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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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Pipe Committee

Detail from a 19th-century painting of a tavern. Four men in frock coats smoke pipes around a table. On the table are drinks, a candle and tobacco. The atmosphere is dark and smoky.

Cornelius Krieghoff, “Le Shakespeare Club, Montréal, 1847” (detail), McCord Stewart Museum, M2000.95.1.

In the 19th century, smoking was part of everyday life in Parliament. Inherited from the colonial period, the tobacco habit took hold, and the pipe became an essential accessory. The parliamentary smoking room even had a telling nickname: the “pipe committee.”

Fragile Pipes

Guy Lessard, Pointe-à-Callière.

The video opens with a 360-degree view of a 3D model of an old pipe, rotating on itself. The pipe is blackened by fire. The word “Glasgow” is engraved on the side. The video stops after 10 seconds, offering a complete view of the antique pipe.

Most clay pipes, made of fired clay, were mass-produced and very fragile. No one expected them to be reused for long: they broke quickly, ensuring steady demand—an early form of “planned obsolescence.” As a result, archaeologists find them in astonishing quantities on excavation sites.

Shakespeare Club

A 19th-century painting of a tavern. Six men in frock coats smoke pipes around a table. On the table are drinks, a candle and tobacco. The atmosphere is dark and smoky.

Cornelius Krieghoff, “Le Shakespeare Club, Montréal, 1847”, McCord Stewart Museum, M2000.95.1.

A scene at Montréal’s Shakespeare Club, capturing an atmosphere that was both warm… and smoke-filled—much like the one that must have prevailed in Parliament’s “pipe committee.”