Of Burning Interest – Centre d’histoire de Montréal, Place d’Youville, Montréal, Québec, Canada

Named in honour of Marie-Marguerite d’Youville, who founded the order of Grey Nuns in the early eighteenth century, Place d’Youville is much more recent than the neighbouring Old Market (Place Royale). The name is well merited since the building that housed the hospital Mme d’Youville ran for so many years still adjoins this area. But the creation of the square was delayed for a century mainly because of the expense of covering over the little St-Pierre River, which now runs through large sewage ducts into the St Lawrence.

The little St-Pierre River was first covered over from McGill Street to the point where the fire station now stands in order to build Ste-Anne’s Market, the commercial centre of the community in the mid-1840s. Its main feature was a handsome structure, some 104 metres long, which sheltered the merchants stalls. But within a few years the government of the United Canadas cook it over and converted it into its Parliament Building. It was in 1849, only a few years after its construction, that the Governor General, Lord Elgin, approved the Rebellion Losses Bill, an act that inspired a group of disgruntled Tories to invade the government building, sack it, set fire to it, then fight off the firemen who tried to stop the blaze.

The central point of Place d’Youville occupied by what was once a fire station, a pleasant piece of Victorian fantasy in the Tuscany-Dutch style. The building dates from 1903 and is the work of architects Joseph Perrault and Simon Lesage. Abandoned for some years, it now houses a display of photo-graphs, maps, and dioramas designed to introduce visitors to the history of Montreal. Ironically, the fire station stands on what was approximately the east end of the vandalized building. This building now houses the fascinating Montreal History Centre (Centre d’histoire de Montréal)