Champlain had dreamed of setting up a trading post at Montreal, but in 1642 a missionary settlement got there first. And so, although the city was most often called Montréal, it also came to be known as Ville-Marie. The beginnings were difficult, but Montréalistes, as they were known, stuck it out and gradually put down roots.
To understand the context in which Montreal was founded, we need to go back to France in the 1630s. Religion was back in favour; a wave of exaltation and a desire to spread the Catholic faith had washed over part of France’s elite, affecting both the nobility and bourgeoisie. It spawned a host of new works, from religious orders and charities to missions. A secret society, the Company of the Blessed Sacrament (Compagnie du Saint-Sacrement), channelled part of this energy and brought together many of the kingdom’s most influential figures. This was also a time when French Catholics were learning about missions in Canada, thanks in particular to The Jesuit Relations, chronicles of their time in New France.
This was the world of the man behind the Montreal project, Jérôme Le Royer de La Dauversière, a tax collector from La Flèche in France. A fervent Catholic, he founded a number of religious and charitable organizations in his town and was also a member of the Company of the Blessed Sacrament. Around 1635, he first had the idea of founding a missionary settlement in Montreal. His project began to take shape in 1639 when he met Father Jean-Jacques Olier in Paris, a French priest who would go on to found the Sulpicians, and who was already nursing a similar idea. Together they managed to rally the rich and influential around their project, including the superior of the Company of the Blessed Sacrament, Gaston de Renty.
They set up the Société de Notre-Dame de Montréal to convert the Aboriginal peoples of New France. Their goal was to found a missionary settlement in Montreal where Aboriginals who had converted to Catholicism would live and farm alongside the French. The fur trade, still the main reason for many staying in Canada, was of no interest to them; their mission was religious. Their directors managed to raise a considerable amount of money to meet the needs of the colony and its inhabitants.
The Société de Notre-Dame purchased the seigneury of the island of Montreal that had previously belonged to Jean de Lauson and looked for someone to run the settlement. They picked the right man for the job in Paul de Chomedey de Maisonneuve, a gentleman with a military career behind him. They also brought on board Jeanne Mance, a woman with a project of her own, namely to found a hospital in Montreal, with the financial support of a rich benefactor, Madame de Bullion. Jeanne Mance became the settlement’s bursar. Others were indentured servants—artisans, for the most part—who were recruited on three- to five-year contracts.
The Compagnie des Cent-Associés (Company of One Hundred Associates), which owned New France, granted the Société de Notre-Dame a great deal of autonomy over its settlement in Montreal. It was able to name its own governor, Maisonneuve, who enjoyed a vast range of military and civilian powers, especially over judicial matters. It was also able to freely import the products it needed to Canada and had its own warehouse at Quebec.
The forty-person expedition set sail in 1641. There were three boats, but Maisonneuve’s was damaged and delayed, not arriving until the end of the summer. It was too late in the year to set up the new settlement so the group spent the winter near Quebec, where it continued preparations, got used to the Canadian climate, and familiarized itself with techniques to survive the winter.
The governor of Quebec, Montmagny, deemed a settlement in Montreal risky, given attacks by the Iroquois and the small population of New France. He tried to get Maisonneuve to give up on the project—a “foolhardy undertaking,” in his eyes—and to build a settlement on Île d’Orléans instead. But Maisonneuve stuck to his guns: he would build a settlement in Montreal, even if “all the trees on the island were to turn into just as many Iroquois.” The autonomy granted to the Montreal colony also irritated the governor. In other words, even before the city was founded, there were already signs of legendary rivalry between what would go on to become Montreal and Quebec City.
In May 1642, accompanied by a small group from Quebec, including Governor Montmagny, Maisonneuve and his group set off up the river for Montreal. They arrived on May 17. The Jesuit Barthélemy Vimont said mass and gave a famous sermon in which he compared the new settlement to a mustard seed and predicted a bright future for it. Montreal had been founded.
Maisonneuve chose to settle on the spot later known as Pointe-à-Callière, the same site pinpointed by Champlain in 1611. The first year was devoted to building a fort and living quarters. An additional 12 settlers, sent by the Société de Notre-Dame, arrived at the end of summer 1642, meaning that fifty-odd men and women—mostly men—would spend a first winter in Montreal.
But Maisonneuve did not lose sight of his primary mission and tried to convince the Aboriginal people who passed through to come and make their home alongside the French. The project stood little chance against the harsh reality of war, however. The Iroquois had begun to control the fur routes along the St. Lawrence and Ottawa rivers. They systematically attacked rival nations, annihilating many of them, as was the case with the Hurons in 1649.
The founding of Montreal was a direct threat to the Iroquois. It took them a year to realize the new settlement existed, but once they did, they relentlessly spied on and harassed the Montréalistes, even managing to capture and kill a few of them. From that moment on, Ville-Marie was on the defensive; the dream of attracting Aboriginal peoples to the settlement evaporated since there was no way of guaranteeing their safety. The survival of the tiny colony was already hanging by a thread.
Montreal’s history in the early years is therefore closely linked to its military heroics. The inhabitants survived by organizing their defences, keeping their wits about them whenever they dealt with the Iroquois, and making the most of lulls in the fighting. There were many tales of bravery among settlers convinced they were working for the glory of God (the religious ideals behind the settlement remained, even though the project of building a mission had stalled). And the charismatic Maisonneuve and Jeanne Mance helped keep the group together.
The war forced the Montréalistes to live inside the fort as much as possible, which curbed the development of agriculture. A few pieces of land were given to the settlers and some was cleared, but not much. In 1645, a hospital was built during a truce with the Iroquois, the Hôtel-Dieu that had drawn Jeanne Mance to the project. The building was not erected at Pointe-à-Callière—too vulnerable to flooding—but on the other side of the Petite rivière Saint-Pierre, where the city would later develop. Some settlers also began building homes for themselves on that side of the river.
Meanwhile, the population was stagnating. After initial efforts in 1641–1642, the Société de Notre-Dame sent few new settlers for the rest of the decade, and none at all in some years. Births were also scarce. New arrivals barely filled the void left by people leaving Montreal and those lost to war and other causes. Ten years after it was founded, Montreal still had no more than 50 people living there. Early results had not been encouraging, and in the early 1650s, the future appeared gloomy indeed for the handful of Montréalistes persisting with the project. A solution would have to be found.
In 1651, Maisonneuve returned to France to recruit new settlers. He believed it was now or never for Montreal: if he failed to garner new recruits, the experiment would have to be brought to an end. Jeanne Mance suggested he use some of the funds earmarked for the Hôtel-Dieu, financial support that would prove decisive. But times were hard in France. The Montreal project was greeted less warmly than in 1641, although associates from the Société de Notre-Dame nevertheless managed to scrape together the money required to fund a new recruitment drive. In 1653, Maisonneuve at last returned with reinforcements: 95 new settlers, enough to triple the population of Ville-Marie in one swoop! The years that followed saw only a few immigrants arrive, but in 1659 one last push brought 91 more settlers. The colony could breathe again.
The recent wave of immigration had brought with it couples and single young women, who were quickly asked for their hand in marriage. It was enough to counterbalance what had until then been a surfeit of men. The next natural step was, of course, a spurt of births that, for the first time ever, gave a real boost to Montreal’s population (estimated at 596 in 1663 by historian Marcel Trudel). From a tiny missionary settlement with an uncertain future, Montreal had blossomed into a permanent colony that was increasingly taking root.
Maisonneuve’s presence as governor throughout these growing pains ensured some degree of continuity and stability. He administered the colony with a good dose of paternalism and managed to keep his little family together. Responsible for justice, he came down on misdemeanours, and as military commander, he surrounded himself with reliable officers like Lambert Closse. The other pillar of the colony was, of course, Jeanne Mance. She had also been there since the settlement’s beginnings and, along with Maisonneuve, worked with French associates and donors.
The religious ideal remained a fundamental part of life in Ville-Marie. In the first few years of the settlement, Jesuit missionaries served the tiny colony, but as the population grew, there was a burgeoning need for a permanent parish clergy. In 1657, the first priests arrived from the Saint-Sulpice seminary in Paris and a parish was formed. From that moment, the Sulpicians went on to play an ever-growing role in the history of Montreal.
Another key institution was the Hôtel-Dieu set up by Jeanne Mance. The hospital, built in 1645 and then expanded, was, along with the fort, the biggest building in town. The first Hospitallers of St. Joseph, a women’s religious order, arrived from La Flèche in France in 1659. They assisted Jeanne Mance and eventually took over from her.
The recruitment drive of 1653 brought a young woman to Montreal, Marguerite Bourgeoys, who wanted to devote herself to educating children. She opened her first school in an old barn in 1658. The following year, she brought over a handful of companions from France who would go on to form the Congregation of Notre Dame with her.
Montreal now had a network of schools and hospitals adapted to the needs of its population. The directors of the Société de Notre-Dame gave these institutions land in prime locations. Revenue generated by the land would be used to fund their work.
At the same time, the town itself was taking shape. In addition to the huge plots of land set aside for religious institutions, Maisonneuve also gave away more modest sites. A first line of homes popped up along Saint-Paul street; a strip along the shores of the St. Lawrence was set aside as common grounds, known as the Commune, where the habitants could let their animals graze.
One of the objectives of the Société de Notre-Dame was to set up an agricultural settlement. The first years did not make any progress on this front, but in the 1650s rural land extended further around the town as the population grew. From 1648, a first seigneurial mill meant wheat could be ground into flour, which became the main product of local agriculture.
Since the island of Montreal was a seigneury, Maisonneuve gave parcels of land to settlers prepared to clear them. In 1654 and 1655, he even gave them cash bonuses to take the land (although the bonuses had to be reimbursed, if ever the settlers left Montreal). This system was an effective way of keeping people in the country once their contracts with the Société de Notre-Dame had ended and who might otherwise have been tempted to return to France. Land given out in this way was right on the periphery of the area reserved for the town, but lots were smaller than those around Quebec to keep the habitants closer together and better protected in the event of an attack. As elsewhere in the St. Lawrence Valley, land was divided into long rectangular strips fronting on the St. Lawrence, Rivière Saint-Martin, and Petite rivière Saint-Pierre.
So what about the fur trade, the leading economic activity in Canada at the time? The Société de Notre-Dame had no direct role in the fur trade, but the habitants were interested in it. From 1645, when the Communauté des Habitants, which had a monopoly on trade in New France, was formed, Montréalistes had a voice within the organization. But their involvement in trade was limited since their Aboriginal allies were reluctant to bring their furs to Montreal because of the Iroquois, often preferring long portages inland to trade at Quebec or Tadoussac at the mouth of the Saguenay instead. The Iroquois eliminated or dispersed many tribes allied with the French, further complicating matters. Deliveries were possible during outbreaks of peace, however, which also provided an opportunity for the habitants to trade with the Aboriginals. Montreal’s involvement in the fur trade really began in the 1650s, with a few merchants like Charles Le Moyne and Jacques Le Ber becoming rising stars.
Iroquois raids intensified starting in the late 1650s, which led to a new strategy: sending Frenchmen up into the Pays d’en haut to bring back furs from the nations around the Great Lakes. Radisson and Des Groseillers paved the way in 1660, returning to Montreal with a lucrative haul.
This was the background to the Battle of Long Sault in 1660. The young soldier, commander of the city garrison, Adam Dollard des Ormeaux, came up with a plan to attack the Iroquois along the Ottawa River on their way back from a hunting expedition. It may also have been his intention to ensure safe passage for Radisson and Des Groseillers, who were expected back soon. Dollard des Ormeaux left Montreal with 17 companions, taking up position at the Long Sault rapids along with a few Algonquins and some forty Hurons. But soon they came up against a group of Iroquois who were preparing to launch a major attack on New France. The Iroquois called for reinforcements posted at the mouth of the Richelieu River, and after several days of fighting, the French and the few Algonquins and Hurons who had remained loyal to them were defeated and killed. The battle nevertheless relieved the pressure exerted by the Iroquois that year.
At first wholly dependent on the Société de Notre-Dame for materials and supplies, the Montreal colony was beginning to generate economic activity of its own. A social structure was also taking shape. First, there was the group of habitants, the people who were no longer employed by the Société de Notre-Dame and who owned property in Montreal. They were fortunate enough to be able to trade with the Aboriginals and were the lifeblood of Montreal society. They included farmers, artisans, a small number of future merchants who came into their own later on, and a smattering of nobles. A new society like Montreal was a place of social and economic mobility for many of them. Then came the indentured servants who worked for the Société de Notre-Dame, the journeymen, tradesmen, and servants. They formed the largest group in 1663: historian Marcel Trudel estimates that two thirds of Montrealers worked for the other third.
Sweeping changes in France in 1663 altered the course of Montreal’s history. The Company of One Hundred Associates stopped managing New France, which would now be governed by a more centralizing royal administration. The considerable autonomy Montreal had enjoyed since it had been founded was reduced. What’s more, the Société de Notre-Dame, short on energy and resources, was dissolved and the seigneury of Montreal was transferred to the Saint-Sulpice seminary in Paris.
The new French administration, determined to come to the aid of its subjects who were being harassed by the Iroquois, sent troops in 1665. Their expeditions to Mohawk lands had little military success, but did bring about peace, to the great relief of Montrealers. That same year, Maisonneuve was somewhat cavalierly sent back to France by the king’s representative without a word of explanation.
It was the end of an era, the end of Montreal’s beginnings. Montreal now had roots, thanks to the efforts of the Société de Notre-Dame and the courage and tenacity of its inhabitants, in particular Maisonneuve and Jeanne Mance.