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Nelson Monument

Detail from a 19th-century photograph of Nelson’s Column. It stands in a small garden, overlooking the St. Lawrence River.

Silas A. Holmes, “Nelson’s Monument, Montreal” (detail), National Gallery of Canada, 22941.

At the very top of Place Jacques-Cartier stands the monument erected in 1809 in honour of Admiral Horatio Nelson. It is Montréal’s oldest piece of public art.

Set in a strategic location, it offered maximum visibility: you simply couldn’t miss the tall column and the statue that crowned it, a symbol of British prestige and power.

Trafalgar in Montréal: Paying Tribute to Nelson

19th-century illustration of Nelson’s Column in Place Jacques-Cartier, abutting Notre-Dame Street. The column features a cubic base decorated with various bas-reliefs. The shaft is made of grey stone. At the top stands a statue of Horatio Nelson. Passersby stroll across the square. At the end of Notre-Dame Street stands Notre-Dame Church.

Robert Auchmuty Sproule, “Nelson monument and western extension of Notre-Dame Street”, McCord Stewart Museum, M302.

Nelson’s Column pays tribute to the victories of Admiral Horatio Nelson, who died a hero at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, when the British fleet defeated Napoleon’s.

Commissioned by a group of Montréal citizens, the work draws on an ancient style inspired by Trajan’s Column in Rome. It was designed by a renowned London architect: Robert Mitchell.

A Fragile Material

19th-century watercolour of Place Jacques-Cartier. On the right stands Nelson’s Column, in grey stone. Two men are talking in the foreground. Below the column are wooden market halls, where a small crowd has gathered. The St. Lawrence River lies in the background.

James Pattison Cockburn, “The Nelson Monument and Market Place, Montréal, July 20, 1829”, Library and Archives Canada, 2898318.

The statue and the panels on the monument’s square base are made of Coade stone, an English material meant to withstand anything… except Montréal winters! Frost and cold sped up its erosion far more quickly than expected.

Despite several restorations over the years, a botched intervention brought the original statue’s display to an end, and it was removed in 1998. The following year, it was replaced by a copy made of Indiana limestone.

A Contested Symbol

19th-century photograph of Nelson’s Column. It stands in a small garden at the head of a square overlooking the St. Lawrence River.

Silas A. Holmes, “Nelson’s Monument, Montreal” (detail), National Gallery of Canada, 22941.

Nelson’s Column, erected to glorify the British Empire, was also seen as a symbol of its domination over French Canadians. Voices rose in opposition to its presence in Montréal; in 1893, the son of Prime Minister Honoré Mercier even tried to blow it up with dynamite!

The column survived, but it was offset with a symbolic counterweight: the statue of Jean Vauquelin, a French naval officer and hero of the Seven Years’ War, which brought the French Regime in New France to an end (1760). Erected by the Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste, facing Nelson, it embodied a French Canadian nationalist reply to British prestige.