The Origin and Services of the 3rd (Montreal)

winter athletic organizations of the city.The club held its regular tramps, itssteeplechases, its ladies nights, its drives, etc., and in the carnival procession of1889, the allegorical car of the club was admitted to be one of the most effective onparade.The car represented a full battery behind a snow fort, with a pyramid ofmen in the centre of the whole. It was drawn by six battery teams with artillerymounted drivers in the full winterharness and driven in the regulation way byuniform of the Battery. It was accompanied by a mounted escort.The Battery has played an important part in obtaining the present excellentquarters of the Montreal Militia corps. When first organized the Battery had theuse of the Artillery quarters at the old QuebecGate Barracks, where the station now stands,for the guns and for gun drill, while the Eastern part of the upper story of the BonsecoursMarket was used for the foot and sword drill.This was after the Barracks had been vacatedby the Imperial troops, who had been orderedoff to the Crimea. When the Royal Artilleryreturned in force, at the time of the Trentaffair, the Battery had to leave the barracks,and found accommodation for some time, bothfor the guns and drills, at the Crystal Palace,then located on St. Catherine Street, oppositethe end of Victoria Street.Some objection having been made to theuse of part of the Bonsecours Market forevening drills, in 1857 or 1858, Lieutenant-Colonel Stevenson and Captain A. W. Ogilvie,then commanding the Montreal Cavalry, hadthe Victoria Hall, on Victoria Square, erectedas a drill shed for the two corps. This building was vacated when the old Drill ShedMAJOR JOHNon Craig Street, on the site of the present one,S. HALLwas erected. When the Drill Shed collapsedthe Battery re-occupied the Crystal Palace as quarters, and when compelled toleave that building again, returned to what was left of the old Drill Shed. Afterthe Montreal High School moved from the building at present occupied by theFraser Institute, at the corner of University and Dorchester Streets, ColonelStevenson rented the lower part of the building as quarters for the Battery, andconsiderable expense was incurred in putting the place in a proper state of repair.After a couple of years occupation of these quarters, the Battery had again to move,and this time there was no place to move satisfactorily to. So the guns werestored in the Crystal Palace, which had been removed to the exhibition grounds at67