Acland’s Letters: Seventh Letter
Quebec
Quebec
August 20, 1860
Arrival at Quebec
We are now fairly entered on the Provinces which invited the Prince of Wales to cross the Atlantic. We were met at the entrance of the St. Lawrence at Gaspé as you remember by the Governor and the Executive – We ascended that amazing river & first set foot on Canadian soil in the Saguenay. From thence steaming upwards between the two shores we saw their difference – the North rugged, woody, scarce reclaimed. The South studded not with Villages, but one continuous unbroken line of houses & barns a short distance from the shore – the residences of the old French habitans – the more ancient population of this modern land. We ascended to the Isle d’Orleans, & there anchored for the night. The day following, Saturday the 18th, we weighed in the mid-day, and escorted by 14 large river Steamers, anchored off Quebec,11 astern of Admiral Milne who had preceded us from Halifax – and landed exactly at 4: the time appointed.
The preparations which have been made are of the most sumptuous kind. No single word, however, can express the nature of the Prince’s reception. All classes have united to make it acceptable – acceptable from its unanimity, acceptable from its loyalty – acceptable from its splendour – acceptable from its considerate kindness, its manifestly heart-deep intentions – its reflexion of the sentiments of love for the old home, for the England that is called & felt to be still the Mother Country – and acceptable from the not unfounded hope which the imagination is forced to entertain that great benefit will arise from all these things to England, to these good sturdy people, to constitutional government, and rational liberty throughout the world.
All the outside view the ‘Our Correspondent’ will tell. I shall not therefore attempt any more to count the Steamers that nearly crush us, or to measure the stunning effect of weighty batteries, nor to tell whether the Indians in the processions were painted all over – or half – or how many temperance companies there were in attendance – these you must get from the Papers, and you must have a book and paste in for me every notice you can cut out from the ‘Illustrated’ or the ‘Times’ or other paper. Some quires of good Cartridge Paper will best do this and we can have them bound afterwards. I shall endeavour rather henceforward to write however personal it may seem, our personal life – just what I see & do & know – and what the whole race of “our owns” neither see nor know, nor care to describe. My letters will therefore be but esoteric additions to their State Records. In fact the correspondents whose business it is, will be so much more complete than I can be, that it is the best & most interesting plan for you.
I am writing now at an open window in the Governor’s residence, hanging over the St. Lawrence. The house is called Cateraquay. It is a mile & a half from Spenser Wood the old Government House, which two years ago was burnt down. We are 3 miles from Quebec – between us lies the old battle field of the Plains of Abraham, where Wolfe died and almost not less, Montcalm. Below us is not only the St. Lawrence, but the thousands of timbers which line its banks forming rafts and waiting for shipment in the many vessels that will convey it to Europe. They line the banks by the hundred for miles from Quebec.
Arrangements for state visit
We go this day, Tuesday, into Quebec in state. Outside my window in a pouring rain is a fine corps of Volunteer Cavalry. We are to be escorted to the Parliament house which has been fitted up for the occasion at great cost – 15 horses have been provided for our riding – carriages to correspond – and 10 servants in livery. These all with 100 men as a Guard of Honour are to accompany the Prince of Wales all through Canada. We had a picnic out in a wood yesterday, by the falls of the Chaudière – I enclose the bill of fare – The plates were made for the occasion of the visit – They are white china with a wide border of green leaves & the crest in the middle i.e. the Plume of Feathers. Plate is engraved to correspond.
Opulent picnic
The luncheon was so oppressively rich that I ventured for once to express my opinion on the state affairs – and I said the Governor should represent to the Council that though the liberality and splendour of their entertainments were most gratifying, yet that but for state purposes it would be more acceptable if in private the Prince was entertained in a more simple & less costly manner, and I said that the Physician had no moroseness in his composition, but still he could not but think of the contrast between this excessive luxe and the toils of those who helped to provide it – and there was an obvious difference between its adoption for public purposes, or for private necessity. Which announcement was heartily acccepted.
Settling in
I am quite in love with Sir Edmund Head – and indeed am getting very happy with my companions, for I have shaken out of all share in any state business as it were – am able to listen without talking – and to take the proper place of the Physician as a quiet & ready companion when useful or wanted. I am able to get a good deal of time in my room reading – and hope to get thro’ some professional study day by day – for I have got quite strong & well – wholly refreshed after the pressure of last Term. The first month I was in truth far from myself body or mind – and this I know the more by feeling how much more I am capable of enjoying the opportunities before me, without effort.
Aug. 21. The scene is changed since the last sentence from the Governor’s residence at Cateraquay to a window in Quebec, whence I look over the harbour – We occupy the Parliament House – Each of the suites has a bedroom & sitting room well and neatly fitted up.
We have had addresses – and a Levée lasting 3 good hours – a public luncheon comes presently – & the events to be hereafter chronicled.
Canadian politicians
Sir Edmund Head is full of knowledge – classical – artistic – scientific.22 He lost his only son suddenly last year and has since not rallied, and indeed takes little interest in things compared to what formerly he did, or rather is less willing to exert himself and is in bad health.
The Ministers, that is, the Executive Council are very much with us. Mr. Rose, the Commissioner of Works, and Mr. Macdonald, Attorney General of Upper & Mr. Cartier of Lower Canada, I think I have before said are my chief allies.33
Acland shared common cultural and scientific ground with this dedicated colonial administrator.
Acland enjoyed the company of three members of the executive council, all commercial lawyers, and all, like him, in their early forties.
Laval Faculty of Medicine
I have in Quebec (August 23) seen also some highly intelligent Medical Men.
The Laval University a Roman Catholic Institution was founded 4 years ago. It is constructed on a large scale of Professors. Receives all persons of all creeds for Education – has begun an admirable Library, & Collections. The regulations for conferring the Medical Diploma are excellent – and if carried out as I learn they are, are the most severe test almost that I am acquainted with. I have the Reports and directions, and Calendars of the University.44 The principle of the Examinations is peculiar – Every three months there is an Examination by the Professors of the Faculty – each Professor writing one question – the answers must be 24 pages fairly written. For these Examinations marks are given and the total of these if sufficient gives the Bachelor of Medicine in two years time. If insufficient he has the option of a regular Examination which is intended to be very severe. An Examination of a serious nature includes a vivâ voce [oral exam] (of 3 hours by Statute) public to the University and the Medical Professors. If this be really done there must be a severe test indeed. This gives the Licence [licentiate]. Two years after practice or the Licence, the Doctorate is conferred, on a Thesis which had been given to the Professors for perusal a month before. Their object is to establish in Canada a high standard for the Doctorate. God speed them.
When Queen Victoria granted its charter as a degree-granting institution in 1852, Laval University emerged as an entity separate from the Séminaire de Québec, a classical college and seminary originally founded in 1663 for the training of priests.
Licensing of Physicians
There is besides a licensing body – i.e. a College of Physicians & Surgeons,55 but this College of Physicians & Surgeons is really but an incorporated collection of Practitioners, (what is a College?) who meet one year at Quebec & one year at Montreal to grant licenses. I could obtain no report of their proceedings, for they publish none.
It is a great mistake that the Government does not publish a Medical Register, and before any Quackery becomes rampant it should be done. I hope to be able to convince Mr. Ross [?] the Prime Minister of this.
To practise as physicians, both those, like Acland, who took exams at a university after clinical observation and lectures in hospitals and those who were trained through apprenticeship were required to obtain a license through examination by licensing boards.
Beauport Asylum
I visited the Lunatic Asylum at Beauport for the purpose mainly of testing Mr. Fremont’s accuracy when he said it was the best conducted Establishment in Canada. It is a private Proprietary belonging to Mr. Fremont, Dr. Douglas and an aged practitioner retired.66 As a Proprietary it is very good in its management, it was certainly scrupulously clean – But I was not invited to see the detached house for the violent & dirty, and therefore of their condition as I did not go officially I cannot speak. Mr. Fremont is strongly against Ventilation by Fans. This is not prejudice I think because he has twice altered his method – and he has a Steam Engine at work. I daresay however it would cost money to apply it. His ventilation is now conducted by hot air exhausting shafts made by having 2 flues on the sides of the main chimney in the stack. He has more than one of these – They extract the foul air from the bottom – the supply coming in from above (as I think in Price’s plan in Oxford Gaol.) But I am not positive on this point. The laundry is managed or worked by the Insane – there is a Patient blacksmith’s, Tailor’s & Shoemaker’s shops – Baker & Engine man are same. Sixty servants, 130 acres of land in hand, and under cultivation, pleasure grounds, water-power from a stream with a neat American made turbine for pumping water, fair latrines, with iron floors, form the chief remaining particulars to note. The Government pays 11/ – sterling per week for their Lunatic poor. They make those pay whom they can. The Government gives the orders (I presume through the Commissioners of Works?) And this on proof evidence given by a Magistrate or Clergyman with a Medical Man. The cost of the Asylum to Mr. Fremont is about £12,000 a year. He has expended £30,000 on it. It is now extending another wing, i.e. to make 450 instead of 400. The accommodation space is not great. He would prefer not to exceed 400, in number, and would rather that the Government should found another to take the surplus over 400.
Dr James Douglas and Charles-Jacques Frémont were two of the founders and co-owners of the asylum.
Parliamentary Library
In the Government House, or rather the Provincial Building, there is a Library, the Government Library.77 This has been twice burnt. They certainly do burn a good deal – Sir Edmund Head lost all his property almost or much of his Library at all events by fire.
This Public Library was at Toronto – it will of course be removed to Ottawa when all is completed there of the new building.
I found there was no copy of the Bodleian Catalogues – and I promised to obtain one if I am able & to send it.
Dr. Adamson, and Mr. Lott [Todd] are the Librarian & SubLibrarian respectively. The latter knows the Library best. I believe the number of volumes is now about 20,000. I should have thought more. Louis Napoleon the rogue gave many splendid works lately. The Catalogue is alphabetical and also in subjects. It is kept always up for reprinting by writing in a large interleaved copy. About £1000 yearly are spent upon it. I failed in seeing the first volume (series) of Drake’s Diseases of the Mississippi Valley.88 Mr. Lott thinks it is not to be got. Dr. Drake whom he knew well is some years dead. He greatly respected him.
As chief librarian at Oxford’s Radcliffe Library, Acland took a professional interest in the practices at the parliamentary library in Quebec in a period which predated the use of library card catalogues and when there were no universal procedures for cataloguing.
At the parliamentary library, Acland inquired after the first volume, printed in small numbers in 1850, of a monumental work by Dr Daniel Drake investigating the possible contagious and environmental causes for prevalent diseases like small pox, scarlet fever, malaria, and typhus.
Ethnography
I found good information in Prichard’s last posthumous edition concerning the N. American Indians. But the subject is intricate & unsatisfactory also I fear. There is a quantity of detail like the Scotch Clan tradition and division, and I think that in some respects the family distinctions are not dissimilar. Prichard’s tables are taken from Schoolcraft – He is not living. I was told that he is not quite to be depended on, by Mr. Cartier (I think). It is certain that the several tribes cannot understand each other – a Huron & Micmac e.g. cannot intercommunicate. Through the kindness of Mr. Aleyn the Minister I obtained a copy of the “Relations des Jésuites”99 which Sir Edmund tells me is the most graphic authentic account of the early conditions of the Indians as far as known. It is in old French & will interest you one day. But the recitals are horrid occasionally – The Hurons were always at war with the Iroquois who were South of St. Lawrence and would eat special parts of their vanquished not uncommonly. Scalping does not necessarily kill. It is done to an enemy supposed dead. But Lord Mulgrave saw one who had swooned, and recovered. He saw the person many years afterwards.
In the Relations des Jésuites (Jesuit Relations), a collection of annual reports sent to France by Jesuit missionaries in Canada, Acland’s reading included accounts of Huron culture like those written by Jean de Brébeuf who died during an Iroquois raid on a Huron village near Midland, Ont. in 1649.
Indian Department policies
The Indians are under Superintendents and are all known.1010 Our Government paid them annual grants, but these were withdrawn some years ago. Governor Bruce when Military Secretary was the Superintendent & wrote several reports. He was always anxious to give up these payments. This policy prevailing – Lately Mr. Pennefather, the Governors excellent & pleasant Secretary Army Commissioner wrote another report which I cannot obtain – though I have under perusal his interleaved copy.
To this subject I shall revert.
In 1755, Britain had originally established the Imperial Indian Department as a wing of its military both to foster diplomatic relations with First Nations People and to effect alliances indispensable in the North American theatre of its global conflicts with France.
Confederation
I am absolved from writing on another topic, by a paragraph in a paper which I enclose – I had intended to have written to the same effect; but without pledging myself to all this article says, I think it deserving your thorough attention. I will at a later period say more; now it is only necessary to say that the Canadians are probably willing enough and that the sole objection would spring from the lower provinces. But I had much talk on the subject with persons of political influence & knowledge and I saw no real opposition, on the contrary a strong desire on their part. The Canadian & other N.B.A. [B.N.A. or British North American] colonies are thoroughly averse to American institutions & manners.
The true significance of the Prince of Wales’ visit to North America
(From the New York Evening Post) Some five or six years ago the Duke of Newcastle, at present the companion & Mentor of the Prince of Wales in Canada, delivered a speech, which we cannot conveniently put our hands on at this moment, but in which he distinctly stated that he looked forward to the formation of a new empire, on this continent at no distant day. This was no idle talk of the British peer. It foreshadowed a policy already matured, and which only waited a convenient opportunity to be put into operation. The Crimean, Indian and China wars together with the uncertain designs of France, have kept England so much occupied since then, that British interests in America have been treated as of secondary importance.
The Spring of 1860 brought with it a period of comparative repose for England. One of the consequences is that the Prince of Wales is now on the American Continent. The Duke of Newcastle, the Queen’s Secretary for the provinces is with him. Both are for the first time quietly feeling the pulse of the Queen’s subjects there; seeing face to face and conferring with the leading men of the separate colonial possessions, with a view, as we have reason to believe, of ascertaining the practicability and expediency of bringing about, at the “earliest practicable period” a Consolidation of all the Provinces, for which there is unquestionably a strong popular aspiration. The Canadian Government is decidedly in favor of it, while Nova Scotia and New Brunswick are thinking about it with favorable dispositions – Newfoundland and Prince Edward’s Island will not resist if the rest can harmonize. The Red River Valley wants a government, and British Columbia an Atlantic connection. All these combined have a population of over four million souls, a million more than the number of American colonists when they declared their independence, and with tenfold the number and value of public works to say nothing of their advanced civilization. This hardy, self reliant and industrious population have grown up near neighbors to our prosperous republic and familiar with the working of our institutions. They are not disposed to become republicans exactly, nor to adopt our laws and institutions entire if they could, but with the growing ambition of a manly youth they are beginning to ask to set up for themselves; that is, to have some separate provision. They are proud of the old family name, their model Queen, and, since they have been allowed to govern themselves, of their model government, but they are not content to remain forever mere colonists, with no chance of imperial dignities; they don’t wish to be called forever, Canadians, New Brunswickers, Nova Scotians, Prince Edward’s Islanders, Newfoundlanders, etc., etc., but they wish to have a national name & a national character. We have reason to suppose that one of the ends proposed by this visit of the Queen’s eldest son to Canada will be to prepare a suitable response to these aspirations and that it will be forthcoming very soon after the return of the Royal party to England. If we may judge from such information as has already transpired some new name will be given to the entire British American states, and they will be placed under the rule of the young gentleman whom they are now receiving with such attention, with the title and powers of a Viceroy. That something of this kind is in contemplation there can be no doubt.
If this tour were made simply for Educational purposes, like his trip to the states of the Continent, and to various parts of the British Islands, he would not be permitted to receive greater or more costly attentions from the Queen’s subjects than he received then; whereas, he is received in Canada as the immediate representative of the sovereign; the same etiquette and homage being required in all cases, he alone being indulged with the freedom of intercourse which European Sovereigns usually part with, on mounting the throne.
We may therefore reasonably expect, as one of the fruits of this visit the creation of Red River into a Colony and then the formation of a united confederacy, extending from Canada on the east to British Columbia on the west, composed of six or eight independent state sovereignties, united under a single vice-regal federal head to be as nearly independent as can be made to consist with the Queen’s supremacy.
That the Queen’s government is inspired to this step by other than merely motherly considerations for Canada, or for her eldest son, it is easy to suppose. The position which our country is gradually acquiring among nations, and what to foreigners seems its uncontrollable energy of will & impulse, have caused us to be regarded as in some respects a rather dangerous neighbor.1111 Government is supposed to be at the mercy of the people, and in the Old World it is not the habit to put much faith in the people’s respect for other people’s property unless protected by a pretty strong government. It is, therefore, no doubt, in view of the somewhat reckless foreign policy of the last two administrations, and the tendency in the same direction which is ascribed by a large class of British statesmen to our system of almost universal suffrage, that it is now proposed to consolidate and strengthen the British power on this continent so that it may be more effective for military purposes than it can possibly be while distributed about as at present in the several provinces. With a well organized government extending along our frontier the entire length of the continent, for a land approach and a sea coast accessible to an invading fleet every fifty miles for more than three thousand, the United States will find herself under stronger bonds than she has ever yet been for her good behavior to England.
Based on recent American history, one of the tour’s American journalists postulated that one important reason for Britain’s support of a confederation of the colonies was to create a unified defense of their borders against American aggressions. Since the 1840’s, several borders had been demarcated: between Oregon and British Columbia, on lands near Lake Superior, along the southern boundary of Quebec, and between New Brunswick and Maine. However, during the same period, to justify a two-year war with Mexico about disputed borders President Polk had invoked the concept of Manifest Destiny, a belief that settlers in the United States were destined to expand across North America. In the treaty following this war, the United States acquired not only California but much of the area of Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico. The journalist also pointed out that one factor determining a future constitution for the federated provinces was the prevalent British suspicion of “mob rule,” a perceived “tyranny of the majority” inherent in the broadly-extended American franchise.
Montcalm and Wolfe
You will scarce expect me to leave Quebec without any allusion to General Wolfe and Montcalm.1212 The best thing I can do is to transcribe this touching letter, which follows these few remarks. I saw the cove up which Wolfe got with his Highlanders. It is not true that they had to scale cliffs. It is true that Wolfe was twice wounded before his Death-wound; the generally recited stories are correct – The fortifications are much altered. Quebec is now held to be impregnable – No less than 2,800 guns are mounted in it. Immediately below the Citadel Rock lie the Timber ships to load from the Coves in which the timber rafts are collected.
Extract from “Lettres de M. le Marquis de Montcalm à MM. de Berryer et de la Molé 1757-1759.” Londres 1777. [translation below]
Monsieur et cher Cousin,
Me voici depuis plus de trois mois aux prises avec M. Wolfe. Il ne cesse jour et nuit de bombarder Quebec avec une furée qui n’a guère d’exemple dans le siège d’une place qu’on veut prendre et conserver.
Il a déjà consumé par le feu presque toute la basse ville; une grande partie de la haute est écrouée par les bombes. Mais ne laissa-t-il pierre sur pierre, il ne viendra jamais à bout d’emparer de cette capitale de la colonie, tandis qu’il se contentera de l’attaquer de la rive opposée dont nous lui avons abandonnée la possession. Aussi après trois mois de tentative n’est-il pas plus avancé dans son dessin qu’au premier jour – Il nous ruine mais il ne s’enrichit pas.
La campagne n’a guère d’un mois à durer, à raison du voisinage de l’automne, terrible dans ces parages pour une flotte, par les coups de vent qui règnent constamment et périodiquement.
Il semble qu’après un si heureux prélude, la conservation de la colonie est presqu’assurée. Il n’en est cependant rien. La prise de Quebec dépend d’un coup de main. Les Anglais sont maîtres de la rivière; ils n’ont guère à effectuer une descnte sur la rive où cette ville sans fortifications et sans défense est située.
– Les voilà en état de me présenter la bataille! que je ne pourrai plus refuser et que je ne devrai pas gagner. M. Wolfe en effet, s’il entend son métier, n’a qu’à essayer le premier feu, venir en suite à grands pas sur mon armée, faire à bout partant sa décharge, mes Canadiens, sans discipline, sourds à la voix du tambour, et des instruments militaires, dérangés par cette escarre, ne sauront plus reprendre leurs rangs. Ils sont ailleurs sans bayonettes pour répondre à celles de l’ennemi; il ne leur reste qu’à fuire et me voilà battu sans ressource. Voilà ma position! Position bien fâcheuse pour un général et qui me fait passer de terribles moments. La connaissance que j’en aie m’a fait tenir jusqu’ici sur la défensive qui m’a réussi, mais réussira-t-elle jusqu’à la fin? Les événements en décideront! Mais une assurance que je puis vous donner, c’est que je ne survivrai pas probablement la perte de la Colonie. Il est des situations où il ne reste plus à un Général que de périr avec honneur; je crois y être, et sur ce point je crois que jamais la postérité n’aura rien à reprocher à ma mémoire.
[“Letters from the Marquis de Montcalm to Mr de Berryer and Mr de la Molé 1757-1759.” London, 1777.1313
Sir and Dear Cousin,For three months, I have been grappling here with Wolfe. He stops neither day or night bombarding Quebec with a fury that has scarcely a parallel in the siege of a place that a commander intends to take and preserve. He has already destroyed by fire almost the whole Lower Town; a large part of the Upper Town is in ruins from the bombardment. But even if not one stone is standing on another, he will never manage to seize this capital of the colony as long as he remains satisfied with attacking it from the opposite shore, which we have yielded to him. Thus after three months of attempting, he is no more advanced in his design than on the first day. He leaves us in ruins but he himself does not flourish.
The campaign can scarcely last a month more because of the approach of autumn, terrible in these parts for a fleet, because of the gusting winds which prevail constantly and recurrently.
It would seem that after such a fine prelude, the preservation of the colony is almost assured. However, this is not the case. The taking of Quebec depends on a surprise attack. The English control the river; they have only to effect a descent on the river bank where this city is unfortified and without defense.
There they would be in a position to engage me in battle! which I would no longer be able to refuse and which I should not win. Wolfe, indeed, if he knows his business, has only to fire the first shot and then charge towards my army, while firing. My Canadian troops, without discipline, deaf to the sound of the drum, and to military instruments, scattered by this violent beginning, will not know any longer how to regroup their ranks. Besides, they have no bayonettes to answer the bayonettes of the enemy; there remains nothing left for them but to flee and there I am beaten and without resources. That’s my position! A very troublesome position for a general that makes me suffer terrible moments. This knowledge has up to now made me hold a defensive position which has been successful; but will it succeed to the end? It well be decided in the event! But I can give you one assurance; that is, that I shall probably not survive the loss of the Colony. There are some situations in which a General can only perish with honour. I believe I am up to it and that on this point posterity will have nothing to reproach my memory. ]
(Translation by Jane Rupert)
The fortifications or entrenchments which Wolfe took first in accordance with this prophetic strategy are still to be seen in Mr. Price’s garden, above Wolfe’s cove, but the place is wholly outside the present works.
Perfectly to man the present works would take from 8, to 10,000 men.
I must now wind up. We are steaming on & on up the St. Lawrence whose waters equal in extent nearly half the cubical contents of all the fresh waters of the globe if we include in its waters its lakes. We are approaching Montreal. I shall endeavour to keep up the interest of my letters, but I doubt whether I shall be able to do as much in my own special line in future as I heretofore have been able to add to the Prince’s doings. But I propose to cut off balls, and occasionally dinners.
Besides what I have mentioned at Quebec we visited two famous falls, those of the Chaudière and of Montmorenci. To the former we rode some miles on horseback. I believe I named [mentioned?] that 15 saddle horses are provided for us, & meet us at every town we go to, being sent on by rail or by water before us. Both these falls are remarkable. I still tried to sketch them – but the deluge at one and the hurry at the other made the sketches Nil. I try however to keep up my Journal for you in the sketches – but look at and keep & cut out the Illustrated News with regularity –
I have just read with astonishment the Canada Government orders for the charge of us: the care, the precision and forethought displayed is quite curious.
We are catered for by an American Hotel keeper, Mr. Anderson of New York, a kind of manly Spiers. He prefaced his account of himself to me thus – “Doctor, I wish you to understand in the first place that I am a Gastronomer by taste – by profession – and by science; and that I hope to live to prove that in my hands the school of cookery in France, England & Russia or Germany is inferior to the School of America.”
Almost one hundred years earlier, the public imagination in Britain had been captivated by the legendary Battle of Quebec fought on the Plains of Abraham, a grassy plateau named for an earlier owner of the fields. In 1759, after a summer of almost hopeless news, a ship arrived with the report of a dramatic victory: of 3,500 British troops gliding downstream on a moonless night on the ebbing tide of the St Lawrence River, of their stealthy ascent along a steep path about a mile above the city, and their surprise engagement with Montcalm’s outnumbered troops outside the walled city. Included among the British troops were the Fraser Highlanders, mentioned by Acland, drawing their broad swords to the sound of bagpipes and uttering their fierce Celtic war cries. Before the morning was over, Wolfe’s body lay aboard a nearby ship. Montcalm, shot as he brought up the rear of a disordered mass of soldiers retreating through the city’s Saint-Louis gate, died the following morning.
Acland’s transcription of a poignant letter written by Montcalm just two weeks before the battle, published in London in 1777, was addressed to the Minister of the Navy, M. de Berryer, and to M. de la Molé, a cousin of his wife who was President of the Parliament. Montcalm referred to the relentless British bombardment of the city from across the river in Lévis which had levelled in a single night 167 houses in the Lower Town and reduced to rubble nearly every building at the front of the Upper Town. However, the general anticipated that in spite of his successful defensive tactics during the siege of the city Wolfe would lead a surprise attack at a vulnerable point above Quebec, that his own Canadian troops would not know how to conduct themselves in European-style warfare, and that he would die an honourable death with nothing for posterity to reproach him.
However, nine years after the royal tour this prophetic and moving letter in which Montcalm exonerated himself and his French troops was proved conclusively to be a forgery. Its purpose was to protect the honour of the French army in its defeat. In fact, in spite of Montcalm’s long-standing disdain for North American guerilla-style warfare, during the battle some 1,500 Canadian and Aboriginal sharpshooters had successfully harried British soldiers from behind the cover of bushes and knolls. Chronically defeatist, Montcalm had made the decision himself to incorporate 3,000 Canadian militia into his regular troops rather than to accept reinforcements from France for a colony he deemed doomed. By this time, France had placed its hopes on winning the war through an invasion of England and regaining its colonial losses during post-war settlements. Nonetheless, Montcalm’s purported claim to fame by posterity was fulfilled. During the 1820s, Lord Dalhousie, governor general of British North America, inaugurated an obelisk in Quebec erected to both Wolfe and Montcalm with a Latin inscription declaring that military prowess gave them a common death, history a common fame, and posterity a common monument.
List of travelling party
To the remainder of my sheet I shall add the list of our daily Travelling party through Canada. At each place we meet the special Authorities.
The Prince
The Duke of Newcastle
Lord St. Germains
General Bruce
Major Teesdale
Captain Grey
Myself
Commodore Seymour
Mr. Engleheart (Duke’s Secretary)
***
The Governor General, Sir Edmund Head
Mr R.J. Pennefather, Governor’s Secretary, Superintendent General Indian Affairs
Captain Retallack, Assistant Military Secretary
Colonel Irvine, Provincial A.D.C. [aide-de-camp]
Sir F. Williams, the General Commanding in Canada
The Hon. Colonel Rolls, Military Secretary
Captain DeWinton, R.A.
Captain Earle, A.D.C.
Sir Allan McNab, A.D.C. to the Queen
Sir Etienne Taché, A.D.C. to the Queen
Mr. Cartier, Premier of the Cabinet
Lord Lyons, Minister in U.S.
Mr. Warre, Attaché to Lyons (?)
Mr. Jenner, Dr.
The Earl Mulgrave, Governor of Nova Scotia
The whole number of the Suite i.e. of the travelling party exclusive of the Crews is 81 – there is a Guard of Honour of 100 with a band of 30 wherever we go – and the groom & stable staff separate & additional. The Members of the Legislature go as far as Ottawa in other conveyances, and the Admiral with three ships to Montreal.
Contextualized Notes
On the arrival of the Prince of Wales, salutes boomed from the massive citadel located on the imposing promontory of Cap Diamant which jutted out to force a dramatic narrowing of the river at Quebec (Algonquin: kebec – where the river narrows). About 20,000 spectators had gathered in a city which with its suburban populace in 1860 was estimated at 60,000. Among these spectators, 2,000 had bought tickets to sit on a grandstand by the Champlain Market Wharf to hear the prince’s brief speech, echoed in Acland’s report to Sarah, in which the prince said that all differences of origin, language, and religion were lost in one universal spirit of patriotism, that all classes were knit to each other and to the mother country by the common ties of equal liberty and free institutions.
Acland shared common cultural and scientific ground with this dedicated colonial administrator. Their study of Greek and Latin classics at Oxford provided them with a common frame of reference and a training in seeking fundamental, underlying principles. In an age that still pre-dated scientific specialization, both were also interested in the new physical sciences, in promoting public education in science, and in expanding the scope of university studies. While Acland found respite from the demands of his profession through painting, Head found similar solace in translating poetry. A publication after his death in 1868 included his translations of Greek and Latin poetry, a Spanish ballad about love between an Arab and Spaniard, a German poem about Warsaw’s defeat by the Prussians in 1831, and selections from the medieval Edda, the Old Norse saga about Norse gods and heroes.
Acland enjoyed the company of three members of the executive council, all commercial lawyers, and all, like him, in their early forties. Two of them, Cartier and Macdonald, were to be key figures in the forthcoming federation of the colonies. After 1857, when John A. Macdonald began his long political cooperation with Cartier, his conservative counterpart in the lower province, it was apparent that the difficulties inherent in the forced union of the two Canadas made a federation of separate provinces with regional freedoms an appealing solution. Cartier, a passionate French-Canadian and strong monarchist who had named his daughter Reine-Victoria (Queen Victoria), had been one of three delegates who travelled to London in 1858 to present a plan for federation. The politically shrewd, genial Macdonald wrote most of the constitution for the new dominion, becoming its first prime minister in 1867. In 1860, John Rose, his charming and urbane friend, was chief commissioner of Public Works responsible not only for the construction of the new parliament building in Ottawa but for arranging the large touring party’s transportation and accommodation. After serving as the new dominion’s first minister of finance, Rose became an international banker in London with a firm that negotiated the refinancing of the American national debt after the civil war, public borrowings for the province of Quebec, and capital for building the Canadian Pacific Railway.
When Queen Victoria granted its charter as a degree-granting institution in 1852, Laval University emerged as an entity separate from the Séminaire de Québec, a classical college and seminary originally founded in 1663 for the training of priests. In its new, three and a half story medical building, medicine was established as a university faculty distinct from training through apprenticeship with a doctor or through walking wards and attending lectures in a hospital as Acland himself had done in the 1840s – an experience he described as haphazard and exhausting. An organized, systematic program of medical sciences like pathology, toxicology, and pharmacology made concurrent or subsequent clinical practice in hospitals a more beneficial experience. Acland, considered the founder of modern medicine at Oxford, was impressed by the program at Laval which was meant to raise the status of the profession in the province through ensuring rigorous standards. Unlike the Faculty of Medicine at McGill, founded in 1829, Laval offered not only a bachelor in medicine but also a licentiate and a doctorate on completion of a thesis; the first thesis in 1859 was on the relation between mental illness and suicide in the province. Like Acland, the faculty’s professors were also full-time medical practitioners, two were English-Protestant, and all had agreed to forgo remuneration during the first four years to help establish the faculty.
To practise as physicians, both those, like Acland, who took exams at a university after clinical observation and lectures in hospitals and those who were trained through apprenticeship were required to obtain a license through examination by licensing boards. In 1845, Acland’s own examination by members of the Royal College of Physicians in London had involved an oral examination conducted in Latin based on a paper that he had written over a period of six hours. In 1847 in Canada’s lower province, a College of Physicians and Surgeons had been established that made obligatory either six months attendance at courses in clinical medicine and surgery or one year of practice in a hospital before undergoing examination for a license. Licensing was a pressing concern. It is estimated that in 1851, of some 11,000 practitioners in Britain, more than half were unlicensed. To regulate practice, in 1858 Parliament passed the Medical Act, establishing the General Medical Council, of which Acland was a member for Oxford University, to create a public register distinguishing qualified from unqualified practitioners.
Dr James Douglas and Charles-Jacques Frémont were two of the founders and co-owners of the asylum. Douglas, trained in Edinburgh, had gained a reputation for successfully correcting cases of club foot shortly after his arrival in Quebec and for more than two decades had been the strict, disciplined director of the Marine and Emigrant Hospital. Frémont was a kind, high-minded man who had not only served as director of the asylum for eleven years but as the oldest member of the Faculty of Medicine in accordance with its policy was also its dean. Inspired by the optimism of the moral therapy movement which maintained that in many cases mental health could be restored, in 1845 the mentally deranged had been transferred to the new asylum from prison in Montreal and hospitals in Trois-Rivières and Quebec where they often languished in windowless rooms or were shackled in chains, sometimes not seeing the sun for years. At the asylum, spacious surroundings, recreation, and manual work were therapeutic instruments in the path towards mental health. The two cardinal principles of physical health were also implemented through good ventilation to prevent the spread of airborne disease and through sanitation and clean water to prevent disease from contagion. The government continued as before to pay for the indigent or the “Lunatic poor.” Impropriety in admissions was prevented by requiring the recommendation not only of a physician but also of either a clergyman or a magistrate. Unfortunately, at Beauport the medical ideal of the asylum, which involved a therapeutic relation with patients, was already jeopardized by its large population which in 1860 had increased from its original eighty patients to 450.
As chief librarian at Oxford’s Radcliffe Library, Acland took a professional interest in the practices at the parliamentary library in Quebec in a period which predated the use of library card catalogues and when there were no universal procedures for cataloguing. The library holdings had been subjected to two fires. In Montreal in 1849 the Parliament Building was set on fire while parliament was still in session by an angry anglophone mob of Loyalist Tories who are described in French-Canadian accounts as ‘Orangistes,’ the anti-French, anti-Catholic members of the Orange Lodge. The riot protested the passing of a bill offering compensation for property losses suffered during the Lower Canada Rebellions of 1837-38, rebellions that the protesters considered treasonous. The riot lasted for two days, involved thousands of people, and led to the relocation of the seat of government alternately to Toronto and to Quebec City. The fire destroyed not only some 23,000 volumes from the amalgamated Upper and Lower Canada libraries but also parliamentary archives, official documents, and original manuscripts. In 1854 in another fire, this time during the early morning at the Parliament Building in Quebec, the valiant efforts of police, soldiers, and civilians managed to save about 9,000 of its 17,000 volumes. The following year, the chief librarian, sent by the legislature to Europe, bought thousands of books, secured several hundred volumes from the British parliament and government, and acquired hundreds more in France.
At the parliamentary library, Acland inquired after the first volume, printed in small numbers in 1850, of a monumental work by Dr Daniel Drake investigating the possible contagious and environmental causes for prevalent diseases like small pox, scarlet fever, malaria, and typhus. In this period before the discovery of microscopic bacilli, Drake followed the same procedure as Acland in his Memoir on the Cholera, looking for patterns in data tabulated in statistical charts and medical maps. He accumulated massive amounts of information from various sources: for example, the mortality and meteorological records of the United States Army, the British Army, and the Hudson Bay Company; records from the Lewis and Clark expedition; data from professors; a physician’s record of thunder storms over sixteen years in St Louis that indicated changes in the positive and negative state of the atmosphere. In the course of his own field work between 1836-41 in which he covered over 30,000 miles, Dr Drake met the librarian at Quebec and exchanged contending views with Dr James Douglas on the source of typhus. Drake supported the hypothesis that typhus spread through contagion in personal contact abetted by factors like poor diet and wretched living conditions; Douglas supported the miasmatic theory of air-borne environmental sources, making cleanliness and ventilation in hospitals of vital importance.
In the Relations des Jésuites (Jesuit Relations), a collection of annual reports sent to France by Jesuit missionaries in Canada, Acland’s reading included accounts of Huron culture like those written by Jean de Brébeuf who died during an Iroquois raid on a Huron village near Midland, Ont. in 1649. Acland also consulted James Prichard’s ethnological work, a new science with a recently coined name. Drawing on its origins in the taxonomies of eighteenth-century botany, early ethnologists had divided the peoples of the globe into a few large geographical areas with different skin colours and characters based on the humours. Red North Americans were choleric, yellow Mongolians were melancholic, white Caucasians were sanguine. Prichard explored the origin of human varieties and races especially through a comparison of languages and mythologies, proving, for example, that the Celtic language was a branch of the Indo-European languages and concluding that all races probably descended from Negroes in Africa, a conclusion more recently affirmed by genome studies. Acland read of the variety of languages among North American Indians in Prichard’s work entitled Natural History of Man in its posthumous edition of 1855. Prichard had drawn on the work of an American ethnologist, Henry Schoolcraft, who through his marriage to the cultured, educated grand-daughter of an Ojibwa chief had learned Ojibwa grammar, customs, and legends, including the story of Hiawatha which provided the source for Longfellow’s epic poem. Schoolcraft traced the geographic spread of various tribes in North America through language and cultural affinities. His conclusions about the mental characteristics of Aboriginals, reflected in the relative paucity of abstract and numerical words in their languages and the non-inductive reasoning of legends and myths, were considered as scientific evidence in United States’ Indian policy as the government deliberated whether Aboriginals were constitutionally capable of assimilation into white civilization or should be removed to reserves. In the 1880s, Acland was a member of the committee that approved establishing the Pitt River Museum to house General Pitt River’s founding ethnographic collection. As an extension of the University Museum’s natural history collection, the new department of ethnology, the first in a British university, was also an extension of Acland’s ideal of the unity of all the sciences.
In 1755, Britain had originally established the Imperial Indian Department as a wing of its military both to foster diplomatic relations with First Nations People and to effect alliances indispensable in the North American theatre of its global conflicts with France. Two of Acland’s travelling companions had superintended the Indian Department in the united Canadas. General Bruce, as secretary to the governor general, Lord Elgin, had been superintendent-general from 1847-54. Richard Pennefather, as secretary to Edmund Head, had been chief superintendent from 1856-60. During recent decades, divergent interests had opened fissures between the policies of the Indian Department and the treaty-based claims of First Nations people. Indigenous military assistance had ceased to be necessary, the economics of Indigenous partnerships in the fur trade had yielded in large measure to farming by settlers and to the timber industry, and massive European migration had shifted demographics, diminishing the ratio of Indigenous peoples. As a result, the Department had placed constraints on what it considered sufficient payment for past services, diminishing or eliminating its annual grants from sales of land and annual gifts, such as various cloth goods, weapons, and tools. However, within the long-standing diplomatic custom of First Nations People, these gifts were understood not only as a ceremonial honouring both the recipient and the prestige of the giver but as an annual re-balancing and re-enactment of treaty agreements. Shortly after becoming superintendent-general, Pennefather headed a three-man commission which through a massive use of statistics provided a detailed picture of the Indian bands of the province and of the Indian Department’s agents and superintendents. This report, published in 1858, made observations about efforts at assimilation, noting that Indians’ response to attempts at civilization was still piece-meal despite almost thirty years of implementing this policy. It reported that conditions among the Indians were not good, urging compassionate and effective treatment of their social ills. Finally, it suggested that administrative confusion was responsible for many of the Indians’ problems and recommended establishing a centralized Indian Department with its own permanent head.
Based on recent American history, one of the tour’s American journalists postulated that one important reason for Britain’s support of a confederation of the colonies was to create a unified defense of their borders against American aggressions. Since the 1840’s, several borders had been demarcated: between Oregon and British Columbia, on lands near Lake Superior, along the southern boundary of Quebec, and between New Brunswick and Maine. However, during the same period, to justify a two-year war with Mexico about disputed borders President Polk had invoked the concept of Manifest Destiny, a belief that settlers in the United States were destined to expand across North America. In the treaty following this war, the United States acquired not only California but much of the area of Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico. The journalist also pointed out that one factor determining a future constitution for the federated provinces was the prevalent British suspicion of “mob rule,” a perceived “tyranny of the majority” inherent in the broadly-extended American franchise.
Almost one hundred years earlier, the public imagination in Britain had been captivated by the legendary Battle of Quebec fought on the Plains of Abraham, a grassy plateau named for an earlier owner of the fields. In 1759, after a summer of almost hopeless news, a ship arrived with the report of a dramatic victory: of 3,500 British troops gliding downstream on a moonless night on the ebbing tide of the St Lawrence River, of their stealthy ascent along a steep path about a mile above the city, and their surprise engagement with Montcalm’s outnumbered troops outside the walled city. Included among the British troops were the Fraser Highlanders, mentioned by Acland, drawing their broad swords to the sound of bagpipes and uttering their fierce Celtic war cries. Before the morning was over, Wolfe’s body lay aboard a nearby ship. Montcalm, shot as he brought up the rear of a disordered mass of soldiers retreating through the city’s Saint-Louis gate, died the following morning.
Acland’s transcription of a poignant letter written by Montcalm just two weeks before the battle, published in London in 1777, was addressed to the Minister of the Navy, M. de Berryer, and to M. de la Molé, a cousin of his wife who was President of the Parliament. Montcalm referred to the relentless British bombardment of the city from across the river in Lévis which had levelled in a single night 167 houses in the Lower Town and reduced to rubble nearly every building at the front of the Upper Town. However, the general anticipated that in spite of his successful defensive tactics during the siege of the city Wolfe would lead a surprise attack at a vulnerable point above Quebec, that his own Canadian troops would not know how to conduct themselves in European-style warfare, and that he would die an honourable death with nothing for posterity to reproach him.
However, nine years after the royal tour this prophetic and moving letter in which Montcalm exonerated himself and his French troops was proved conclusively to be a forgery. Its purpose was to protect the honour of the French army in its defeat. In fact, in spite of Montcalm’s long-standing disdain for North American guerilla-style warfare, during the battle some 1,500 Canadian and Aboriginal sharpshooters had successfully harried British soldiers from behind the cover of bushes and knolls. Chronically defeatist, Montcalm had made the decision himself to incorporate 3,000 Canadian militia into his regular troops rather than to accept reinforcements from France for a colony he deemed doomed. By this time, France had placed its hopes on winning the war through an invasion of England and regaining its colonial losses during post-war settlements. Nonetheless, Montcalm’s purported claim to fame by posterity was fulfilled. During the 1820s, Lord Dalhousie, governor general of British North America, inaugurated an obelisk in Quebec erected to both Wolfe and Montcalm with a Latin inscription declaring that military prowess gave them a common death, history a common fame, and posterity a common monument.