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Everyone to Parliament!

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The Present-Day Place D'Youville

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Place Royale

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Place d’Armes

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Notre-Dame Street

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Champ-de-Mars

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Front-Row Seats…

Detail from a 19th-century illustration of the burning of Montréal’s Parliament. A crowd watches from a distance. In the lower right-hand corner, firefighters try to unroll a fire hose.

E. Hides, “Destruction of the parliament house, Montreal, April 25th 1849” (detail), lithography, Pointe-à-Callière, 2022.17.56.1-2 p. 22.​

On the evening of April 25, 1849, the Grey Nuns had front-row seats to the burning of the Parliament. Given the intensity of the blaze and the violence of the rioters, their fears for their property were well founded.

Chronicle

Handwritten account describing the burning of Parliament.

“Note of the Burning of Parliament Buildings on April 25, 1849”, Archives des Sœurs grises de Montréal, ASGM_G06.

In this handwritten account, a Grey Nun describes the violence of the Parliament fire and her fear that it would spread to the hospital. She describes rioters “setting fire to every corner with lit torches,” and notes that in “less than three quarters of an hour, this vast building was, from one end to the other, in the grip of the flames.”

Sketched from Life

19th-century illustration of the burning of Montréal’s Parliament. A crowd watches from a distance. In the lower right-hand corner, firefighters try to unroll a fire hose. On the left, people on a ladder pass buckets of water.

E. Hides, “Destruction of the parliament house, Montreal, April 25th 1849”, lithography, Pointe-à-Callière, 2022.17.56.1-2 p. 22.​

This scene of the fire, drawn by an eyewitness, captures the scale and intensity of the blaze and highlights the presence of local residents, powerless as they watched the tragic events unfold.