All summer long, we will be offering you forays into libraries across Quebec to discover their little-known treasures, on unusual themes. This week, we are opening the doors of the Morrin Centre, which houses the venerable library of the Literary and Historical Society of Quebec.
Few people know about the Morrin Cultural Centre in Old Quebec. On Chaussée des Écossais, a stone’s throw from the Maison de la littérature, it houses the only English-language library in Quebec City outside of the academic world. It is celebrating its 200th anniversary this year.
As you pass through its gate, you feel as if you have stepped into another century, into the Victorian era of the British Empire. Here still stands a desk that belonged to George-Étienne Cartier. On the mezzanine, which is reached by a spiral iron staircase, a five-foot statue of James Wolfe points a determined finger toward the Conquest. Amidst the wooden shelves covered with books, patinated armchairs and Indian rugs welcome readers.
On the shelves, current books rub shoulders with those that made up the first public library in Quebec, the Quebec Library, which was founded in Quebec City in 1779 by Governor Frederick Haldimand. Its books were collected by the Literary and Historical Society of Quebec (LHSQ), which founded the Morrin Centre in 1866. Even today, members can borrow books here on a subscription basis and participate in the various activities organized by the Literary Society.
The place is so special that detective novelist Louise Penny chose it as the setting for one of her Inspector Gamache’s investigations.Bury your dead. In fact, the library site was home to the former French Royal Redoubt, built in 1712, and then a British prison, built between 1808 and 1813. Its archives tell how public hangings took place in front of its door. After being sheriff of Quebec City, Philippe Aubert de Gaspé, imprisoned for debt, languished there for several years, while his family lived across the street. Today, the Morrin Centre library carefully preserves a copy of his book, The old Canadians, one of the founding books of French-Canadian literature and which was published 25 years after his imprisonment.
In the heart of a little Scotland
The old books in the Morrin Centre collection bear witness to its epic. The LHSQ was founded in 1824. It is the oldest learned society in Canada and is also the forerunner of the National Archives of Canada. It was founded by Governor George Ramsay, Earl of Dalhousie, a Scotsman by origin, on the model of Scottish learned societies. He was such an avid reader that during the Spanish Civil War, in which he served, he carried around a portable library of French and English classics, which he added to from one battlefield to another.
“It’s a little bit of Scotland here,” says the Morrin Centre’s current librarian, Kathleen Hulley. It was also a Scot, Joseph Morrin, a former prison doctor, who established Morrin College, the library’s predecessor in the building on the Causeway des Écossais. And a little further down the road, St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church is the oldest Scottish church in Canada.
At the time of its founding, the LHSQ was comprised of a handful of scholars, particularly interested in science. “They were cultured people, intellectuals, and really well-off people too,” notes Kathleen Hulley. In 1860, a single reference work worthy of the name could cost twice the annual salary of the LHSQ’s only employee, Louisa Blair points out in her book Iron shelves and barson the history of the Morrin Centre.
And his collections included animals as well as precious works, such as a stuffed moose that disappeared in a fire, or a Huron grammar from 1822, sold at auction in the 20th century.e century. Its members were passionate about botany and fauna. It is said that a moth, theAlypia langtoniwas named by entomologist and naturalist William Couper in honor of a president of the LHSQ, John Langdon.
Books saved from the flames
In 1868, after a second fire decimated its shelves, the LHSQ finally established itself in the building on Chaussée des Écossais, after the closure of Morrin College. “They moved all the books in June 1868,” continues Kathleen Hulley. Even today, old books in the library bear the traces of these devastating fires. The volume Memoirs of North America, or The continuation of the voyages of Mr. Baron de Lahontanedition of the Honoré brothers, from 1715, bears the mark of the flames. Has also been partially burned The lives of famous men by Plutarch, published in 1778 by Jean-Edme Dufour and Philippe Roux, taken from the collection inherited from the Quebec Library.
“On some books you can see the repairs that have been done,” explains Kathleen Hulley. “You can see that some books are very old, from the 17th centurye or from the 18th centurye century. We have a copy of the Confessions by Rousseau which dates from 1782. It is therefore the first edition.
In fact, the oldest book in the Morrin Centre’s collection is Of the military kingof Flavius Renatus Vegetius, dating from 1524. It is also bound with another book, From the Roman Gestisby Lucius Annaeus Florus, which dates from 1540.
Bilingual and bifaith
Governor Dalhousie’s initial desire was for the LHSQ to bring together members of the French-speaking and English-speaking communities. James MacPherson Lemoine, who was its president from 1871, was himself bilingual, even bidenominational. In her book, Louisa Blair recounts that he was married in a Presbyterian church, that his funeral took place in a Catholic church and that he was buried in a Protestant cemetery. An exhibition of his books is currently on display at the Morrin Centre library.
The fact remains that from 1837, the year of the first Patriote rebellion, the LHSQ’s French-speaking members became rarer. Lord Durham, author of the famous report that aimed for the total assimilation of French Canadians, whom he considered to be of “inferior” culture, was one of the generous donors of books to the LHSQ at that time. Today, the library’s more recent collection is mainly English-language.
It was the statue of James Wolfe, still at the station, that caused the third fire that ravaged the library. In 1966, an Argentinian student protesting the British occupation of the Falkland Islands burst into the library and threw two Molotov cocktails. The statue remained unharmed, but the LHSQ lost 500 books in the explosion.
Recently, the LHSQ has experienced a new boom. A few years ago, it began publishing a journal again, Society Pages. Grants allow it to hold new events, particularly around poetry. Reading clubs continue to meet there. The three sectors of activity of the LHSQ remain heritage, education and art, as long as there are English-speaking and French-speaking books and readers in Quebec to borrow them.