On Revisiting Lately These Once Famous Haunts Of Our Forefathers, The New
Proprietor, Ex-Mayor Tourangeau, Courteously Exhibited To Us
The
antiques of this heavy walled tenement, dating back possibly to the
French regime, perhaps the second oldest house in
St. John street.
In a freshly painted room, on the first story, in the east end, hung two
ancient oil paintings, executed years ago by a well-remembered artist,
Jos. Legare, for the owners, two octogenarian inmates - his friends,
Messrs. Michel and Charles Jourdain, architects and builders. They were
charged some seventy years ago with the construction of the District Court
House (burnt in 1872) and City Jail (now the Morrin College.) Messrs.
Jourdain had emigrated to Canada after the French Revolution of 1789. They
had a holy horror of the guillotine, though, like others of the
literati of Quebec in former days, they were well acquainted with
the doctrines and works of Voltaire, Diderot, and d'Alembert. One of the
Jourdains, judging from his portrait, must have been a shrewd, observant
man. Later on, the old tenement had sheltered the librarian of the
Legislative Council, Monsieur Jourdain - a son - quite a savant in
his way, and whose remains were escorted to their last resting place by
the elite of the Canadian population. It is a mistake to think that
culture and education were unknown in those early times; in some instances
the love of books prevailed to that degree that, in several French-
Canadian families, manuscript copies then made at Quebec exist to this
day, of the Latin and French classics from the difficulty of procuring
books; there being little intercourse then with Paris book-stores, in
fact, no importations of books.
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