Meet André Leroux dit Cardinal, the Assembly’s chief messenger. Since Parliament did not sit year-round, someone had to keep an eye on the building—that was his job. Cardinal lived in the basement with his wife and daughter, in a former market cellar converted into living quarters.

A career civil servant, André Leroux dit Cardinal, first worked at the Parliament of Lower Canada in Québec City, then in Kingston after the Union of 1841, before settling in Montréal in 1844. He was still active at the Québec Parliament in 1850. Well liked, he was described as personable and in good standing with politicians.

“Any visitor who, from 1850 to 1864, entered Quebec’s old Parliament was sure to run into, in one corridor or another, a small, lively man—slightly bald, always bareheaded—alert, exquisitely polite, with the manner of someone welcoming guests in his own home. […] To say that Cardinal was a character would not be enough; he was almost a monument […], a cog in the Constitution. He had only friends around him.”