In the months following the fire, an inquiry was conducted to identify those responsible. Hundreds of witnesses to April 25, 1849, were questioned. Their accounts—now preserved in the Court of Queen’s Bench archives at Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec—describe the chaos that swept through Parliament.

A clerk later recalled fleeing his office after a volley of stones shattered a window, soon followed by a rag soaked in a flammable substance.

Five ringleaders of the attack were identified by the authorities. Yet on May 12, the Tory newspaper Punch in Canada portrayed them as heroes, denouncing their arrest as an injustice tied to the “Indemnity Act.”

They were quickly released, even though the judicial inquiry continued throughout 1849.