Westward with the Prince of WalesNewton, W. Douglas (Wilfrid Douglas)
History
Westward with the Prince of Wales
Newton, W. Douglas (Wilfrid Douglas)
Canada -- Description and travel; Windsor, Edward, Duke of, 1894-1972
In the face of this crowd Montreal had to invent a new method of
authority. The mounted men having failed to press the spectators back,
tanks were loosed.... Oh, not the grim, steel Tanks of the war zone,
but the frail and mobile Tanks of civilization--motor-cycles. The
motor-cycle police were sent against the throng. The cycles, with
their side-cars, swept down on the mass, charging cleverly until the
speeding wheels seemed about to drive into civilian suitings. Under
this novel method of rounding up, the thick wedges of people were
broken up; they yielded and were gradually driven back to proper
position.
Again the throngs in the park were only hints of what the Prince was to
expect in his drive through the town. Leaving the grounds and turning
into the long, straight and broad Sherbrooke Street, the bonnet of his
automobile immediately lodged in the thickets of crowds. The splendid
avenue was not big enough for the throngs it contained, and the people
filled the pavements and spread right across the roadway.
Slowly, and only by forcing a way with the bonnet of the automobile,
could the police drive a lane through the cheerful mass. The ride was
checked down to a crawl, and as he neared his destination, the Art
Gallery, progress became a matter of inches at a time only. It was a
mighty crowd. It was not unruly or stubborn; it checked the Prince's
progress simply because men and women conform to ordinary laws of
space, and it was physically impossible to squeeze back thirty ranks
into a space that could contain twenty only.
I suppose I should have written physically uncomfortable, for actually
a narrow strip, the width of a car only, was driven through the throng.
The people were jammed so tightly back that when the line of cars
stopped, as it frequently had to, the people clambered on to the
footboards for relief.
In front of the classic portico of the Art Gallery the scene was
amazing. The broad street was a sea of heads. Before this wedge of
people the Prince's car was stopped dead. Here the point of
impossibility appeared to have been reached, for though he was to
alight, there was no place for alighting, and even very little space
for opening the door of the car. It was only by fighting that the
police got him on to the pavement and up the steps of the gallery, and
though the crowd was extraordinarily good-tempered, the scuffling was
not altogether painless, for in that heaving mass clothes were torn and
shins were barked in the struggle.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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