Old Quebec: The Fortress of New FranceParker, Gilbert
History
Old Quebec: The Fortress of New France
Parker, Gilbert
Québec (Province) -- History
compensation for all they had left at home. For the exiled sportsman,
too, there was the racecourse on the Plains of Abraham, riding to the
hounds on the uplands of Lorette, snipe at Sillery Cove, and ducks on
the St. Charles Flats.
[Illustration: LIEUT.-COLONEL JOHN BY, R. E.
(Founder of Bytown, now Ottawa)]
With pomp and circumstance the Duke of Richmond made progress through
his dominions, everywhere speaking, entertaining, endeavouring to
conciliate. He travelled up the St. Lawrence by steamer and thence by
canoes along the shore of Lake Ontario to Toronto and Niagara. Next,
he undertook the more arduous journey in the course of which he was to
meet a tragic end.
The little settlement of Richmond, named after the Governor himself,
lay thirty miles from Perth, at some distance west from the Ottawa
river. Here, following the trail through the woods, the Duke had
penetrated in search of adventure. That night he and his small staff
stayed at the village inn, and the next day they started in canoes on
their way down to the junction with the Rideau river. Hardly had they
commenced their journey, however, when the Duke's actions began to
excite alarm. The attendants sought in vain to restrain his violence,
and the boats drawing in to shore the party landed. Breaking loose
from all control, the Duke plunged into the woods, and was found soon
afterwards lying exhausted in a fit of hydrophobia, the result of a
bite by a tame fox two months before at Sorel. He died the same night;
and the body was presently carried back to Quebec, where for two days
it lay in state at the Château. An impressive service was held in the
English cathedral, and the body of one who had been Canada's most
splendid governor since the days of De Tracy and Frontenac, was
deposited in the cathedral vault. Minute guns boomed forth from the
citadel, and Quebec was plunged from gaiety into mourning.
[Illustration: SIR PEREGRINE MAITLAND
(Lieut.-Governor, Upper Canada, Aug. 1818 to Nov. 1828; also
Administrator as Governor for Canada in 1820)]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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