This watercolour by Thomas Davies (ca. 1737-1812) was painted in the year of his death and was derived from sketches made before his departure for England in 1790. Despite some inaccuracies - neither the walls nor the citadel were so well preserved - it has the merit of faithfully portraying the locale of Montreal and the state of urban expansion at the end of the eighteenth century. The map which corresponds most closely to this scene is the one drawn by Louis Charland in 1801 (illustration 3). The work clearly shows the rural hinterland of the old walled city on the shores of the St. Lawrence. By 1800 the walls were in a very dilapidated state. The empty space between the walls and the suburbs,corresponding to the bed of the little St. Martin River (following the line of present-day Craig Street), is explained by an old ordinance forbidding construction within a certain distance of the fortifications. Almost in the centre of the picture, in front of the walls, can be seen the Saint-Laurent suburb; to the extreme left are the houses of the Saint-Louis suburb and the Quebec (or Sainte-Marie) suburb. To the west of the old city lie the first dwellings of the Des RÄcollets suburb.
The relative crowding together of buildings in the old city is visible, with the parish church in the middle of the picture boasting the tallest steeple. At this time, the city of Montreal had just extended its limits, well beyond the suburbs (see illustration 3). This meant that the city now included agricultural land, some of which was gradually given over to pasture and orchards to meet the needs of the city. Thus the animals shown in the picture do represent a feature of life in Montreal at the time.
Courtesy: National Gallery of Canada, National Museums of Canada
