, down the mountain slopes. The Montreal Bonsecours
Market is famed everywhere, and presents an imposing Doric front
nearly five hundred feet long upon the river bank, surmounted by a
domed tower. Here gather in force the French Canadian peasantry, known
as the _habitans_, to sell their produce and wares, and it gives a
quaint exhibition of old-time French customs. The ancient Church of
Notre Dame de Bonsecours is alongside, originally founded by
Marguerite Bourgeoys in 1673 for the reception of a miraculous statue
of the Virgin, entrusted to her by one of the associates of the
Society founding Montreal, Baron de Faucamp. The church was burnt and
then rebuilt in 1771, and is a quaint structure of a style rarely seen
outside of Normandy, having shops built up against it after the
fashion common in old European towns. Thus does this famous city
combine the methods and styles of the Middle Ages with the manners and
enterprises of to-day. It is an impressive fact that notwithstanding
the prodigious religious development, all the denominations get on
without friction. There is an underlying spirit of toleration, and it
is recorded that after the British conquest of Canada the Protestants
who came into Montreal occupied one of the Catholic churches for
worship, assembling after the Catholic morning mass; and that for
twenty years after 1766 the Church of England people occupied the
Catholic church of the Recollets every Sunday afternoon. The
Presbyterians are said to have also used the same church prior to
1792, and then having removed into a church of their own, they
presented the priests of the Recollet church a gift of candles for the
high altar and of wine for the mass as a token of good will and their
thanks for the gratuitous use of the church. Then the churches were
few, but now all denominations have their own, and numerously.