The Pointe-à-Callière history museum is inaugurating a temporary exhibition dedicated to the St. Lawrence River. The “Great River of Canada”, as it was called, what does it carry about our lives, between our current affairs and our memory of the past? This exhibition, based largely on the collection of the Musée maritime du Québec, aims to tell it in ten stations. A little more than 300 objects are summoned to speak of these 1200 km of water that the Anishinaabes call Magtogoek.
The Saint Lawrence is one of the most difficult rivers to navigate in the world. There are many strong currents and pitfalls. For a long time, the life of fishermen went unnoticed there. For them, no salary, except that of poverty.
How many ships have sunk in the river? The most famous of the buildings swallowed by the Saint Lawrence is undoubtedly theEmpress of Ireland, a passenger ship that belongs to the Canadian Pacific fleet. In less than 15 minutes, on May 29, 1914, 1,012 people were swept to the bottom, off the coast of Rimouski. Bottles of wine, the wheelhouse order transmitter and a piano leg allow visitors to imagine what life could have been like on these great liners.
War, war!
In Quebec, in the Petit Champlain district, the Notre-Dame-des-Victoires church commemorates the military stampede of the boats commanded by Sir Phips. In 1690, the English admiralty had New France in its sights. Boats make their way across the waters. After attacking Beauport and then attempting to take Quebec, they had to turn back, in the hope of attacking again later. However, the storm breaks loose and carries away the ships. Among the objects recovered from one of these ships, theElizabeth and Mary, a heart-shaped brooch. Did this “heart of the Saint Lawrence” belong to the land of love in times of war?
During the Second World War, the St. Lawrence was infested by German submariners. Between 1942 and 1944, the river was patrolled by dangerous U-boats. 26 ships were sunk. The presence of Hitler’s soldiers is attested even on the coasts of Gaspésie.
The transport route
Can we even imagine a time when the river allowed thousands of travelers to move around? Several ships proposed to reach Montreal and Quebec or even Montreal and Trois-Rivières. The St. Lawrence Steamboat Company will own up to 36 transport vessels.
In 1913, the Canada Steamship Lines was born from this craze for transport on the river. The company owns rich ships which welcome wealthy travelers. After being acquired by Power Corporation, it should be remembered that this company was sold, in 1986, for the sum of 186 million dollars (the equivalent of 445 million in 2023) to the interests of Paul Martin, future Prime Minister of Canada ?
The filmmaker and writer Pierre Perrault (1927-1999) made the “water cars”, these schooners which, by the hundreds, crisscrossed the river until the end of the 1960s, a sort of national symbol, a point of valuable support for understanding this river where the life of an entire country navigates. These boats were used as buses and trucks, which is recalled in the presentation of extracts from the Water cars (1968), one of Perrault’s great films. But of the St. Lawrence shipyards, small and large, there remains today only that of Davie, managed in its beginnings by a woman.
What bridges to the future?
Can we imagine Montreal without the Jacques-Cartier Bridge or even Quebec City without its century-old iron bridge, even at a time when the obsession with a “third link” is resurfacing? The bridges thrown on the liquid route of the Saint-Laurent are part of the image of the river, also reminiscent of this exhibition which explores several directions.
The Lachapelle Bridge, which spans the Rivière des Prairies, was the very first, in 1836, to connect the island of Montreal to Laval. First made of wood, like all these bridges regularly swept away by the powerful ice of the river, it will be rebuilt in metal. The immense Victoria Bridge will be considered a triumph in the world of the British Empire. Further away, for a long time, bridges did not exist. The use of the ice canoe continued to be a necessity for generations, before this practice was relegated to the level of a sporting event.
On June 22, 2012, during a boat trip on the St. Lawrence, Prime Minister Philippe Couillard designated the river as a “historic site”. This classification should in no way hinder economic development, he immediately clarified. The designation was not accompanied by any environmental regulations or measures to protect places considered threatened, such as municipal wharves, lighthouses or even maritime wrecks. The rich exhibition presented at the Pointe-à-Callière museum does not hold back from recalling the bulk of the threats that climate change and economic neglect pose to the river.