society for the study of architecture in canada - SEXTONdigital

SOCIETY FOR THE STUDY OF ARCHITECTURE IN CANADA / SOCIETE POUR L' ETUDE DE L 'ARCHITECTURE AU CANADA

Society for the Study of Architec:ture in Cenede
Sociiti pour l'itude de1'1rchitec:ture 1u C1n1d1
President I prisidente
Diana Thomas office(602) 261 ·8699
Historic Preservation Office lu (602) 534·4445
Tht City of Phoeni•
200WutWashingtonStreet
Phomi1, Arizona 85003
P11t President /encien prisident
Mark fr~Q! te1Jfa1 (416) 961 ·9956
159 Russel Hil Road, No. 101
Toronto, Ontario M4V2S9
Vice·President/ vice·prisidente
Dorolhy field office (403)431 ·2339
Alberta Ccmnunity Development fu (403) 433·3553
8820 112Street
Edmonton, Alberta T6G 2P8
Tre11urer I trisorier
Edgarlumak 1613) 565·9407
12 Comwal Street
Ouawa, Ontario KIN 7P8
SKretery lsecriteire
James DeJonge
Parks Canada
Dept.ofCanadianHeritaQe
Hul, tlJtbK K 1 A OMS
otfice l819l 953·5100
fu (819)95J.4909
Bulletin Editor/ridecteur du Bulletin
Gordonfulton
officel819)997·6966
62lewisStrret
fu l819)953·4909
Ouawa, Ontario K2P OS6
Previncill repr ... ntetivu/ Repri~~nhmt1 provincieux
Rob Mellin
office1709)579·0501
89BamuRoad
fal(709)579·5163
St. Jolwl's, Newfooodand A IC 3X5
Dan Norris
otfice l902)421·7787
Dept. of Planning and Development far (902) 421-2659
City of Haifa•
P.O. Bo1 1749
Halifu, NovaScotia 83J 3A5
Kenneth Mcinnis
office l902)566·9348
HolandCollege
fa•1902)566·9321
Royahy Centre, 40 Enman Crescent
Charlottetown. Prince Edward Island C1E 1E6
Bill DeGrace
office(5061452·9500
Planning and Development Dept. fu (506) 452 ·~613
City of fredericton
P.O. Bo1 130
fredericton. New Brooswick E38 4Y7
Marie·Josee Therrien bLJ"eaul819) 776·8390
421f2rue Carilon
Hul ltl.Je!IKJ J8X 2N7
SaUyCoults
Dept. of Planning and Developmtnt
City of Ottawa
111 Susm Drive
Ottawa, Ontario KIN5A1
AndrewJ. Gaudes
Cuhure, Herit~ge lfld Citiztnship
Province of Manitoba
Main floor, 213 Notre Dame Avtnue
Wllnipeg, Manitobl R38 OW5
BiH Hutclinson
2330SmithStreet
Regina, Saskatchewan S4P 2P6
Judylannour
RR#l
RinDey,Alberta TOC2JO
office l613) 244·5300
office (204) 945·7146
fu 1204) 948·2348
IJ0615nsssa
far(306)525·1550
teiJfu (403) 748-4862
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4048 We.st 17th Aveooe
VancOIIVet, British Cok.nrt.ia V6S 1 AS
Douglas Olynyk office 1403) 66].5295
Yukon Hl!fitage Branch fu (403) 66].2634
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Whitehorse, Yukon Y1A 2C6
Kayhan Nadj
le1Jfui403)87J.3455
41 Gold CilyCourt
Yelowknife, Northwest T trritories X 1 A 3P7
The Society for the Study of Architecture in Canada
is a learned society devoted to the examination of
the role of the built environment in Canadian society.
ltsmembershipincludesstructuralandlandscape
architects, architectural historians, urban historians
and planners, sociologists, folklorists, and specialists
in such fields as heritage conservation and landscape
history. Founded in 1974, the Society is currently
the sole national society whose focus of interest is
Canada's built envirorment in all of its manifestations.
La Societe pour I' etude de I' architecture au Canada
estunesocietesavantequiseconsacreill'eumen
du rOle que joue l'environnement bfiti dans Ia societe
canadienne. Parmi ses membres, on retrouve des
ingllnieursen structure, des architectes de paysage,
des historians en architecture et en urbanisme, puis
des urbanistes, des sociologues, des folkloristes et
des specialistes dans des domaines tels Ia
preservationdupatrimoineet l'histoire dupaysage.
Fondt!e en 1974, Ia Societe est presentement Ia
seule association nationale dont I' interet se
concentre sur l'environnement bBti du Canada sous
loutes ses formes.
Society for the Study of Architecture in Canada
Societe pour I' etude de I' architecture au Canada
BULLETIN
Volume/Tome 21, Number/Numero 1
In This Issue I Le numero de ce mois-ci
by Christopher Thomas (guest editor} ........ .. .............................................................. ................ 3
The British Contribution to the Architectural Identity of Old Quebec*
by Luc Noppen ............................. ....................................................... ................ ........................ 4
Indices of Identity: A Canadian Architectural Practice in the Second Half
of the Nineteenth Century*
by Angela Carr . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
The Mighty Empire of the Past: Lord Dufferin's 1875 Embellishment Proposals
for Quebec City*
by Georges Drolet ............................ .......................................................................................... 18
Durability and Parsimony: Railway Station Architecture in Ontario, 1853-1914*
by Anne M. de Fort-Menares .................................................................................................... 25
*Conference Proceedings
Membership fees are payable at the following rates:
Student, $15.00; Individual/Family, $30.00;
Organization/Corporation/Institution, $50.00;
Patron, $20.00 (plus a donation of not less than
$100.00). There is a surcharge of $5.00 for all
foreign memberships. Contributions over and above
membership fees are welcome, and are tax·
deductible. Please make your cheque or money order
payable to the SSAC and send to Box 2302, Station
D, Ottawa, Ontario K1P 5W5.
ISSN No. 0228·0744
l'abonnement annuel est payable aux prix suivantes:
etudiant, 15,00 $; individuel/famille, 30,00 $;
organisation/societe/institut, 50,00 $; bienfaiteur,
20,00 $ (plus un don d'au moins 100,00 $}. II y a
des frais additionnels de 5,00 $ pour les
abonnements etrangers. les contributions au·dessus
de I' abonnement annuel sont acceptees et
deductibles d'impot. Veuillez s.v.p. faire le cheque ou
mandat poste payable a l'ordre de SEAC et l'envoyer
a Ia Case postale 2302, succursale D, Ottawa
(Ontario) K1P 5W5.
Produced with the assistance of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council
COVER: Proposed Chateau Saint-louis, Ou~bec City; W.H. lynn, architect (Building News. 28 October 1878 [detail//. See page 21.
2
SSAC BULLETIN SEAC 21 :1

In This Issue I Le numero de ce mois-ci
As a specialist group of the British
Association for Canadian Studies,
the Canada/UK Architecture Group
endeavours to promote the
exchange of architecture-related
information that is of interest on
both sides of the Atlantic. We
would like to make the flow a
two-directional one, and hope that
our relationship with the SSAC is
just the beginning of a mutually
beneficial future.
Martin Birkhans MRAIC
Chair, CUKAG
Dept. of Architecture
University of Edinburgh
THE BRITISH EMPIRE
1897
Brltl11t PoueuloM 1lrow11 111 Bolld Black
an~ llttd•rlin•d in Black
-·
At last summer's SSAC conference in Victoria
I chaired a session which explored some of
the British connections to architecture in Canada. I
titled the session "Canada and the British Umbilicum."
I owe the reference to mid-body anatomy to
Rudyard Kipling, who once wryly remarked that
[English] Canadians of his day harboured "a certain
crude faith in the Empire, of which they naturally
conceive themselves to be the belly-button." 1
Accordingly, this session was designed to address
a number of questions: Was Kipling right? If so, to
what extent? How, where, and when do we see it
in architecture? Have there been an ebb and flow?
Has British cultural imperialism ever really died?
How does it overlap, intersect or contradict pro­
American sentiment and influence?
Over the past quarter-century or so,
Canada and Quebec have been so busy constructing
independent identities for themselves-!
exclude Brian Mulroney's government in the 1980s
(and perhaps the present one)-that none of us has
much wanted to have our roots in Old Blighty, or,
for that matter, in America, pointed out to us, so
darkly do we fear they are already sunk too deep.
Still, as historian Carl Berger argues, until
the Second World War and perhaps later (decades
later in some quarters, as the "VE-Day-Plus-Fifty"
celebrations last year suggest), Britishness was so
hitched to Canadianness in the minds of at least
English Canadians that few considered being
Canadian and being staunchly British imperialist
a contradiction at all. 2 That is the point of several
of the papers that follow. A striking sub-theme in
them is the frequency with which Scotland is noted
as a source, suggesting the degree to which in
Canadian culture a second Auld Alliance (echoing
that of Scotland and France) has been forged.
The thought-provoking papers delivered
in the "British Umbilicum" session by Luc Noppen,
Angela Carr, Georges Drolet, and Anne de Fort­
Menares are here presented; David Monteyne's
paper from the same session appeared in the last
issue of the Bulletin (20:4).
Christopher A. Thomas
University of Victoria
CORRECTION: The end of the last sentence on page 101 of the
December 1995 Bulletin (20:4) was electronically deleted. It
should read " ... and kindred subjects?" 22
1 Quoted in Robert C. Brown and Ramsay Cook, Canada 1896·
1921: A Nation Tronsformed [Toronto: McClelland & Stewart,
1974), 27.
2 See Carl Berger, ed., Imperialism and Nationalism, 1884-1914:
A Conflict in Canadian Thought (Toronto: Copp Clark. 1969).
21 :1
SSAC BULLETIN SEAC
3

The British
Contribution to the
Architectural Identity
of Old Quebec
Quebec today is championed as a monument to the French
presence in North America. In fact, it is for this role, and for its
identity as a fortified town, that the historic district of Old Quebec was
nominated to UNESCO's distinguished list of world heritage sites.
But while Quebec thrives today as an indisputably French city,
it was not always so.
Figure 1. The Anglican cathedral,
Quebec City, about 1930. (Archives
nationales du Quebec, GH·573·54)
4
SSAC BULLETIN SEAC 21 :1

T'fhe long process by which Quebec's French identity and image
1 ~ere shaped (beginning with Confederation, which officially
established Canada's cultural duality) has been explained on numerous
occasions. 1 Briefly, the process of creating a French identity
for the capital of the province of Quebec 2 began with the late-19th
century penchant for creating history. This popular movement
saw the introduction of buildings and monuments inspired by
French architecture of the 16th and 17th centuries, giving Quebec
the desired image of historical continuity. Later, the liberal ideology
of men such as Lomer Gouin and Louis-Alexandre Taschereau,
who were striving to create a secular state, resulted in the French
model being imposed upon institutions, obliging them to be built
in the architectural style taught at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in
Paris. 3 Subsequently, beginning in the 1930s, Taschereau's Liberals
sought to give the province a capital city worthy of the name,
whose supremacy, without breaking with continuity, would inevitably
come to be taken for granted. With the creation of a new
administrative district 4 the city began to regain its French character,
notably in its toponymy.
And then Place Royale was "rediscovered." From the end
of the 1950s, national modernism was confirmed in the preservation
and development of the surviving relics of the glorious era of
New France. 5 It was in this context that the idea of recreating
Place Royale was born, 6 henceforth billed as "the cradle of Francophone
civilization in North America." This concept was followed
by a stream of restorations to recreate the image of an idyllic (but
ever-so-problematic) New France. 7
This construction, carried out for the purpose of creating
an identity, originated from a respect for the original concept, an
actual space-time whose age inspired awe in admirers of antiquity
and increased its symbolic value in the eyes of its "curators." 8 For
the urban tissue of Quebec does, in fact, bear the indelible imprint of
the French occupation, and traditional uses have guaranteed that,
even long after the Conquest, the silhouettes and unassuming austerity
of the architecture continue to be familiar reminders of the
early 18th century. 9
It remains, nonetheless, that 90 percent of the buildings
in Quebec's historic district date from the 19th and 20th centuries,
and not from the French Regime. 10 Only a few traces and fragments
survive from that earlier period, alongside buildings largely rebuilt
or restored since the end of the 19th century. An overall,
objective assessment reveals an important paradox: the oldest
buildings in Old Quebec, the symbol of the French presence in
North America, date from the British Regime. So, in fact, the
French image of the city originates from a sort of global intuition
residing beyond the actual age of the architecture; it is only with
the passage of time and a posteriori that this image has acquired
the credibility that allows it to substitute for what actually existsand
to corrupt, even dictate the interpretation of it. 11
The following example illustrates this nicely. It is generally
thoughe 2 that the Anglican Cathedral of the Holy Trinity of
Quebec, built between 1800 and 1803 on Place d'Armes (figure 1),
is of much more recent construction that Notre-Dame cathedral,
begun in 1647, or Notre-Dame-des-Victoires church, said to date
from 1688, or even the Hotel-Dieu church, which was completed
a few months before Holy Trinity. Based on these early construction
dates, the three French Catholic churches were listed as historic
monuments in 1966, 1929, and 1961 respectively. Notre-Dame
cathedral was, in fact, completely destroyed by fire in 1922;
Notre-Dame-des-Victoires was entirely rebuilt in 1760 and
again in 1818, and its interior was completely redone in 1854;
and the Hotel-Dieu church was entirely remodelled in 1830.
21 :1
SSAC BULLETIN SEAC 5

Figure 2. The interior of the Anglican cathedral as
restored in 1993. (Paul Laliberte, SRP · Universite Laval)
Considering the fires and the reconstructions, alterations, and restorations of these
Catholic churches, there is no doubt that the Cathedral of the Holy Trinity is the oldest
church remaining in Old Quebec. 13
It was only recently, after the restoration of the three Catholic churches, that
the true value of the Cathedral of the Holy Trinity as an ancient building emerged.
After work was completed on the other churches, the cathedral looked old-fashioned
and decrepit-just what was needed to attract the attention of those interested in the
past. and in things from the past. Historical research proved that the fabric of this venerable-looking
building was in fact authentic, 14 and old, according to the recognized
comparative frames of reference. The next step was listing the building, which was
done in 1989. Its full worth has now been brought to light with the recent completion
of a very extensive restoration project (figure 2).
The Cathedral of the Holy Trinity, which was not part of the movement to
resuscitate and then restore the French Regime, reveals a layer of the architectural history
of Quebec that numerous restoration projects have almost erased. The connotation of
its common name, "Anglican Cathedral." may explain why it was never included in
crusades to authenticate the architecture of Old Quebec: the British period in Old
Quebec was forgotten in the "Frenchifying" process, and the cathedral's "rehabilitation"
was neglected. But this did not keep it from influencing the character of a built environment
of another order. If narrow partisanship is put aside when looking at datings
or individual buildings, the omnipresent "English" heritage, which had undeniably
survived the Conquest but which the authorities preferred to forget, can, alone, explain
the uniqueness of Quebec City today.
The British contribution to the architectural identity of Old Quebec consists
of the changes they brought to housing, to the use of urban space, and to the image
projected by the city. These changes left an indelible mark on the built environment;
they also shaped the cultural behaviour of the francophones of North America. The
history of the British contribution began about 1800 when the British government,
desiring to make a good impression, went to great lengths to create a fitting image for
its new colonial capital. At Place d'Armes, for example, the British authorities created
for the first time a nucleus of public buildings for Old Quebec. A courthouse, the
Cathedral of the Holy Trinity, the Union Hotel. the Chateau Haldimand, and the
Chateau Saint-Louis (an existing building, renovated and enlarged by the addition of a
storey) were all rendered in the classical English style of architecture.
The intentions of the British authorities were clear. For their new buildings
they chose a refined architecture inspired by the 16th-century Italian architect Andrea
Palladia in place of the original architecture of Place d'Armes, which had been
seriously damaged in the bombings during the Conquest-and which, although derived
from French classicism, was seen to have suffered when left to the devices of mere
artisans. The British desire to create a more civilized environment is evident from the
transformations they undertook. It was also clearly stated in a speech made in 1805,
when the first stone of the Union Hotel was laid:
Experience shows that in all countries, progress in architecture generally goes hand in hand with
the blossoming of civilization and progress in science. In every country whose inhabitants must
settle for public buildings and housing that are crude and devoid of decoration, we can only expect
to find an uncouth and unrefined society. By making improvements to the buildings, we can follow
quite accurately the progressive stages achieved by the community as it evolves ....
The speaker continued:
In this far-off colony of the British Empire, we cannot claim to compete with the mother country
[Great Britain], in any of the arts or in the refinements of life. However, in her attentive care and
under her protection, we can gain from her teachings and her example.
Then, on the subject of the new construction bordering Place d'Armes:
It is not without a certain pride and satisfaction that we observe the level of public-spiritedness
inspired by a number of buildings constructed recently in the Province, as well as by various
public works that have been undertaken. This is very promising for the prosperity of the country
and gives hope for rapid progress in the development of the colony. 15
6
SSAC BULLETIN SEAC 21 :1

Figure 3 (left). Place d' Armes, Quebec City, in 1832, as
drawn by R.A. Sproule. (Musee du Quebec}
The complete transformation of Quebec's built environment was coupled
with the transformation of its society. The "official" portrait of the capital in the era of
New France was a conventional bird's-eye-view representing the Upper Town and the
Lower Town from an imaginary perspective, depicting what was deemed appropriate,
rather than what was actually seen. The standard depictions of the capital of the British
colony, on the other hand, adhered to a rather Anglo-Saxon frame of reference, showing
the city from within, the new institutional quarters occupying a prominent place
in the establishment (figure 3) .
The British period was also one of considerable and ambitious undertakings,
notably the construction of fortification walls around the city and a citadel by the military
engineers (figure 4) . The French had drawn plans for both, but never got around
to building them. It was these very fortifications, into which all the energy and resources
in the capital were channelled between 1815 and 1830, that enabled Quebec, the only
fortified city in North America, to be designated a World Heritage site.
As the speaker at the Union Hotel alluded, the British brought to the colony
a new manner of living, the single-family dwelling, which they had adopted more
than a century earlier. In Quebec, the British came up against an older Mediterranean
concept inherited by the French in the 16th and 17th centuries, that of collective
housing divided into units such as an "apartment" or, for those less well-off, a "common
room." The British were thoroughly astonished to find this kind of housing in
Quebec. They considered it outdated and conducive to intolerable promiscuousness,
and set about filling all the available space within the fortified town with their new
kind of housing.
British social customs also had an impact on existing housing. Whereas
Parisians, mainly apartment dwellers, rented the horse-drawn carriages they used, the
British owned their own domestic carriages. They set about adapting the existing
buildings in Quebec to accommodate them. But the elegant stables and coach-houses
that accompanied single-family houses in the British system required access to the
rear of the properties, and this access was not possible on the lots divided under the
French Regime. The solution was to open carriageways through the existing fa

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1790-1800
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Figure 5 (above). Typical types of houses built in Quebec
between 1790 and 1840. (Andre Cloutier)
Figure 6 (right). Avenue Saint·Denis as seen from the top
of the citadel, c. 1940. (lnventaire des muvres d'art)
These streets give Old Quebec its unity, creating a homogeneity in what is referred to
as the "classical city." The houses were modelled after the architecture of London's
residential suburbs, with Westminster, Mayfair, and Victoria around the commercial
City, as well as Edinburgh's New Town, serving as models for the housing that transformed
the capital of Lower Canada.
The new districts in the capital were developed exclusively for housing, with
commercial functions such as the port, markets, and factories relegated to other areas
of the city, where the density of these non-residential functions was greater than ever
before. At the same time, the British established an economic system based on the exchange
of goods produced in accordance with predictable levels of consumption.
From that time on, markets were intended only for local merchandise, fresh produce,
and bulk products, while a new kind of building, the store, was used for the sale of
manufactured and imported items. Quebec's new commercial district saw the introduction
of shop signs about 1800, and bowed display windows in the English style
about 1820. The commercial storefront became the characteristic feature of the new
type of architecture, with a commercial establishment on the ground floor and accommodations
for the shopkeeper's family upstairs.
From the Lower Town market to the St. John suburb, by way of the Upper
Town market, the streets of the capital of Lower Canada were lined with elegant storefronts,
forming the first, and still only, commercial axis in Old Quebec. Many storefronts
on rue Buade, cote de Ia Fabrique, and rue Saint-Jean survive as eloquent reminders
of this change in consumer habits. And today, more than ever, this architecture of the
first half of the 19th century sustains the economic activity of the historic district of
Old Quebec.
The introduction of single-family housing within Quebec and the separation
of districts according to their functions triggered the urban sprawl previously held in
check by the collective housing and the mixed functions of the city under the French
Regime. The British concept of the city led to the creation of suburbs of sparse urban
activity and to the development of land farther out for villas. The territory occupied
in 1830 by the city, the suburbs, and the outlying vacation areas today corresponds
approximately to that of the Quebec Urban Community. Knowing the Mediterranean
concept of the city prevalent in France up to the 19th century, had it not been for this
expansive growth it is likely that Quebec City would have been rebuilt over and over
within its walls, each period wiping out the previous one like a palimpsest. 16
The British contribution to the architectural identity of Old Quebec, then, is
apparent first and foremost in the restructuring of the environment. From 1800, the
city was divided into districts according to specific functions, the inhabitants living.in
residential districts alongside but separate from the non-residential. The typically
Anglo-Saxon urban expansion which resulted is responsible for the survival of the old
historical centre of Quebec. And while the density on some residential streets has
increased with the introduction of apartments among the mainly single-family residences,
the residents of Old Quebec have clung to the habit of not living on
commercial streets.
8
SSAC BULLETIN SEAC 21 :1

Nothing resembles Old Quebec more than the Beacon Hill district of Boston,
an 18th-century housing ensemble which, having developed earlier on the North
American scene, holds a position of historic precedence over Quebec. But a comparison
of the two districts reveals certain differences, primarily because many of the
British planners of Quebec were Scots, which was not the case in New England. The
political clout of the Scots in Quebec was such that, in 1809, they managed to build
St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church, much to the displeasure of the Anglican bishop,
Jacob Mountain. 17
The forthright architectural tradition of the French met with the approval of
the merchants and builders from northern Great Britain. Construction in Quebec in
the 19th century continued to be in stone, though in a range of colours similar to
those found earlier in Edinburgh. 18 The creamy white of the French whitewash was
replaced by the bluish white of the old Scottish capital, as illustrated in Cockburn's
numerous watercolours of 1829-30. The darker sandstone from the quarries in Sillery
and Cap-Rouge later gave the fortifications and the fa«;ades lining the streets of Quebec
the colours of Edinburgh's New Town (figure 7). Towards the end of the 19th century,
certain public buildings were painted brown to resemble the brownstone of the new
districts in Edinburgh and Glasgow. British emigration by this time, however, was already
widespread, leaving many more reminders of this trend throughout western cities.
In Quebec the Scottish reference was no less explicit: the city administrators
clearly indicated their intention to establish in Quebec a New Edinburgh when designing
the city on the plateau outside the walls. With Confederation and the creation of a
territory for the "distinct" French-Canadian population, the project was renamed: New
Edinburgh, beside the Parliament Buildings of the new province, became the "Champs­
Elysees" of Quebec. 19 History was already beginning to change the way in which
Quebec's past would unfold.
While the passage of time and the emergence of a critical history have nuanced
the way we see the chronicle of Quebec, it remains that the francophones of
North America are no longer French (as everyone will agree), and are yet today in search
of an identity. As far as the built environment of Old Quebec is concerned, the scope
and the influence of the British contribution are re-emerging as the understanding of
its specific character develops.
Nevertheless, the matter of the validation of a building such as the Cathedral
of the Holy Trinity is far from being seen as the beginning of an enriched history of Old
Quebec; it is now simply an event to be studied on its own. 20 In the present political
context, the last thing to deliberate is the inherent British character of the old capital.
In the 1960s, the new nationalistic and traditionalistic elite were busy rebuilding
Place Royale for the purpose of confirming the establishment of the French settlement
in the city-a modern-day revenge against the clerico-nationalistic ideology which
placed the mythical site on the ile-d'Orleans. 21 Today, they are busy completing the
"Frenchification" of Quebec. And if a critical approach to restoration no longer permits
the physical construction of a national mythology, 22 history and toponymy seem to
have taken up the torch. The Musee du Seminaire has made way for the Musee de
!'Amerique fran«;aise, and a new Musee de Ia Nouvelle-France would come into being
just as soon as a sovereign Quebec could come up with the necessary millions. As for the
streets and squares, they too have been bent to the cause. Many names with British
historical connotations have recently been replaced by names considered more consistent
with the French image. 23
Figure 7. The house constructed for Benjamin Tremain,
merchant. at 89 rue d'Auteuil, Quebec City, in 1818.
(Paul Laliberte, SRP · Universite Laval)
OLD QuEBEC, TillS BASTION OF TOT AUT ARIAN "FRENCHNESS," is not only left without
choices regarding any new architecture that would respect this onerous history, it is
also paralyzed under the weight of a dubious heritage. 24 And while there is little new
construction going on in Old Quebec, the preference of certain authorities towards a onesided
history would appear to threaten the subtleties of an environment that is
characterized, as has been shown, by layers of different historical periods and heritages,
both French and English. What a pity if our age bequeaths to these memories rekindled
daily by the architecture around us nothing more that a watered-down past, brought
to light in vain.
21 :1 SSAC BULLETIN SEAC
9

Endnotes
For example, in Lucie K. Morisset and Luc Noppen,
"A Ia recherche d'identites: usages et propos du recyclage
du passe dans !'architecture au Quebec," in Luc
Noppen, ed., Architecture, fonne urboine et identite
collective (Sainte-Fay and Sillery, Que.: CELAT
IUniversite Laval]/Septentrion, 1995), 103-34.
2 Luc Noppen, "L'image franyaise du Vieux-Quebec,"
Cap-aux-Diamants 2, na. 2 (1986): 13-17.
3 Luc Noppen, "L'architecture d'Etat: l'epoque de
Louis-Alexandre Taschereau," Cap-aux-Diamants
3, no. 4 (1988): 23-26.
4 See Luc Noppen and Lucie K. Morisset, Quebec Ia
capitale (Ville de Quebec, 1996) (forthcoming); Luc
Noppen, Analyse contextuelle, principes et orientations.
Rapport d'etape du projet de reamenagement
des axes Rene-Levesque et Dufferin Montmorency,
report prepared for Gauthier Guile Daoust, architectes,
and le Groupe Lestage, presented to the City
of Quebec, june 1993.
5 Since the end of the Second World War, an impressive
body of writing (even if only counting information
concerning the preservation of a "heritage"
being brought to light,) has been drawing a clearer
picture of "history" as written under the Duplessis
administration: Trudel, Morisset, Barbeau, and
Hebert, to name only four, collaborated closely on
imparting of this version of New France. Noppen
and Morisset. "A Ia recherche d'identites."
6 On the subject of Place-Royale, see Luc Noppen, La
restauration a Ia Place-Royale de Quebec. Une
etude sur les concepts et sur Ia nature des interventions.
Le choix d'un concept actualise: une proposition,
Universite Laval, May 1978.
7 Luc Noppen, "Place-Royale, chantier de construction
d'une identite nationale," Villes reconstruites: du
dessin au destin (Paris: l'Harmattan, 1994), 2:301-
06.
8 Franyoise Choay claimed recently that the primary
and determining factor in determining the authenticity
of a monument was, and remains, age. See
Franyoise Choay, "The Belonging to the Past," in
L'allegorie du patrimoine (Paris: Seuil, 1992).
9 This is what Gerard Morisset, a keen francophile
and a participant in construction for the purpose of
creating an identity, alludes to: "So it is not at all
surprising that within about ten years after the Conquest,
Quebec once again had the pleasant look of
a small French provincial town." Gerard Morisset,
Quebec et son evolution. Cahiers d'histoire n" 4
(Quebec: Societe Historique, 1952).
10 This according to the Concept general de
reamenagement du Vieux-Quebec (Quebec, August
1970), 60.
11 On this subject, Marcel Trudel's speech in which
he passionately appeals for the creation of an "outdoor
museum" to protect the French heritage of
Old Quebec comes to mind. He insists on the necessity
of getting rid of commercial storefronts and going
back to a French-Canadian concept of advertising
and window displays. He claims, in desperation,
that "there is still enough of the old architecture left
to create an outdoor museum: the little that remains
from the 17th and 18th centuries will be shown to
better advantage and we can save, within the walls,
the beautiful and still abundant architecture of the
first half of the 19th century. This is precisely the
architecture that gives Quebec its old-world character.'"
Marcel Trudel. ConseiVons notre heritage
franr;ais. Cahiers d'histoire n" 3 (Quebec: Societe
Historique, 1951), 15.
12 If "age" is understood today by the scientific community
in terms of symbolic value, it is certainly
one of the criteria sine qua non for monuments, in
public opinion. This example of an excessive longing
for what is old is anything but rare. At the very
awakening of a historic conscience in French Canada,
Arthur Buies was inspired to claim, ironically,
"I cannot resist the temptation to mention in passing
that one of the greatest weaknesses of ours, the
Quebecois, is our love of what is old because it is
old. We like nothing more than a burnt-down
house, and the longer is has been burnt-down the
better." Arthur Buies, L'ancien et le futur Quebec
(Quebec: Darveau, 1876).
13 Luc Noppen and Lucie K. Morisset, Foi et patrie:
art et architectures des eglises a Quebec (Quebec:
Publications du Quebec, 1996). See also Luc Noppen
and Lucie K. Morisset, La presence Anglicane a
Quebec: Holy Trinity Cathedral (1796-1996)
(Sillery, Que.: Septentrion, 1995).
14 This double concept of "apparent age" and "real
age" comes from Alols Riegl. to whom critical
thinking on architectural conservation is deeply indebted
today. Alols Riegl, Le culte moderne des
Monuments. Son essence et sa genese (Paris, 11903];
Paris: Seuil, 1984).
15 Quoted in Pierre-Georges Roy, "L'Hotel Union ou
Saint-Georges a Quebec," Bulletin des recherches
historiques 43, no. 1 (1937) : 3-17.
16 The deciphering of these buried vestiges is the particular
sphere of interest of archaeologists andrestorers
trained to interpret towns that were built in
layers.
17 Noppen and Morisset, Foi et patrie.
18 While buildings in England were increasingly of
brick rendered with untreated plaster, the British
in Quebec continued to build in stone.
19 Danielle Blanchet, Decouvrir Ia Grande Allee
(Quebec: Musee du Quebec, 1984), 47.
20 In this case, the exception most likely confirms the
rule. It is apparent that a unilateral process of sanctioning
for the purpose of creating an identity that,
until now, seems to have shaped the body of historical
monuments in the province is more propaganda
than archival objectivity. Indeed, as Alols
Riegl points out, no object is a memorial in itself. It
is significant, however, that the systematic francophile
validation which becomes apparent here, "for
the purpose of survival," as the historian Dumas
wrote in 1951, today connects the fates of the buildings
in Quebec with the "commemorative monuments"
defined recently by Franyoise Choay: "The
specificity of the monument comes precisely from
the way it acts on the memory. It works on it and
transforms it by influencing the emotions in such a
way that the past is called up and adapted to fit the
present. But this past which is summoned up, assembled,
conjured up, if you will, is not just any past:
it is specific, and selected for vital purposes, insofar
as it can directly help to maintain and preserve
the identity of a community, be it ethnic or religious,
national, tribal or family." Choay, 15.
21 Luc Noppen, "L'ile d'Orleans, mythe ou monument?,"
Cap-aux-Diamants 5, no. 1 (1989): 23-26.
22 Franyoise Choay, among others, has recently
aimed a sharp, denigrating criticism in this direction:
'1n Canada, the centre of Old Quebec, which
is on the world heritage list, stems from a huge project
begun in 1960 for nationalistic purposes and to
promote tourism. It led to the demolition of a
group of early buildings and their replacement by
others, chosen on no scientific basis, in the style of
French 18th-century architecture." Choay, 166.
23 The mishaps with respect to the reminders of the
Victorian period in Quebec speak volumes on the
transformations on the "memory of place" imposed
by the admiration for all things French. An example
of this is a statue of Queen Victoria by British
sculptor Marshall Wood, intended for display in
front of the Parliament Buildings. Never placed on
the intended spot, it was relegated to the Lower
Town in 1889, when the city acquired it for a park
named in honour of the Queen. It is this statue that
was blown up by the Front de Liberation du Quebec
in 1970; its remains are now on display in the exhibit
Memoires in the Musee de Ia Civilisation, in
Quebec City. Ever since rue Victoria became rue
Pere-Marquette in 1937, pare Victoria remains one
of the few reminders of the Queen in Quebec.
24 This situation, an extreme case of the "obvious excesses
in the practices of historical heritage" described
by Choay, leads inevitably to "the decline
in the competency to build." This is illustrated by
both the number of architectural projects frozen
because of the pervasive patrimonial orthodoxy
and the few new buildings in the historic district of
Old Quebec, the latter being exact copies of age-old
buildings. Noppen and Morisset, "A Ia recherche
d'identites."
The author wishes to thank Sylvia Bergeron for the
translation of this text.
Luc Noppen, RSC, is a professor in the school of
architecture at Universite Laval and a researcher at the
CELAT (Centre d'etudes interdisciplinaires sur les
lettres, les arts et les traditions des francophones en
Amerique du Nord), Universite Lava'-
10
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21 :1

INDICES
OF
IDENTITY:
A Canadian
Architectural
Practice in
the Second
Half of the
Nineteenth
Century)
"Canada is a colony,
not a country; it is not yet
identified with the dearest
affections and associations,
remembrances and hopes of
its inhabitants; it is to them
an adopted not a real mother.
Their love, their pride, are not
for poor Canada, but for high
and happy England; but a few
more generations must
change all this. " 2
by Angela Carr
11
SSAC BULLETIN SEAC 21:1

',
il()l._'ft: tr'fllt.. ~';'.:.:~-=- . ). \ ;;~~· .:' .:~y
3.:wr .)• .:..'.,). ·:~.v.'· · ·.
Figure 1 (above). Robert Simpson house, Toronto;
Langley & Burke, architects, 1883 (demolished).
Perspective and plans, no date. (Heliotype Publishing,
Boston. Photograph by University of Toronto, Robarts
Library !Amlficsn Architsct & Building Nsws 19 (20
February 1886): no. 530))
Figure 3 (previous page). Imperial Chambers, Toronto;
Langley, Langley & Burke, architects, 1874·75
(demolished). Perspective signed "F. Burke," December
1875. (Archives of Ontario, J.C.B. and E. Horwood
Collection, C11-42·0·0·1(49J1)
So wrote Anna Jameson in 1837. More than half a century later, little had changedanother
commentator ventured that it was "not unreasonable to believe that the
period will be reached when her sons [sic] will think of Canada as Canada and not as
a mere dependency.'' 3 Only in the past thirty years have academics been in a position
to articulate the country's political and cultural emancipation as a nation. In the meantime,
the issue of Eurocentrism in Canadian academic curricula has focused critical
concerns about how one forges cultural identity. As a result, it is all the more incumbent
upon scholars to examine precisely how past belief systems have informed and
are still implicated in the myths of our national consciousness. 4
Carl Berger's pioneering study The Sense of Power, published in 1970, chronicled
the rise of the British imperial vision after 1880 under Disraeli's Conservatives
and the ensuing view of Canada as the "keystone" of empire. 5 A.B. McKillop has since
credited Berger's work with shifting our understanding of imperialism in Canada from
a destructive retrenchment to a defensive intellectual stance protective of the country's
nationhood. 6 Here, historian and historiographer, no less than historical subject, share
in the re(-)presentation of the past. 7 More recently, R.G. Moyles and Doug Owram have
documented nine British stereotypes of Canada, all of which were entirely at odds with
contemporary Canadian interpretations of self and nation. 8 Historical narrative appears,
therefore, as an arena in which past and present interact as ideologically invested
constructs within and beyond their respective historical moments. 9
Berger, in his exploration of imperialism as a post-Confederation defensive
strategy around which the Canadian Dominion was built, quoted a 1904 Empire Club
of Canada address by nationalist poet Wilfred Campbell to the effect that the country's
only choice lay between "two different imperialisms, that of Britain and that of the
Imperial Commonwealth to the south." To stay within the British sphere was a matter
of self-defence, because "to enter that of the American means sheer annihilation of all
our personality as a people." 14 According to Berger, American republicanism and continentalism
were seen as serious threats to British North America well into the early
decades of the 20th century.
McKillop has argued that, because of the country's colonial origins, Canadian
intellectual historians must ask how ideas, whatever their source, have been handled
in the Canadian context, not which ideas are "indigenous" or "derivative." 10 By analogy,
our understanding of architectural theory and built form in the historical period is not
so much a study of "innovation" as an exploration of "appropriation" and "acculturation."
How colonial cultures interpret borrowed ideas is fundamental to our understanding
how the society defined itself.
Toronto architect Edmund Burke's career illustrates some of the doctrines of
imperialism as they relate to the practice of architecture in Canada in the 19th century.
Burke offered some insights into what he understood of his own cultural identity in
an 1892 speech to the city's Architectural Sketch Club on the subject of residential
construction techniques. 11 His personality tended toward conciliation and gentility,
yet his discussion mischievously deprecated the "tendency to 'knock things together'
superinduced by the craze for cheapness and inordinate haste, after the example set
by our restless cousins to the South who use the almighty nail and trust it implicitly." 12
The statement bears an uncanny resemblance to contemporary Canadian imperialist
rhetoric, which labelled the American system unstable and chaotic-the "power of
mobocracy." 13 If it were not for the fact that Burke was soon to emerge as one of the
foremost proponents of American commercial architecture in Canada, one might take
his comments at face value. But the context suggests that the spirit of 1812 may have
prejudiced the merits of the balloon frame.
It is worth noting that Burke also dismissed the British mortice-and-tenon
system in his discussion of construction techniques because it was too labour-intensive
for the high wages of the Canadian market. 15 Instead, he advocated wrought iron
straps and bolts to hold the framing together (a refinement lost on today's residential
builders). The restricted labour pool determined the choice of construction techniques,
said Burke, just as a lack of household help precluded "careless and diffuse"
room arrangements common in Britain. Extremes of climate demanded a compact
building footprint for effective heating, and snow necessitated steep roofs (figure 1). 16
Burke positioned the Canadian house plan as a kind of "golden mean" between
Britain and the United States, using regional labour variances and climate to construct
his ideal. 17
12
SSAC BULLETIN SEAC 21 :1

-Piansby Canatfii! Ardlll:l,,_a, ... T ... flr . .. -
. S81aJ)OO.
Even Burke's seemingly practical references to climate take on a broader significance
in the context of contemporary rhetorical linkages with national character.
Imperial advocate George Parkin wrote that the country belonged to "the sturdy races
of the North ... fighting their way under conditions ... more severe than those to which
they have been accustomed in their old homes." 18 Roland Barthes has suggested that
myths, because of their tendency to "act economically," lend the appearance of innocent
naturalness to something entirely constructed. 19 Indeed, Canadians until quite
recently have accepted that a harsh climate linked quite naturally to a series of archetypes
emphasizing rusticity and toughness as intrinsic to the national character.
Lawren Harris' proclamation of a new race of "true" Canadians imbued with the [ample,
replenishing] North is a widely accepted identity-myth, notwithstanding reservations
by some contemporary scholars that it was little more than "mystic racism." 20
Burke was a generation older than Lawren Harris, but he shared the same
social circle. A devout Baptist, Burke was retained by Lawren's uncle Elmore Harris in
1889 and again in 1892 to design successive buildings for the Walmer Road Baptist
Church in Toronto. Six years later, a commission for Elmore's Toronto Bible Training
School also came Burke's way, and in 1902 his firm built a house for Lawren Harris'
mother, Mrs. T.M. Harris, at 123 St. George Street in Toronto. Burke's views, while
quite distinct from Lawren's Theosophic mysticism and Elmore's pre-millennialism,
embodied the popular rhetoric of the day. He envisioned a country dedicated to imperial
unity, but free from sectarian or class distinctions-a result to be achieved through
determined opposition to dual languages and separate schools. Burke's condemnation
of American residential construction techniques 21 may have been rooted in his rejection
of slipshod methods. But the speech of 1892, like his politics, seems tinged with
an imperial jingoism which proposes a myth of self-sufficiency and resistance for a
Canadian profession under seige.
In many ways Burke is representative of an entire generation of Canadian architects.
He is distinguished both for his role in founding the Ontario Association of
Architects in 1889, which placed the practice of architecture on a professional footing,
and for the unprecedented step of introducing Chicago-style curtain-wall
construction into Canada, in 1894-95. 22 His training with his uncle Henry Langley,
begun in 1865, scarcely prepared him for the challenges of his later career. He once
confided that little thought had been given to education in his day-students read
Daly and Rickman, and "[looked] out the window while the boss was out." 23 In fact,
his boss Henry Langley was one of the most highly respected practitioners of his day,
known for his more than seventy churches, mostly in the Gothic revival style. 24
Langley's knowledge of British precedents and training methods derived
from a seven-year apprenticeship with Scottish emigre William Hay. Hay came to
Canada in 1847 as clerk of works on Gilbert Scott's St. John the Baptist Anglican
Cathedral in St. John's, Newfoundland, then settled for a time in Toronto. Hay was
well-informed about contemporary British architectural theory, and upon his return
to Scotland in 1862 he left a stock of British-based precedents as a foundation for
Langley's productive and successful career. 25
Figure 2 (left). Government House, Toronto; Gundry &
Langley, architects, 1866-70 (demolishedl. Exterior view,
no date. (Josiah Bruce, Archives of Ontario, Ace.
13222-281
Figure 4 (rightl. Broadside of the "New Parliament
Buildings" showing the Darling & Pearson scheme
(abovel and Richard Waite design (belowl, 1892.
(Metropolitan Toronto Reference Library, Baldwin Room,
Broadside Collection, 18921
21 :1 SSAC BULLETIN SEAC
13

Figure 5. Sherbourne Street Methodist Church (now St.
Luke's United Church), Toronto; Langley & Burke,
architects, 1886·87. Exterior and interior views, no date.
(United Church of Canada, Victoria University Archives,
Toronto)
While Hay experimented in the 1850s with the British version of the Second
Empire mansard, Langley turned to this form (in its American interpretation) only in
the late 1860s. Langley described his 1866-70 scheme for Government House in Toronto
(figure 2) as being in the "modern French style of architecture" adopted "largely in
American cities" and "rapidly getting into favour in England." 26 This apologia reveals
Langley's perception of fashion hierarchies, and the justifications needed to gain public
acceptance. Two years later he designed the federal government's Eighth Post Office in
Toronto, based on a preliminary proposal by American government architect Alfred
B. Mullett and solicited, according to architectural historian Janet Wright, as part of a
concerted effort to update the government's public image. 27 The trend was continued in
the Langley firm's designs for an adjoining office building known as "Imperial Chambers"
and for the Bank of British North America one block away (figure 3, page 11). 28
Apparently, American models were promoted by Canadian governments
immediately after Confederation but before the appearance of the influential periodical
American Architect & Building News in 1876, the year of the American centennial.
Campbell's speech four decades later about the choice of imperialisms took aim at a
cultural shift that began as soon as the new Dominion was created. As Kelly Crossman
has chronicled, the Ontario government offered a final bow to British tradition when
it requested entrants in its notorious 1880 competition for the legislative buildings in
Queen's Park to submit only Gothic designs. But the architectural character of the
winning entries was judged inferior because of an unrealistically low budget. American
assessor Richard Waite inveigled the commission for himself with a scheme The
Globe described as "Nero" Greek (figure 4)-actually Richardsonian Romanesque.
American Architect & Building News labelled Waite's conduct "reprehensible," while
the provincial government blithely defended a huge increase in budget. 29
In the Langley office American ideas were assimilated quickly. Two important
commissions from Senator William McMaster, at the urging of his American wife,
Susan Moulton, launched Burke's career. The Jarvis Street Baptist Church of 1874-75
was arranged on an amphitheatre plan drawn from American evangelical sources. 30
And McMaster Hall of 1880, a private Baptist college established on Bloor Street near
the University of Toronto, synthesized ideas from similar institutions in the northern
United States. 31 Langley's firm also explored American neo-grec and, along with E.J.
Lennox, introduced Richardson's popular aesthetic in a series of city churches (figure
5). 32 The intense gravitational pull of the United States was resisted only in residential
commissions, where public taste and/or municipal bylaws apparently dictated a
preference for Queen Anne revival. 33
14
SSAC BULLETIN SEAC 21 :1

By 1890, Burke was design partner for the Langley firm, supervising a large
draughting room similar to though somewhat smaller than the large draughting factories
common among major architectural practices south of the border. 34 Former Langley
students J.C.B. Horwood and Murray Alexander White, later Burke's partners, went to
the United States-to New York and Chicago, respectively-to gain additional experience.35
Horwood's communications with Burke during that period were instrumental
in encouraging another historic change. 36 In 1894, having set up practice on his own,
Burke proclaimed himself dissatisfied with what he called "an unreasoning adherence
to [methods] unworthy of this scientific and progressive age." Notwithstanding his
remarks on the American balloon frame, he decided to tackle the sparse aesthetic of
the "Chicago men," as he called them. 37 That year he designed the Robert Simpson retail
store in Toronto with a rolled-steel interior frame enclosed by a series of continuous
brick piers carried on I-bearns at the level of the mezzanine. While not a fully sustained
curtain wall, the concepts of the Chicago school were clearly evident. The store was
destroyed by arson three months later, but was rebuilt on a freestanding iron frame,
fireproofed to the latest standards (figure 6). 36
Such prompt adaptation was far from universal. Crossman has detailed how
government and business leaders continued to bypass Canadian architects throughout
the 1880s, until their American counterparts had made Richardsonian Romanesque
the ascendent idiom. 39 Protests surfaced about the hiring of Americans by Canadian
companies such as Western Life Insurance and Canada Life, as well as the Toronto
Mail, known for its editorial defence of the Conservatives' National Policy on trade
protectionism. The profession gloated over every structural collapse for which Americanbased
firms could be held responsible. And, for their part, American periodicals
stereotyped "staid old Canada" for its fear of tall buildings and elevators, saying that
Canadians would "as soon attempt to walk upon the waters, as Peter did of old, as to
trust their precious lives in one of those 'bird-cages."' 40
This debate raged into the first decade of the 20th century, when the New
York firm of Carrere & Hastings secured several important commissions in Toronto. 41
But the tide gradually turned after 1910, when the Maxwell brothers won the commission
for Montreal's Dominion Express building. A contemporaneous decision by the
Hudson's Bay Company in London, England, to choose Burke, Horwood & White of
Toronto in preference to Burnham & Company of Chicago for their flagship stores in
western Canada was another triumph, but the victory lost some of its edge when the firm
was told to develop a motif similar to one Burnham had already successfully colonized in
London's Selfridge's store. Likewise, the Georgian mode already established in the United
States by McKim, Mead & White of New York was the basis for a series of YMCA buildings
that Burke's firm designed in the Toronto area in the same years (figure 7) . 42
While American competitors were criticized, imperial architects were often
welcomed. The Royal Architectural Institute of Canada publicly pressured the Anglican
bishop of Toronto to employ a Canadian or British architect in finishing St. Alban's
Cathedral instead of the renowned American neo-Gothicist Ralph Adams Cram. 43
Then, in 1912, Borden's Conservative government, having just won an election on its
opposition to reciprocity with the United States and its support for imperial ties,
Figure 6 (left). Robert Simpson Store, Toronto; Burke &
Horwood, architects, 1895. Exterior view, 1898·99.
(Archives of Ontario, J.C.B. and E. Horwood Collection,
C11, Additional 5)
Figure 7 (right). Central YMCA Building, Toronto; Burke,
Horwood & White, architects, 191 Z (demolished).
Exterior view, no date. (Archives of Ontario, J.C.B. and E.
Horwood Collection, C11, Additional 5)
21 :1 SSAC BULLETIN SEAC
15

Figure B. Proposed ground plan for departmental
buildings competition, Ottawa; Edward White, architect,
1912·13 (not executedl. (National Archives of Canada,
NMC 54511
called upon landscape architect Edward White of London, England, to prepare a
ground plan for a piece of land on Wellington Street in Ottawa, newly expropriated
for the Supreme Court and yet another group of departmental buildings (figure 8).
Later disrupted by the outbreak of war, the competition, like so many of that period,
was open only to British subjects practising within the empire, and White's preliminary
layout even alluded to the Baroque domes of Wren's Greenwich Hospital as part of
the concept. 44
On the subject of imperial architecture, a column reprinted from the conservative
British journal The Builder in the November 1912 issue of Construction
magazine proposed that "an empire can nurse no finer ideal than the cohesion of its
dominions in cities erected in one style of architecture recognized throughout the world
as the expression of its own imperial ideals." 45 A month later, a rebuttal demanded to
know
Will we, then, by planting in India, in Australia, in Canada and elsewhere, the architectural style
suitable to the practical and natural needs of our mother country, England, bring about ideal conditions?
It means the loss of a nation's individuality. 46
Even those who supported the imperial link as a strategy to discourage the country's
annexation by the United States saw it as perpetuating a state of mind that hobbled
any sense of independent action. 47
THE CONCEPTUAL COMPROMISES IMPUCIT IN THE DOCTRINES of imperialism are manifest in
Burke's claim to favour imperial unity, while at the same time counting himself a
Liberal, and supporting the Conservatives' National Policy on protectionist tariffs. Our
abiding national obsession with a supposed lack of identity finds its roots in a borrowed
chauvinism born of imperial ideology and in the meagre appropriation and acculturation
of alien ideas. But Burke managed to deploy the rhetoric of one in opposition to
the other-reinterpreting all the borrowed precedents according to a made-in-Canada
standard-to promote a dynamic that aspired to liberate Canadian architecture from
the taint of "provincialism."
16
SSAC BULLETIN SEAC 21 :1

Endnotes
This paper re-examines the findings of my recent
book with reference to imperial myths current between
1660 and the outbreak of the First World
War. See Angela Carr. Toronto Architect Edmund
Burke: Redefining Canadian Architecture (Montreal:
MeGill-Queen's University Press, 1995).
2 Anna Jameson, Winter Studies and Summer Rambles
(London: Saunders & Otley, 1636), 1:99-100.
3 R.G. Moyles and Doug Owram, Imperial Dreams
and Colonial Realities, British Views of Canada,
1880-1914 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
1966). 11, quoting the Attorney-General of Nova
Scotia, J.W. Longley, "Canada and the Imperial Federation,"
Fortnightly Review 49 (1691) : 466.
4 For a list of recent studies relevant to the issue of
national identity, see Doug Owram, '1ntellectual,
Cultural, and Scientific History," Canadian History:
A Reader's Guide, Volume 2: Confederation to the
Present, ed. Doug Owram (Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 1994), 157-76.
5 Carl Berger, The Sense of Power: Studies in the Ideas
of Canadian Imperialism, 1867-1914 (Toronto: University
of Toronto Press, 1970), 226, quoting Rev.
George Monro Grant, principal of Queen's University,
"Response on Behalf of Canada to Address of
Welcome, at the World's Parliament of Religions,"
Queen's Quarterly 1 (October 1893): 158, that"God,
who appointed the bounds of our habitation, made
us the natural keystone between the old world of northern
Europe and the older world of China and Japan."
6 A.B. McKillop, "Nationalism, Identity, and Canadian
Intellectual History," and "So Little on the Mind,"
Contours of Canadian Thought (Toronto: University
of Toronto Press, 1967), 3-33, at 11-13 and 22-25.
7 In the art historical field, the early inquisitions about
methodology include Hans Belting, The End of the
History of Art? (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1967), and A.L. Rees and Frances Borzello, The New
Art History (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press
International, 1967). Vernon Hyde-Minor, Art Histol}"s
History (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1994),
offers a popular historio-graphic resume of the field,
while a more scholarly summary of post-modern and
post-colonial critiques can be found in Irena M.
Makaryk, ed., Encyclopedia of Contemporary literary
Theoiy. Approaches, Scholars, Terms (Toronto: University
of Toronto Press, 1993), 155-57, 612-13.
6 Moyles and Owram try to separate rhetoric from
reality. Also on nationalism in the historical and
contemporary contexts, see Ramsay Cook, Canada
and the French-Canadian Question (Toronto:
Macmillan, 1966), and The Maple Leaf Forever:
Essays on Nationalism and Politics in Canada
(Toronto: Macmillan, 1977).
9 Donald Preziosi, Rethinking Art History: Meditations
on a Coy Science (New Haven, N.J.: Yale University
Press, 1969), 44.
10 McKillop, 5.
11 Edmund Burke, ''Elements of Building Construction
-structural Iron Work," Canadian Architect &
Builder 5 (March 1692): 26-29.
12 Ibid.
13 Berger, 155-62.
14 Ibid., 170, quoting Wilfred Campbell, "Imperialism
in Canada," Empire Club Speeches: Being Addresses
Delivered Before the Empire Club of Canada During
its Session of 1904-05 (Toronto, 1906), 36, 40.
Rudyard Kipling's views, cabled on the eve of the
1911 election that saw the defeat of the reciprocity
agreement between Laurier and Taft, were similar:
"It is her soul that Canada risks today. Once that soul
is pawned for any consideration, Canada must
inevitably conform to the commercial, legal, financial.
social, and ethical standards which will be imposed
upon her by the sheer, admitted weight of the United
States." See John Robert Columbo, ed., Columbo's
Canadian Quotations (Edmonton: Hurtig, 1976), 311 .
15 Burke, "Elements," 26-29.
16 Ibid., 46-51.
17 See Kelly Crossman, Architecture in Transition:
From Art to Practice, 1885-1906 (Montreal: MeGill­
Queen's University Press, 1967), 115, for the influence
of climate on built form in Canada.
16 Berger, 131.
19 Roland Barthes, Mythologies, trans. Jonathon Cape
Ltd. (Paris: Seuil, 1972), 143.
20 Berger, 53, 62-63, quoting R.G. Haliburton's Men of
the North of 1669 and William Foster's commentary
on it; Peter Larisey, light for a Cold Land: La wren
Harris's Work and life-An Interpretation (Toronto:
Dundum Press, 1993), 59-65; Scott Watson, "Race,
Wilderness, Territory and the Origins of Modem
Canadian Landscape Painting," in Jordan Zihovich,
ed., The Canadas (Peterborough: Marginal Editions
and Semiotext(e), 1994) [reference courtesy Petra
Halkes-Halim].
21 He expresses the same opinion as one of the judges
in "Canadian Architect & Builder Competition for a
City House," Canadian Architect & Builder 4 (Februruy
1691): 23-24.
22 Crossman, 32, 76, 75; Geoffrey Simmins, Ontario
Association of Architects: A Centennial History, 1889-
1989 (Toronto: Ontario Association of Architects,
1969).
23 "Annual Banquet," Construction 2 Uanuary 1909):
43. The actual reference is to "Paley" and "Ryckman,"
an indication that the reporter knew little of what
Burke was discussing.
24 Douglas Richardson and Angela Carr, "Henry
Langley," Dictionary of Canadian Biography
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994),
13:572-75; Mary Louise Mallory, "Three Henry
Langley Churches: Victorian Gothic Architecture
and the Diversity of Sects in Ontario," MA thesis,
University of Toronto, 1979; Stephen Beszedits,
Eminent Toronto Architects of the Past: Their lives
and Works (Toronto: B&L Information Services, 1963).
25 Richardson and Carr, 13:572-75; William Hay,
"Architecture for the Meridian of Canada," Anglo­
American Magazine 2 (1653): 253-55; "The Late Mr.
Pugin and the Revival of Christian Architecture,"
Anglo-American Magazine 2 (1653): 70-73.
26 Henry Langley, ''Description of the Lieutenant­
Governor's Residence," in Report of the Commissioner
of Public Works, 1869 (Toronto: Government of Ontario,
1670); William Dendy, "Government House,
Toronto, 1666-1670," Canadian Collector 12 (September/October
1977): 21-25.
27 Janet Wright, "Thomas Seaton Scott: The Architect
Versus the Administrator," Journal of Canadian Art
History6, no. 2 (1962): 202-16, at207, quoting Canada,
Department of Public Works, RG11, B1(a),
307:933 (7)-(11), 309:941-45, 324:666, 1646-52,
313:62-63, National Archives of Canada [hereafter
NAG] ; and Christina Cameron and Janet Wright,
Second Empire Style in Canadian Architecture
(Ottawa: Parks Canada, 1960). Scott was succeeded
in 1661 by Fuller, who also devised a consistent approach
to public buildings; see Christopher Thomas,
"Architectural Image for the Dominion: Scott, Fuller,
and the Stratford Post Office," Journal of Canadian
Art History 3 (Fall1976): 63-94, and his "Symbols of
Canada: The Post Office and Custom House Buildings
Designed by Thomas Fuller Between 1661 and
1696," MA thesis, University of Toronto, 1976. On
nationalism in Canadian architecture, see Crossman,
chap. 7-9.
26 Carr, 104-06.
29 Report of the Han. Alexander Mackenzie, William
George Storm, and Richard Waite, 15 November
1660, Department of Public Works (Ontario), RG
15, E-1, v. 27, file 1, Archives of Ontario; The Globe
(Toronto), 13 August 1666, 5; Crossman, 11-17.
30 Carr, 26-36 (and my article in progress on ecclesiastical
amphitheatres); William Westfall, Two Worlds:
Protestant Culture of Nineteenth-Century Ontario
(Montreal: MeGill-Queen's University Press, 1969).
31 Edmund Burke, ''McMaster University Buildings,"
McMaster University Monthly, January 1902, 154-60.
32 Carr, 100-106. 34-36.
33 Ibid., 52-74.
34 Ibid., 13.
35 Ibid. , 126-53.
36 John G.B. Horwood, "Architecture in New York,"
Canadian Architect & Builder 4 Uanuary 1891): 6;
"American Architectural Methods from the Standpoint
of a Canadian," Canadian Architect & Builder
5 Uanuary 1893): 6-9; and "Some Observations on
Fireproof Building in New York," Canadian Architect
& Builder 6 (March 1893): 36-36.
37 Edmund Burke, "Slow Burning Construction,"
Canadian Architect & Builder 4 (February 1691):
22; "Ontario Association of Architects," Canadian
Architect & Builder 7 (February 1894): 29-32.
36 Carr, 114-25.
39 Ibid., 108-14; Crossman, 9-27.
40 Carr, 106-14; R.C. Windeyer Papers, Archives of
Ontario; Inland Architect & News Record 27 (March
1896): 16.
41 Carr, 133-35.
42 Ibid., 135-39, 91-98.
43 ''Fourth Convention of the Royal Architectural Institute
of Canada," Construction 4 (November 1911): 109.
44 The federal Department of Public Works had already
completed one departmental building on Sussex
Drive-now occupied by Revenue Canada-after
the failure of the 1906-07 competition awarded to
the Maxwells of Montreal; see "New Departmental
Building at Ottawa," Contract Record 24 (27 April
1910): 39; Crossman, 137-42; Carr, 167-69. White's
scheme was controversial, but indicates the strength
of the British tie, particularly for a Conservative
government. See Robert Laird Borden Papers, MG
26, H1(c), vol. 219, pp. 123014-123070; Canada, Department
of Public Works, RG 11M, Ace. 83403/36,
D3946 F4, NMC 121794, item 116, NAG; '1nfluence
Exerted," Construction 5 (October 1912): 56; "Proposed
New Departmental Buildings, Ottawa," Contract Record
27 (5 February 1913): 61; and "Plans Showing
Scheme for New Departmental and Court Buildings
for the Dominion of Canada in Ottawa, Ontario,"
Construction 6 (September 1913): 331.
45 '1mperialism and Architecture," Construction 5
(November 1912): 60-61.
46 "Imperialism and Architecture," Construction 5
(December 1912): 44.
47 Moyles and Owram, 32-35.
Angela Carr is an assistant professor of Art History at
Carleton University, in Ottawa.
21 :1
SSAC BULLETIN SEAC
17

THE MIGHTY EMPIRE
Lord Dufferin's 1875 Embellish
During the 19th century, Quebec
City became increasingly
haunted by the ghosts of its
military past. From the 1820s
onward, in prose and in verse,
poets, historians, and travel
writers celebrated the city's
evocative history. It was not
until much later, however, that
architecture's recapture of the
town's ramparts began. The 1875
"City Embellishments" projects
advanced by Lord Dufferin,
Governor General of the newlyformed
Dominion of Canada
between 1872 and 1878 (figure 1),
played a vital yet ill-understood
role in redefining Quebec's architectural
character and in establishing
a new symbolic function
for the old colonial capital of
Canada. Primarily aimed at the
enhancement of the city's picturesque
qualities, the castellated
architectural idiom and the urban
design ideas Lord Dufferin
brought to Quebec's Old Town
also embodied a reconfigured
history that, he hoped, would
form the basis of a new Canadian
identity within the British
imperial framework.
by Georges Drolet
Figure 1. His Excellency Earl Dufferin, Governor General
of Canada, 1872. (Notman & Fraser, National Archives of
Canada (hereafter NAC(, C-2124)
16
SSAC BULLETIN SEAC
21 :1

..
OF THE PAST:
ment Proposals for Quebec City
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...
History is everywherearound
us, beneath us;
from the depths of yonder
valleys, from the top
of that mountain,
history rises up and presents
itself to our notice, exclaiming:
'Behold me!' ...
She rises as well
from those ramparts,
replete with daring deeds,
as from those illustrious plains
equally celebrated for
feats of arms,
and she again exclaims:
'Here I amf' 1
Figure 2. The Quebec Morning Chronicle of 25 December
1875 dedicated a full page to Lord Dufferin's projects.
The article, illustrated with engravings based on the
Irish architect William H. Lynn's sketches, advocated a
shift from urban "improvements" to "embellishments."
(NAC, C-115651)
P.J.O. Chauveau, quoted in James Macpherson
LeMoine, Picturesque Quebec; A Sequel to Quebec
Past and Present (Montreal: Dawson Brothers,
1882), 12-13.
21:1
SSAC BULLETIN SEAC
19

1n the Fall of 1874, members of Quebec City's Special Committee on City Improvements
travelled to Ottawa to present federal authorities with an urban redevelopment
scheme that proposed, among other measures, the demolition of Quebec's
fortification walls. The Governor General's reaction to the Committee's proposals was
rather blunt: "I have ... put my foot down," Lord Dufferin exclaimed. "Quebec is one of the
most picturesque and beautiful cities in the World, not only from its situation, but also
from the diadem of wall and towers by which it is encircled. Its wretched inhabitants,
however, who are all of them pettifogging shopkeepers, would willingly flatten out
their antique city into the quadrangular monotony of an American town .. .." 2 The municipal
officials viewed the demolition of Quebec's obsolete fortifications as the first
step in transforming the old colonial capital of Canada into a modern city, but Lord
Dufferin saw otherwise. He wrote:
By dint of using the most abusive language, calling them Goths and Vandals ... I have succeeded
in compelling [the members of the Special Committee) to agree to a compromise, namely,-to
leave the walls ... and to allow me to send them a very clever architect I happen to know at home,
who has a specialite for picturesque medieval military construction, and who is to be allowed to
finish off the breeches ... with tourelles, towers, turrets, &c, as may best preserve the ancient
character of the enceinte. 3
2 Dufferin to Carnarvon, 21 December 1674, in C.W.
de Kiewiet and F.H. Underhill, eds., Dufferin­
Cornmvon Correspondence 1874-1878 (Toronto:
The Champlain Society, 1955), 124-5.
3 Ibid.
4 Lord Dufferin's "Speech at the banquet given by the
citizens of Quebec in the Music Hall. Quebec. June
21, 1676," in Henry Milton, ed., Speeches and
Addresses of the Right Honourable Frederick Temple
Blackwood, Earl of Dufferin (London: John Murray,
1662), 179.
5 The two most important publications on the subject
of the Quebec embellishment projects are
Achille Murphy, "Les projets d'embellissements de
Ia ville de Quebec proposes par Lord Dufferin en
1675," The Journal of Canadian Art History 1, no. 2
(Fall1974): 16-29, and the last chapter in Andre
Charbonneau, Yvon Desloges, and Marc Lafrance,
Quebec the Fortified City: From the 17th to the 19th
Century (Ottawa: Parks Canada, 1962).
This was how Frederick Temple Blackwood, Lord Dufferin, third Governor
General of the young Canadian nation, entered the late 19th-century debate over the
redevelopment of Quebec City. His embellishment proposals of 1875, presented as an
alternative to the city's so-called "improvements," irrevocably altered the character of
urban design efforts within Quebec's Old Town. As a whole, Lord Dufferin's proposals
made three major contributions to architecture and urban design in Quebec: they
transformed the concept of urban "improvements" into urban "embellishments"; they
realized the idea of the "promenade" as a primary urban design principle; and they introduced
a historicist, castellated idiom previously unknown in Quebec City.
Moreover, in order to fortify the shaky foundations of a new Canadian selfconsciousness
and to reaffirm the imperial presence only a few years after the
removal of British troops from Canadian soil, the embellishments Lord Dufferin proposed
were highly symbolic in nature. In Lord Dufferin's mind, the Old Town's most
valuable asset did not rest in the surviving ramparts themselves but rather in the evocative
potential of the city's dramatic setting, its striking silhouette and tumultuous
history-a potential that could be fulfilled through the enhancement of Quebec's
picturesque character, with turrets and gates used simultaneously as devices of visual
composition and as emblems of Quebec's historical significance. In "beautifying"
Quebec, the Governor General sought, in his own words, to "exalt and adorn [the city's]
crown of towers" in a way that would preserve not the actual relics of the past, but
certain romantic characteristics of its "glorious inheritance," 4 thus reinforcing certain
aspects of Canadian history as pillars of national and imperial unity.
Two questions arise: first, what was the nature of the elements the Governor
General proposed for the enhancement of the city's evocative character? Second, what
was the nature of the "glorious inheritance" these elements were meant to evoke, or,
more simply, what were the embellishments to represent? An assessment of these issues,
which have not been explored in the existing scholarship, will shed light on the significance
of Lord Dufferin's involvement in the planning of Quebec City. 5
The Governor General's intervention occurred at a time when the city was undergoing
major transformations. The same industrialization and rapid urbanization that
affected most American and European cities in the mid 19th century exercised tremendous
pressures on the former colonial capital of Canada. The city's extensive system of
fortifications, which had been developed over a period of roughly 200 years under both
French and English regimes, made communication between the city centre and the growing
suburbs extremely difficult. The extent of land reserved for military use and the tight
control military authorities exercised over every aspect of urban life caused great frustration
for the population. Beginning in the 1840s, calls for a loosening of the military hold
over the city became widespread; Quebec's obsolete military infrastructure was perceived
as the primary obstacle to progress, and its demolition as the ideal instrument of change.
One by one, the city gates eventually fell prey to the pick-axe, and vast portions of the fortification
walls were left to deteriorate. Stone by stone, the former "Gibraltar of America"
was giving way to the vogue for grand boulevards, open vistas, parks and promenades.
20
SSAC BULLETIN SEAC 21 :1

--~US EXC E. L LE itCl' LORD-­
DVPFB•Ir8QVB.BCIMP~OVBKB.T8
. '
--KENT GATE--
- &CALf 15 FEET T O O NE INC H -
When, in the Fall of 1875, a second mayoral delegation carne to Ottawa to
submit plans for additional urban improvements, the Governor General handed
Quebec's mayor a set of drawings which, in effect, formed his counter-proposal to the
redevelopment project he had criticized a year earlier. Lord Dufferin's protege, the Irish
architect William H. Lynn, proposed in these drawings various types of interventions,
now labelled "embellishments" rather than "improvements" (figure 2, page 19). First,
the city's repeated requests for the extension of streets between the Old Town and the
suburbs were fulfilled, but their number was limited to two, and each passage through
the city walls, either existing or proposed, was to be marked by a new gate along the western
front or by turrets in other locations. In addition, so-called "tourelle additions"
would be made at various points along the enceinte in order to enhance the Old Town's
picturesque character. An iron bridge over Cote de la Montagne would allow pedestrian
movement between the elevated sites of Durham Terrace and the old parliament grounds.
The embellishment proposals also adopted certain components of the 1874
improvements plan. For instance, the enlargement of the Esplanade (or parade grounds)
was incorporated into Lynn's plan, and the architect elaborated the layout of a pathway
to create an uninterrupted promenade along the walls, using the new gates as
pedestrian bridges over busy streets (figure 3). Finally, the crowning feature of Lord
Dufferin's embellishment proposals was to be a large vice-regal summer residence on
the highest point within the Citadel, overlooking both the river and the city (figure 4
[see cover]). Its name, the Chateau Saint-Louis, referred to the colonial governors'
palace that had stood nearby, on the site of Durham Terrace, until it burned in 1834.
The Governor General's project rapidly succeeded in shifting the focus of redevelopment
from the demolition of Quebec's historic fabric to the enhancement of its
picturesque character. Not only were the surviving walls spared further destruction, but
within a few years several components of the embellishments proposals took shape:
in 1878-79 a new gate replaced the old Porte Saint-Louis and another gate-named
Kent-rose over a new opening made through the western wall (figure 5) . In October
1878, a few days before his return to Britain, Lord Dufferin laid the first stone of the
Durham Terrace extension, an earlier project that the city incorporated into the embellishments
and completed in 1879. 6 The Esplanade park was partially executed and the
Rem parts Street walls were lowered to afford pedestrians panoramic views towards the
Laurentian Mountains and the St. Lawrence River, but the proposed addition of turrets
along these walls and on the sites of the former gateways were never realized. 7 Neither
were the iron bridge over Mountain Hill nor the controversial Chateau Saint-Louis. 6
In the minds of Quebec's residents and visitors, the embellishments became
very much identified with the French character of the city, and architectural historians
have done little to either corroborate or invalidate this impression. Instead,
the embellishments have generally been interpreted as a sign of Quebec's entry
into the Victorian era, and as the embodiment of a romantic's vision inspired by
the medieval buildings of Europe, leaving one to wonder what, precisely, were the
sources of this inspiration. As is. the case for any work of architecture, but particularly
in relation to an overtly historicist age, the identification of such sources forms a
fundamental aspect of any attempt to understand the significance of a project.
Here, determining the nature of Lord Dufferin's aesthetic sense and of his architect's
Figure 3 (left). Proposed Porte Saint-Louis, Quebec; W.H.
Lynn, architect, 1875. (NAC, C-639931
Figure 5 (right). Proposed Kent Gate, Quebec; Charles
Baillairge, architect, 1878. City engineer Baillairge
oversaw the design development and construction of the
executed embellishments. (NAC, C-11 8639)
6 City engineer Charles Baillairgt'i first proposed the
extension of Durham Terrace in the early 1670s
and included it in the 1674 "Plan of Proposed City
Improvements" that was presented to Lord Dufferin.
7 Looking at Lynn's drawings, it remains unclear
whether lowering the wall along Ramparts Street
was an integral part of his proposal or was appended
by the city engineer from a proposal the city had
made in December 1672. Mayor Garneau to
Langevin, 27 December 1872 (National Archives of
Canada) and Recommendations of the Minister of
Militia and Defence, 21 June 1873 (National Archives
of Canada), quoted in Charbonneau eta/., 450-51.
8 The arguments involved in the public debate over
funding of the proposed Chateau were summarized
by Arthur Buies, Quebec's prominent columnist of
the day, in a lecture entitled "L'Ancien et le Futur
Quebec" (19 January 1876), published later that
year as VAncien et Je Futur Quebec; Projet de son
Excellence Lord Dufferin (Quebec: C. Darveau, 1876).
Before the publication of the embellishment proposals,
Buies was already advocating promenades as
an urban design approach for Quebec. Along with
historian/travel writer James Macpherson LeMoine,
Buies became one of the earliest and most ardent
supporters of Lord Dufferin's proposals.
21:1 SSAC BULLETIN SEAC
21

Figure 6 (top). Proposal for remodelling Clandeboye
House, County Down, Northern Ireland; W.H. Lynn,
architect, c. 1865. (Mark Bence-Jones, ''The Building
Dreams of a Viceroy -I; Clandeboye, Co. Down," Country
life 14811 October 19701: 819; Jor.athan Gibson/The
Country Life Picture Library)
Figure 7 (above). A ganlen gateway for Dufferin's
Killyleagh Castle; C. Lanyon, architect, c. 1850. W.H.
Lynn was an apprentice in Lanyon's firm at this time; he
became a partner a few years later. The firm's shift from
ltalianate to medievalist designs coincided with Lynn's
arrival. (Conway Library, Courtauld Institute of Art)
9 Mark Bence-Jones, "The Building Dreams of a Viceroy­
II; Lord Dufferin's Schemes in Canada and India,"
Couniiy Ufe 148 (8 October 1970): 900-01.
10 Millon, Speeches, 241. These words, used to describe
the progress of Manitoba towards a cohesive provincial
society, also apply to the Governor General's
ideal vision of the country as a whole.
formal vocabulary is essential to establish the significance of the proposed embellishments.
In an article entitled "The Building Dreams of a Viceroy," Mark Bence-Janes
suggests that the implementation of Lord Dufferin's proposals, and especially the construction
of the Chateau Saint-Louis, would have enabled the Governor General "to
bring into being the baronial and French Renaissance fantasy which he had dreamt of
raising on his Irish estate, and for which his architect, W.H. Lynn, had provided him
with so many designs, all of them beyond his purse." 9 Lynn was Ireland's principal
proponent of the "Scots-Baronial," an architectural idiom developed from the 1830s
by Scottish architects William Burn and David Bryce. Modelled on the late-medieval
tower houses of Scotland, the style was devised as an architectural response to the
cultural nationalism of the Scottish gentry. Regional in spirit, this adaptable model
evoked the romance of Walter Scott's Scotland. With the 1853-55 remodelling of
Queen Victoria's Balmoral Castle, designed by William Smith of Aberdeen and Prince
Albert himself, Scots-Baronial became a truly British idiom. As an Irish peer of Scottish
descent, Lord Dufferin readily endorsed Scots-Baronial for its formal, historical,
and political associations with Scotland on one hand, and for its connections with
British royalty on the other. .
Lord Dufferin's involvement in architecture began as soon as he came of age
and gained control over the family's estates. Until his Canadian appointment, the young
baron's principal architectural efforts were aimed at remodelling his house and estate
of Clandeboye in County Down, Northern Ireland, for which he commissioned designs in
the Tudor Revival and Scots Baronial modes from English architect Benjamin Ferrey
and Scottish architect William Burn. He eventually turned to fellow countryman
William Lynn for his most ambitious (if unrealized) projects.
Lynn's designs for Clandeboye, produced from 1865 onward, participated in
the evolution of Scots Baronial towards more overt references to French Renaissance
sources, demonstrating the architect's ability to produce convincing renditions in the
Baronial idiom from the starkest Scottish tower houses to the most ornate Fran~ois I
chateaux. Lynn's scheme to remodel Clandeboye Mansion covered the full range in a
single proposal: the house's restrained, essentially symmetrical Georgian fa~ades were
to be replaced with an elaborate architecture of distinctly French Renaissance character
(figure 6), and attached to this corps de logis was planned a large tower and
gate-like porte cochere of overtly Scottish character.
While Lynn's Clandeboye schemes demonstrate his capacity to produce designs
unmistakably French in appearance-and demonstrate Lord Dufferin's fondness for
French castellated forms-they also help clarify the nature of the Quebec designs.
These designs possess more of the rugged simplicity of Lynn's Scots schemes than the
ornate refinement of his French-inspired designs. Lynn's Quebec gates echo the Scots­
Baronial gateways built on Dufferin's Irish estates in the 1850s and 1860s (figure 7),
and could be viewed as condensed versions of the tall square keep, porte cochere, and
round turret leitmotif of his Clandeboye sketches. In addition, the turrets that were to
adorn the city walls resemble those built along the garden walls of Lynn's Belfast Castle
(1867-70), one of Ireland's most accomplished Scots-Baronial buildings. Finally, the
proposed Chateau Saint-Louis was a much-abridged and simplified adaptation of one
of Lynn's L-shaped Clandeboye schemes (figure 8), the main French features of which
(the orders of engaged pilasters and steep hipped roofs) were subjected to an overriding
Scots-Baronial treatment. All things considered, Lynn's Quebec designs were not
particularly French in character, and their appearance had little to do with the cultural
and architectural flavour of the colonial capital. Instead, their evocative quality reinforced
certain aspects of the city's history in support of Lord Dufferin's national political agenda.
The Governor General took office during a critical period in the initial stages
of the Canadian Confederation when the foundations of future political development
were being laid, and when the clash of competing regional interests tested the
strength of the new nation. In the midst of a severe economic depression and faced
with major political scandals, Lord Dufferin acted as a conciliatory but no less dedicated
advocate of Canadian unity. His aim was the consolidation of the nation into "a patriotic,
closely welded, and united whole," 10 and his agenda was two-fold. ''You may depend," he
told the British secretary of state for the colonies, "upon my doing my best both to weld
this Dominium into an Imperium solid enough to defy all attraction from its powerful
neighbour across the Line, and to perpetuate its innate loyalty to the mother countiy .. .. " "It
was only upon the understanding that this should be a principal part of our programme,"
22
SSAC BULLETIN SEAC 21 :1

Figure 8. Design for a house at Grey Point. Clandeboye
Estate, County Down, Northern Ireland; W.H. Lynn,
architect. (Bence-Janes, ''The Building Dreams of a
Viceroy ·I," 819; Jonathan Gibson/The Country Life
Picture Library)
I
he added, "that I consented to come here." 11 Lord Dufferin promoted national unity on
the basis of an increasing political, economic, and cultural interdependency between
Canadians; the national life he envisaged would grow out of a shared inheritance and
provide the promise of a common destiny. In his mind, Quebec City's potential contribution
to the establishment of a pan-Canadian identity depended on the city's
representation of "the brilliant history and traditions of the past." 12 In the face of ancestral
antagonism between Canada's two founding nations, the Old Town provided a perfect
stage for the merging of French and English history into a single, heroic past. Accordingly,
the enhancement of Quebec's picturesque character by the addition of turrets
and gates to the city's fortifications presented the promeneur with a restructured vision of
the city's history. Adorned, the city walls ceased to be mere historical remains and
became a more evocative and monumental souvenir historique, 13 a grand memorial to
a reconfigured and idealized past.
There were three basic components to the historical narrative depicted in
Dufferin's embellished city: first. the identification of the Battle of 1759 as the most
significant moment of Quebec City's history; second, the reaffirmation of the battle's
symbolic outcome-that is, the fateful and heroic union in death of commanders Wolfe
and Montcalm; and third, the affiliation of contemporary history with that "glorious
past." In his Quebec City speech of June 1876, the Governor General reported that, at
his request, the British Secretary of State for War had asked the Imperial House of
Commons
to vote a sum of money to be expended in the decoration of some point along your walls in such
a manner as might serve to connect [the soldier world of Great Britain] with the joint memory of
those two illustrious heroes, Wolfe and Montcalm, whose deeds of valour and whose noble deaths
in the service of their respective countries would have been alone sufficient to immortalize the
fair fortress for whose sake they contended, and whose outworks they watered with their blood. 14
Here, Dufferin evoked the three elements of his historical vision: the battle that
formed the genesis of the new country, the merged heroic figures of Wolfe and
Montcalm as precursors of cultural unity between the two founding nations, and the
association of contemporary soldiers with the glories of Quebec's past.
The insertion of contemporary history into the fabric of the past was further
achieved when Queen Victoria sponsored the new Kent gate, dedicated to her father,
the Duke of Kent. The Queen's personal association with Quebec was thus to become
one of the episodes along the city walls' historical promenade, and the latest chapter
in the city's heroic narrative. Involving the Queen in the embellishment of Quebec City
was one of the ways the Governor General found to express, in a tangible manner, Canada's
renewed participation in the British empire and, more importantly, a continued imperial
presence in Canada. Building a vice-regal residence at the heart of the Citadel, the former
centre of Britain's colonial military power in Canada, would have achieved the same
goal, but on an even grander scale. Lord Dufferin felt it was "of very great importance
11 Dufferin to Carnarvon, 25 April1874; Sir Alfred
Lyali, The Life of the Marquis of Dufferin and Ava
(London: John Murray, 1905), 1:229. My emphasis.
12 Milton, Speeches, 242.
13 This expression was used by columnist Arthur
Buies, "L'Ancien et le Futur Quebec," 10.
14 Milton, Speeches, 179-80.
21 :1 SSAC BULLETIN SEAC
23

Figure 9 (left). "The Prince of Wales Landing at Quebec,''
The Illustrated london News. 29 September 1860.
IBibliotheque de I'Universitll Bishop, Lennoxville)
Figure 1 0 !right). "Quebec-A Glimpse from the Old City
Walls,'' Picturesque Csnsds, 1882. !Private Collection)
15 Dufferin to Carnarvon, 9 March 1876, and de
Kiewiet, Correspondence, 196.
16 Th e Quebec Morning Chronicle, 25 December 1875.
Georges Drolet is an architectural historian and an
associate architect in the firm of Fournier Gersovitz
Moss Architectes, Montreal.
that the Governor General should reside some time in Quebec and amongst the
French speaking population." 15 Perched high above the city, the Chateau Saint-Louis
would have provided a visible, and permanent, sign of his presence in the capital of
French Canada.
Over the years since the British conquest, countless views of the cliff-side
fortress had given the site even greater symbolic significance. In landscape paintings,
portraits, illustrations, and even on tableware, the King's Bastion, with its cannon and
flagpole, repeatedly appeared as a monumental pedestal for the British flag. In The
Illustrated London News' depiction of the Prince of Wales 1860 visit to Quebec, for
instance, the representation of British rule in Canada was reduced to its simplest and most
iconic form: the silhouette of the Citadel's bastion with the British banner floating high
above the river (figure 9). The Chateau St-Louis' dramatic silhouette in that precise location
would have further underlined the importance of the site (see figure 2); by occupying
the key position in Quebec's most depicted view, the house of the British monarch's
representative would have likely become one of the city's major iconographic symbols.
AS A WHOLE, WILLIAM LYNN'S DESIGNS FOR THE QuEBEC EMBELUSHMENTS brought about the
codification of the city's long-recognized picturesqueness-a character that had
evolved over two and one-half centuries through the incidents of site, architecture,
and history-into a series of standardized, emblematic architectural features: towers,
turrets, bartisans, partes cache res, and groups of high conical and pyramidal roofs.
The notion of the picturesque-an aesthetic established in painting and landscape art
later applied to architecture and, with Walter Scott's work, to history itself-guided the
recomposition of these codified elements in order to create various evocative tableaux.
While the anachronistic, late-medieval idiom of the Quebec embellishments
signalled the fortifications' association with history, or at least with a certain vision of
their historical significance, the forms of the gates and of the proposed Chateau Saint­
Louis also evo~ed royal prestige and pageantry. Set apart from any of the local
architectural traditions but tied to sites of great significance, the proposed embellishments
were readily identifiable emblems of the nation's reconfigured heroic history
and of the renewed imperial presence in Canada. In an attempt to transform Quebec's
fortifications into a device for viewing the city's reconfigured past, the Governor General's
embellishments, in effect, replaced the soldier's watchful gaze with the
promeneurs charmed glance (figure 10). On the day the Governor General's projects
were announced, a local daily stated: "History speaks from every stone of [Quebec's]
ruined walls, and from every standpoint of its surroundings; antiquity is stamped
upon its face and quaintness is its chief characteristic." 16 The spectacle the embellishments
made visible was this picturesque landscape of history. In the late 19th
century, freed from the stranglehold of military colonialism, Ja Vieille Capitale joined
the mighty empire of the past.
24
SSAC BULLETIN SEAC 21 :1

Durability and Parsimony:
Railway Station Architecture in
Ontario, 1853-1914
c
S £

1 Rowland Macdonald Stephenson, Railways: An IntroductolJ'
Sketch, with Suggestions in Reference to
Their Extension to British Colonies (London: John
Weale, Architectural Librruy, 1850), 8, 78.
2 Local surveyors such as Sandford Fleming, W alt!)r
and Frank Shanly, and Thomas Keefer were involved
as section engineers or consultants. The Toronto to
Sarnia line was credibly built by C.S. Gzowski and
Co. Gzowski was chief engineer on the St. Lawrence
and Atlantic Railway, whose president, A.T. Galt,
also controlled the Montreal & Kingston and
Toronto & Guelph railways, all of which were amalgamated
into the Grand Trunk in 1853. Gzowski was
awarded the contract as something of a consolation
prize. Work on the Gzowski section was supervised
by the Shanly brothers, as divisional chief and resident
engineers. Dianne Newell and Ralph Greenhill,
Survivals: Aspects of Industrial Archaeology in
Ontario (Erin, Ont.: Boston Mills Press, 1989), 47.
3 Thompson, born in Suffolk, is thought to have been a
tailor in London before designing the Midland Hotel
at Derby in 1841. In 1845 he produced a series of
stations for the Eastern Counties Railway on the
Cambridge line. He went over to the Chester & Holyhead
line, where he produced a number of fairly large
stations in 1848 (Chester, Flint, Holywell junction,
Mostyn, Rhyl. Bangor, Bodorgan, Llong, Valley in
North Wales). More buildings by Thompson are
known from the later 1850s: Melton, Darsham, and
Oulton Broad South were all built in 1859 on the
East Suffolk line of the Great Eastern Railway. He
continued to work for the GER through the 1860s.
See Gordon A. Buck, A Pictorial Survey of Railway
Stations (Sparkford, Near Yeovil: Oxford Publishing
Co., 1992), 52-59. The primruy source linking
Thompson to the Grand Trunk is '1mprovements at
Island Pond," Daily Transcript (Montreal), 25 September
1852, 2: "GTR engine house and repair
shop ... Plans by Mr. Thompson, of Montreal, the
Company's architect, who made the plans for the
India Street station." Thompson disappeared from
notice in England in the 1850s; his English biographer,
Oliver F. Carter, believes he was in Montreal
employed as architect for the GTR (Carter's material
is unpublished). Robert G. Hill, Toronto, and personal
correspondence with O.F. Carter, 1991.
4 Newell and Greenhill, 52 ; Buck, 59.
5 Iron train shed at Thompson's Derby station, designed
by Stephenson for the Midland, 1839-41,
and at Chester, designed by C.H. Wild with
Stephenson as company engineer. G. Biddle and
O.S. Nock, The Railway Heritage of Brimin (London:
M. joseph, 1983), 78, 100.
6 A.W. Currie, The Grand Trunk Railway of Canada
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1957), 24.
Stephenson was appointed engineer-in-chief on
the Victoria Bridge project in Montreal, and visited
the site in 1853. Newell and Greenhill, 48.
7 jeffrey Richards and John M. MacKenzie, The Railway
Station: A Social HistOlJ' (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1988), 187.
Corporate railway history in Ontario can be charted as a tree, from many roots up
through three main branches. Dozens of short local lines were initially chartered,
construction began on some, and a few even operated, only to be bought out by a
larger line whose directors had ambitions to develop a system. Strategies for connecting
key shipping nodes drove most company development. By 1882, the Grand Trunk
Railway (GTR) had bought up most of the smaller lines and competing systems in Ontario,
leaving the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) and the Canada Southern as its chief competitors.
The urge to build to the Pacific resulted in three trans-national lines operating
by the First World War: the CPR, the Grand Trunk Pacific (GTP), and the Canadian
Northern (CNoR). Overextension and the huge costs of building and operating railways
through the Rockies caused the bankruptcy of the CNoR in 1918, followed by the GTP
in 1920 and the Grand Trunk, its parent, in 1923. From the crisis was created Canadian
National Railways.
For investors, engineers, and the directors of 19th century railway companies
in Ontario, the railway station was the least important element of their whole enterprise.
Their most intense emotions and intellectual efforts were devoted to stock issues and
debentures, to obtaining government assistance, to the routing of lines and the ballasting
of track, and to attracting the sources of freight that would generate revenue.
Everyone knew that a railway didn't make money carrying passengers. Moreover, railway
stations were peripheral paraphernalia required to execute other functions of
railroading-though, in addition to the obvious purposes of selling tickets, sheltering
passengers, controlling trains, and handling baggage and freight, stations eventually
came to fill a role of disseminating visual propaganda and advertising.
Railway stations emerged in Britain with the development of steam passenger
trains in the 1830s, and evolved as an architectural type in the 1840s (the first passenger
stations in Ontario were built in 1853). British railway influence was so pervasive
in Canada, the United States, and Europe that the sources for railway architecture in
the 19th century were international and fluid; engineers and architects drew upon
architectural fashion, railway precedents, local practice, and company policy-in approximately
that order-when developing a station design. The earliest designs were tentative
in every country, but by 1850 analysts were confidently contrasting the "solidity and
strength, durability and grandeur" of English works with the "rigid and parsimonious
economy" of the American version, or, more generously, with the "simple and economical"
American station. 1
Station construction in Ontario has always followed two streams, one representing
a consciously designed edifice, the other the equivalent of a utilitarian shack.
The designed stream began with the very accomplished first-generation stations of the
Grand Trunk (figure 1, page 25), built between 1853 and 1863. These would not be
matched consistently in quality until the fine Beaux-Arts union stations of the 20th
century. The Grand Trunk was built in the early 1850s to provide a main trunk line
throughout the entire length of the Province of Canada, reaching from Sarnia on Lake
Huron to Halifax on the Atlantic Ocean. Ultimately, the line was extended to the Pacific,
to compete with the Canadian Pacific Railway. The Grand Trunk was entirely a British
imperial railway, backed by British investors, run by a British board from London, funded
and largely built by British companies, and engineered and designed by British talent. 2
The Grand Trunk stations are thought to have been designed by one of Britain's
most original and best known architects specializing in railway architecture, Francis
Thompson. 3 Thompson (1808-1895) worked as an architect in Montreal from 1830 to
1838, then returned to England just in time for the railway boom. He was back in
Montreal working for the GTR from 1853 to 1859, only to resume work in England on
the East Suffolk line of the Great Eastern Railway in 1859. 4 Thompson became a leader in
the Italianate railway style in England, designing the acclaimed Chester station as
well as those at Cambridge and Bel per. He worked at many other locations for the
North Midlands, the Eastern Counties, and the Chester and Holyhead railways. For
the Midlands and Chester railways he collaborated with Robert Stephenson, 5 whose
resident engineer, Alexander Ross, was taken on in Canada by the British railway contractors
Peto, Brassey, Jackson, and Betts. 6 The Peto firm, which held railway contracts in
15 countries, assisted in raising capital through British bankers Barings and Glyn and
built the line from Montreal to Toronto. 7
It should be noted that Thompson's authorship of the Grand Trunk station
design is not certain; it seems peculiar that the company could have so accomplished
and acclaimed an architect as Thompson without reporting this fact in Canada. The
26
SSAC BULLETIN SEAC 21 :1

Figure 2. Station at Pantyffynnon for the Great Western
Railway; I.K. Brunei, architect, 1850. (Gordon S. Buck,
A Pictorisl Survsy of Rsilwsy Ststions(Sparkford, Near
Yeovil: Oxford Publishing Co., 199211
Italianate style he favoured seems to have been freely adapted wherever railways
were built. In the United States, Richard Upjohn developed designs for Massachusetts
stations in 1852-53 which, influenced by Thompson, exhibit the massing,
rhythms, and detailing found in contemporary British station architecture. 8 Four of
Thompson's stations were published in 1842 by J.C. Loudon, who demonstrated how easily
they could be adapted to villas. 9 The influence of British engineer I.K. Brunei should
also be noted: his Mortimer station of 1848 and Pantyffynnon station of 1850 both have
the broad sheltering eaves, simple roofs, compact plans, prominent chimneys, and Italianate
detailing that characterized the stone Grand Trunk stations of the 1850s (figure 2). 10
The majority of Grand Trunk stations opened in 1856. Of the 22 built on the
Montreal to Toronto line, ten survive in Ontario. 11 While most North American lines
built as cheaply and expediently as possible, expecting to upgrade if and when the
line began to pay returns, the GTR built on the English model, with heavy investment
in permanent works. The early GTR stations were specified "to be of stone or brick,
and covered with tin or slate at the option of the Contractors." All were constructed of
limestone except Brighton, which is brick, and Fredericksburg, which was timber. The
stations were built to a standard design that could be varied in size according to needs. In
principle, the plan could be extended, though in practice this is not known to have
happened without severe changes to the whole building. 12 The GTR's use of standard
plans was one of the earliest-the concept of standard design way-stations was introduced
in England on the South Eastern Railway in 1842 13 -and most consistent
anywhere. It established a corporate identity or company style which, while short-lived,
introduced a new technology and a foreign corporation that was widely regarded with
hostility.
Plans for the Granrl Trunk stations were very simple, from five to seven bays
long with a baggage room on one end, a waiting room on the other, and a ticket office
in the centre. If a ladies' waiting room was provided, it was usually separated from the
general waiting room by the station office. A broad, low gabled roof carried on wooden
brackets sheltered the building and its periphery, and large chimneys crowned th~
roof. Openings were invariably arched in the Tuscan style, and French doors were the
norm. Details for each station-the presence of quoins, the style of window voussoirs,
the type of door transom-varied with the local building practice or skills. St. Marys
Junction is the only Ontario Grand Trunk station left with all its French-door openings
intact (see figure 1). On all other surviving stations they have been modified into windows,
or blinded. The prominent chimneys characteristic of the original design have also
disappeared on most stations. In both Canada and the United States, overhanging eaves to
protect the platform became an identifying characteristic of railway station architecture;
in Ontario, exposed rafter ends and brackets became an enduring motif. 14
The Grand Trunk was exceptional in the quality of its stations, but it was also an
exceptional railway, spanning 972 miles and introducing transportation to areas previously
difficult to reach. 15 Other lines built in Ontario at the time tended to be short,
local proje~ts in the 20- to 70-mile range. Their stations were typically wooden shacks
of varying quality. For example, the Canada Southern, a line essentially sponsored by
American interests, built basic small board-and-batten structures that echoed the picturesque
Italianate detailing of the stone Grand Trunk stations, but with minimized
roof overhangs, brackets, and varieties of trim.
8 Carrol L.V. Meeks, The Railroad Station: An Architecturo/
Hist01y (New Haven, N.J.: Yale University
Press, 1956), 54.
9 A.). Downing was also influenced by Thompson,
thus providing another layer of popularization.
Meeks, 45.
10 Biddle and Nock, 49.
11 At Prescott, Belleville, Ernestown, Kingston, Napanee,
Port Hope, Cobourg, Brighton, Georgetown, and St.
Marys Junction. The Kingston and Napanee stations
are in commercial use.
12 Belleville was enlarged by a Second Empire roof;
Georgetown was remodelled with a raised roof and
tower.
13 Isarnbard Kingdom Brunei seems to have used a
standard design for way-stations in the 1850s, which
may even have been prefabricated, as he is known
to have been working on a prefabricated hospital
for the Crimea at the time. Biddle and Nock, 49.
14 Meeks, 48, remarks.that brackets are uniformly evident
on all 19th-century Ontario stations.
15 Newell and Greenhill, 51, citing journals of the Legislative
Assembly, Appendix No. 13, 1856.
21 :1 SSAC BULLETIN SEAC
27

Figure 3 (left). Chatham, Ontario, GWR station; Joseph
Hobson, designer, 1877. Photographed from the
northeast, ca. 1887. (Chatham-Kent Museum)
Figure 4 (right). Cressington Station of the Cheshire
Lines Committee Railway, 1873. (Buck, Pictorial Survey
of Railway Stations)
16 For a brief histol)' of the Great Western, see Currie,
161·220, and William L. Wilgus, The Railway Inter·
relations of the United States and Canada (Toronto:
Ryerson Press, 1937), 81 ·83. Currie, 162, reports
that 55,000 shares were held by British investors,
5,000 by Canadian, and one million dollars' worth,
or about one· fifth of the cost (though unspecified
in number). by Americans.
17 Christopher Andreae, "Railways," in Norman R. Ball,
ed., Building Canada: A History of Public Works
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press. 1988), 91.
18 "Great Engineer Died Here To-Day," Hamilton Spectator,
19 December 1917, 21 [reference courtesy
Robert Hill] . One of his outstanding accomplishments
was the design and construction of the
Sarnia tunnel, stretching over two miles under the
St. Clair River, completed in 1891 and considered
one of the feats of the age. He also replaced the Victoria
Bridge in Montreal with a double-track structure.
19 Hobson may also have been responsible for the
GTR station at Windsor (1884, station demolished,
large freight shed intact). Clifton (Niagara Falls),
Woodstock, and Chatham are the only stations
with Gothic detailing. A more domestic structure
in wood at Jarvis which burned in 1911 is illustrated
in Charles Cooper, Rails to the Lakes: Th e
Story of the Hamilton and Northwestern Railway
(Cheltenham, Ont.: Boston Mills Press, 1980), 47.
71e next notable phase of railway construction in Ontario occurred from the 1870s
1 ~hrough the 1890s. On the national scene, the Intercolonial railway was completed
to link Quebec with the Maritimes, great amalgamations of small railways lines were
taking place, and the CPR built the first cross-country railway, from Ontario to the Pacific.
Architecturally, the most distinctive stations of the second phase were those
of the Great Western Railway (GWR), a company funded by British, Canadian, and
American investors. 16 It ran its first trains between Toronto and Hamilton in 1854, and
originally focused on providing a bridging line for American freight travelling from
Chicago to New York by offering a short route between Michigan and Niagara along
345 miles of track through the southwestern peninsula of Ontario. 17 In 1862 its headquarters
were moved from Hamilton overseas to London, since so many of its
directors and investors were in England.
By the mid 1870s, the Great Western's chief engineer, Joseph Hobson, had
developed an in-house style for company stations. Hobson (1834-1917) had trained as
a surveyor in Toronto, and acquired his credentials as a civil engineer with the firm
Gzowski and McPherson on the Guelph section of the Grand Trunk Railway. In 1870,
he was appointed resident engineer to build the steel arch bridge across the Niagara
River, replacing the existing suspension bridge. Following that success he was named
chief engineer for the GWR in 1873. 18 The Great Western was acquired by the Grand
Trunk in 1882, but Hobson stayed on, becoming chief engineer in 1895. Under his
leadership these companies built a number of imposing brick stations which form a
recognizable body of work: for the GWR, Hamilton (1875, demolished), Clifton (Niagara
Falls) (1879), Tillsonburg (1874, demolished), Chatham (1879), and Woodstock (1880);
and for the GTR, after the merger of the two companies, Ingersoll (1886), Strathroy
(1887), and Sarnia (1890). 19
While not a new concept outside this country, the application of an in-house
style over a 15-year period was novel in Canadian practice. The company had begun by
building or adapting domestic-style structures, an example of which, an 1855 shed with
eaves extending into platform canopies, still stands in Grimsby. Permutations of Hobson's
design were developed as these structures came to be replaced. While British and American
practice at the time differentiated urban terminals from rural stations, the GWR used their
standard design for all locations, whether important border crossings or rural villages:
the major border terminals at Windsor and Clifton (Niagara Falls), the important terminal
at Hamilton, and the station at the agricultural village of Strathroy were all similar.
The Chatham station is a good example of the brick architecture Hobson developed
for the Great Western (figure 3). The standard elements of station architecture are
all there, including a picturesque roofline, a projecting operator's bay (a feature introduced
in the 1870s), a sheltering canopy all around the structure, and a hierarchy of
passenger and business doors. A number of features distinguished the Chatham station: a
banded slate roof capped by rich iron roof cresting, three corbelled chimney stacks,
Gothic dormers lit by stained glass trefoils set into the steep roof slope, heavy wooden
canopy struts anchored more than halfway down the wall, and a rather grand arrangement
of three gables punctuating the ends and midpoint of the design. Symmetry
determined the placement of openings within larger bay units and an overall symmetry
28
SSAC BULLETIN SEAC 21 :1

Figure 5. CPR station at Indian Head (Saskatchewan(.
(H. Roger Grant, living in ths Dspot (Iowa City, Iowa:
University of Iowa Press, 1993D
governed the massing, but the placement of chimneys and of openings within a bay
reflected the internal functions. Gothic Revival influences are evident in the pointed
arches of the door and window openings, in the polychrome brick and stone defining
architectural elements such as lintels, belt courses, and keystones, and in the overall
High Victorian Gothic aesthetic, notably the crispness, colour, and texture of the building.
Although the individual elements utilized in these stations were not in themselves
unusual, the overall effect was unlike any other stations being built in Ontario at
the time. The Great Western stations, organized by pavilions, utilizing massive roofs, and
instilled with a stiff angularity, recalled the 1873 Cressington station of the Cheshire Lines
Committee Railway (figure 4). The polychromy and general High Victorian Gothic attributes,
however, recalled stations in common use in the United States, suggesting the Chathamtype
GWR stations were well within the scope of current practice in all three countries.
The development of standard plans was an obvious efficiency in the engineering
departments of complex organizations such as railway companies. The GTR and GWR built
uniquely identifiable but different stations. Most of the new Canadian lines building
stations during this period (1870-95) followed a policy of minimal investment in structures
until revenues permitted improvements. In such cases, standard plans were purely a function
of economy, even parsimony. A notable exception was the CPR, a political rather
than economic enterprise which opened the first cross-country line from Montreal to
Vancouver in 1886. The company was run from its Montreal headquarters by two Scots,
Donald Smith and his cousin George Stephen, and Canadian-born transportation magnate
James Jerome Hill. General manager Cornelius Van Horne, an American, brought a
personal interest in design that ensured a significant architectural legacy of stylish stations
and hotels across the country. The CPR's Chateau style of the 1880s and 1890s, which has
been called the perfect blend of Canada's French and Scottish cultural heritage, was a
national phenomenon. 20 The CPR also affected the national landscape with hundreds of
standard station designs, and even standardized town plans.
While there are no Chateau style railway stations in Ontario, the CPR approach to
standardized design is well illustrated at Tweed. The CPR began acquiring lines and
building routes through Ontario to bolster the logic of their freight system to and from the
west. Since it was found to be expedient to provide a residence for the agent in some communities,
the CPR developed a standard frame station that incorporated housing for the
station master and his family on the ground and upper floors. This type of station was
first used at Indian Head [Saskatchewan] in 1882 (figure 5), and subsequently at Tweed in
1884. 21 The Tweed design was almost identical to a number of stations across the midwestern
United States and Prairie provinces. 22 The clapboard station is very plain in all
respects, relying on gable trusses and paint colour for its ornamentation.
Standard station plans were produced by all the companies by the end of the
19th century. It is not clear where they first emerged. In England they were known in
the 1840s, but did not become common until the last quarter of the 19th century. 23 In
the United States they prevailed from the 1860s; there was an obligation to provide a large
number of stations very quickly in small or not-yet-existing communities-a responsibility
also faced by the Grand Trunk and CPR at their inception. 24 Standardization
eventually moved beyond architecture: the CPR adopted maroon and black as its
company colours in 1898, and in 1901 it affirmed a standard design for its enamelled
station signs. 25
20 Richards and MacKenzie, 57. For the development
of the Chateau style, see Harold Kalman, A History
of Canadian Architecture [Toronto: Oxford University
Press, 1994), 2:488-90.
21 Tweed was built for the Ontario and Quebec, a
company that amalgamated with the CPR before
the station was built Indian Head and the subject of
standard stations in Canada are discussed in Kalman,
480-84.
22 Hundreds of "second class" depots were built to
this design for the Soo Line through Minnesota,
Nebraska, the Dakotas, and Iowa; more than 200
were built in North Dakota between 1891 and 1920.
A similar design was also used by the Chicago and
Northwestern and the Wisconsin, Minnesota &
Pacific railroads. H. Roger Grant, living in the Depot:
the Two-Story Railroad Station (Iowa City, Iowa: University
of Iowa Press, 1993), 23, 76-90, 105.
23 Biddle and Nock, 144ff.
24 See H. Roger Grant and Charles W. Bohi, The Country
Railroad Station in America (Boulder, Col.: Pruett
Publishing Co., 1978), 26. Standardized stations
did not occur where numerous small, independent
lines ran through relatively well-settled areas. Many
communities were in a position to demand custom
stations or, conversely, had not demonstrated to
the company that a better-than-average station was
merited. The largest concentration of standardized
stations in North America occurs between Thunder
Bay and the Pacific coast. The Grand Trunk Pacific
built more than twa-thirds of their stations to one
design. Ibid., 147, 159.
25 "Canadian Pacific Items," Railway and Shipping
World, June 1898, 91; "C.P.R. Standard Station
Names," Railway and Shipping World, February
1901, 52.
21 :1 SSAC BULLETIN SEAC
29

- ,;RIIJI)S
- .1!111~
-~ ·
-~----- _ _ _____,
/ / ,/
( ',I
I
----------~~------------1 I
I
r
I
I
"-· L
Figure 6 (left). uGrimsby: Proposed New Station,n GTR
Chief Engineer's Office, 1902. (NAC, NMC 0024338)
Figure 7 (right). uoesign for New Station at Grimsby,n
GTR Chief Engineer's Office, 1904. (NAC, NMC 96702)
26 Currie, 371-75. Hays changed the accounting methods
in order to reduce the dividends payable so that
the company could retain a reasonable operating
budget from revenues. He had new capital work
classified as maintenance; new locomotives were
built and charged as repairs to existing; even the
construction of a new head office in Montreal was
charged as ordinary maintenance. He replaced the
line organization with a line and staff, creating four
divisions and 20 subdivisions for operating purposes.
Within two years he eradicated the floating debt.
2 7 Leslie Maitland, The Queen Anne Revivol Style in
Canadian Architecture (Ottawa: Environment Can·
ada, 1990), 24.
28 Newmarket, Washago, Stayner, and Aurora are examples
of elongated pavilion types in Ontario.
29 This towered station burned in 1995.
30 Built by the Lake Erie & Detroit River Railway in
1889, now owned by CSX. a corporate descendant
of the Chesapeake & Ohio.
31 Meeks, 94·95.
rrle third phase of railway building, which lasted until the outbreak of the First
1 Word War, was launched in 1895 with the appointment of American Charles
Melville Hays as general manager and second vice-president of the GTR. Company
president Sir Charles Rivers-Wilson and the board of directors continued to control
the company from London, but for the first time a North American, experienced in
every aspect of railway work, could affect the operation of the company. Hays introduced
American business operating methods and virtually rebuilt the technology, infrastructure,
and corporate culture of the Grand Trunk. 26
During this phase, the GTR developed distinctive new designs for stations in
Ontario. These designs were changed every few years to reflect current architectural
fashion. By the 1890s, American influences had begun to dominate architectural tendencies
in Ontario. The Romanesque Revival style had been introduced in the 1880s,
and the local version of the Queen Anne Revival style was being filtered through the
Stick Style extravagances and Eastlake influences of the American east coast. 27 The effect
of an American railway manager and predominantly American architectural sources
did not noticeably alter the trajectory of the GTR's Ontario station architecture, since the
driving influences continued to be international. Standardization, too, was an industrywide
practice with no national boundaries.
From the 1890s, two divergent architectural trends emerged for Ontario's railway
stations: one saw the complication of surfaces and forms, the other saw a movement
to massive solidity. For a 15-year period, between 1890 and 1905, a particular variation of
the former became popular with all the companies operating in Ontario. Stations built
at small towns and villages, especially those considered suitable for excursion and
tourism traffic, were festively clad in shingles, vertical board and other combinations
of millwork, festooned with decorative wooden brackets and barge board, massed as
pavilions or towered sheds, and enlivened with projecting bays and faceted forms
(figure 6). This "cottage ornee" style had been popular in British and American stations
around mid-century, but the GTR updated the form and ornament. The Grimsby station of
1902 is a good example, an asymmetrical wood-framed pavilion enlivened by ornamental
stick bargeboards, diagonal and vertical boarding, complex surfaces, and an animated
silhouette. If necessary, the pavilion plan could be elongated to accommodate baggage
and freight. 28
When the Grimsby station burned in 1904 it was replaced by the newer towered
variant (figure 7). 29 Towered stations were also built by the GTR at Uxbridge, Whitby,
Toronto Don, Ridgeway, and Glencoe; the CPR built similar types at Orangeville, Parry
Sound, and Goderich. More gratuitously, towers could be attached anywhere to break
a station's horizontal emphasis, create a picturesque composition, and assert landmark
quality, as at Leamington (1889), 30 or Georgetown (an 1856 GTR station renovated in
1904). The tower craze had been rampant in Britain and the United States since the
1860s, evolving out of the Picturesque and Gothic penchant for towers. For a time the
towers were expanded to become a landmark element, then later were shrunk back
into the building mass. 31
Leaning away from this picturesque aesthetic, the simpler stations were
dressed in a variety of styles. The CPR's Woodstock station of 1898 (designed in 1896)
30
SSAC BULLETIN SEAC 21 :1

and the Galt station of 1899 were built to the same plan, a design by Edward Maxwell. 32
Montreal-born and educated but able to offer alluring foreign credentials, including a
stint with Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge of Boston, Maxwell (1867-1923) designed a
number of important stations and hotels for the CPR between 1897 and 1911, continuing
to fulfil commissions even after CPR appointed its own Chief Architect in 1906. 33 At Galt.
a high level of consistent. rigorously thought-out detailing demonstrates the architect's
familiarity with current sources ranging from English Queen Anne to the intricate
Japanese joinery then fascinating California architects such as Greene and Greene.
With its solid stone base, hard brick upper walls, multi-pane glazing, complicated joinery,
sweeping arched window openings, and half-timbered gables, the Galt design hovers
between Romanesque-a distinctly American revival-and the British Domestic Revival. 34
The trend to massive solidity was rooted in the Romanesque Revival, which
had been used in Germany in the 1860s and figured prominently in railway design in
the United States through the 1880s. H.H. Richardson and his successor firm built 31
stations for the Boston & Albany and Old Colony railroads. Their massive roofs, low
arches, and compact plans emphasized the principal function of shelter. 35 The CPR's
Montreal station of 1888 by American architect Bruce Price is a prime example of a
Romanesque central terminal, and in Toronto, an accomplished Romanesque union
terminal designed by Strickland and Symons was built in 1892-94 (demolished). Rugged
masonry and Romanesque arches appear in the CPR's North Bay (1903) and Sudbury
(1907) stations, but both are so anomalous in the company's design repertoire that a
regional Nipissing district etymology can be implied. 36 In a late transitional form, a
tower was combined with a Romanesque design at Brampton (1907), reordering the
composition of a transitional box.
In the current of architectural fashion, English revivals and picturesque eclecticism
waned in the early 20th century in favour of Beaux-Arts inspired classicism.
Internationally, the conceptual image of a terminal station had changed during the
1890s from an easily recognized functional type to a more generic-appearing monumental
public building. 37 When GTR president Hays died on the Titanic in 1912, his company
was already declining from its only period of profitability. Railway systems were seeking
international, intermodal transportation opportunities, and the architecture of the
more important stations reflected that cosmopolitan outlook. By the early years of the
20th century, plans were underway for the ambitious Union Station on the Toronto
waterfront, an internationally significant illustration of the dramatic change in the
understanding of the role of stations as public buildings. 38
At the same time, the Grand Trunk was building the Grand Trunk Pacific,
and struggling to fulfil its obligations. The combination station at Hearst, a northern
Ontario town that came into existence when the railway arrived in 1912, reflects the
frugality and orientation of the Grand Trunk at this time. It was built to a standard divisional
point GTP plan for the National Transcontinental Railway, a subsidiary of the
GTR that was created in conjunction with the construction of the Grand Trunk Pacific.
The Hearst station derives all its decorative aspects from textures and colouring of
wood. Its exterior was shiplap on the first floor, wood shingles above, with brackets,
consoles, and boarding providing surface enrichment.
The Hearst station had cousins across Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and
Alberta, where "economy was unashamedly exacted at each and every opportunity." 39
In overall style they recall the remote neo-classical ancestors that echoed through
domestic and commercial architecture of Britain and North America, the temple front
modified, compressed, and organized on a large, formal block of flats. With the general
rise of nationalist concerns in North America, and specifically in connection with the
construction of the National Transcontinental in Canada, the use of a fake Tudor halftimbering
motif signified fundamental and enduring values of Dominion, Empire, and
civilization.
RAILWAY STATIONS MAY WELL HAVE BEEN PERIPHERAL to the operation of the major railway
companies in Ontario, but many of them, especially the first-generation stations built
by the Grand Trunk, were equal to the best small stations being designed anywhere. They
were frequently current with world-leading British and American station design, particularly
in the adoption of standardized plans. The parsimony of the early railway directors
is no match for current cost-cutting. More than 150 of these durable pre-1914 stations
still stand as substantial elements in the cultural landscape of Ontario, their endurance
challenged not bv the forces of nature but by the vicissitudes of modern economics.
32 The design was a "standard" plan reinterpreted in
stone for Am prior, Almonte, Pembroke, Perth, and
Renfrew (all in Ontario), but all supervised and
modified by the architect. The plan is considered
to be the prototype of the "Credit Valley" type, built
in stone and brick at Chatham and in wood at Guelph
Junction. Commonwealth Historic Resource Management
Ltd., "A Study of Canadian Pacific's Heritage
Railway Properties," report prepared for the
Ontario Heritage Foundation and Ministry of Culture
and Communications in co-operation with CP Rail
and VIA Rail Canada, 1989, 43, 45.
33 John Witham, "Canadian Pacific Railway Stations,
1874-1914," Historic Sites and Monuments Board
of Canada [hereafter HSMBC). May 1974, p. C18.
Other stations by Maxwell include Moose Jaw, Sask.
(1898, demolished); Vancouver (1899, demolished);
New Westminster, B.C. (1900); Broad Street, Ottawa
(1901, demolished); and McAdam, N.B. (1900-01).
See also Kate MacFarlane, "VIA (Canadian Pacific
Railway) Station, McAdam, New Brunswick," Railway
Station Report [hereafter RSR] 20, HSMBC,
November 1990.
34 A.M. de Fort-Menares, "Canadian Pacific Railway
Station, Cambridge (formerly Galt), Ontario," RSR
56, HSMBC, June 1991.
35 Karl Jeffrey Ochsner, "Architecture for the Boston
& Albany Railroad: 1881-1894," journal of the Society
of Architectural Historians 47. no. 2 Uune 1988):
116.
36 A.M. de Fort-Menares, "Canadian Pacific Railway
Station, Sudbury, Ontario," RSR 175, HSMBC, June
1993, and "Canadian Pacific Railway Station, North
Bay, Ontario," RSR 190, HSMBC, October 1993.
37 Meeks, 125.
38 The track and yard redesigns began in 1905. Construction
began in 1914 to designs by Ross and
McDonald. Hugh G. Jones, and John M. Lyle. architects.
Warren and Wetroore designed the Winnipeg
Union Station for Canadian Northern and the
Grand Trunk Pacific, 1908-11; Ross and MacFarlane
designed the Union Station in Ottawa, 1908-12.
39 J. Edward Martin, The Railway Stations of Western
Canada (White Rock, B.C.: Studio E, 1980), 65.
Anne M. de Fort-Menares, a Toronto-based consulting
architectural historian, has undertaken research on a
number of railway stations for the Historic Sites and
Monuments Board of Canada over the past five years.
21 :1 SSAC BULLETIN SEAC
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