The origins of the cross on Mount Royal
De Maisonneuve kept his promise after threatening flood waters receded
Montrealers today know perfectly well that sudden wintertime thaws can bring flooding to low-lying areas along our rivers. But the first Montrealers didn’t have a clue.
Ville Marie, as Montreal was first known, was founded in May 1642 by Paul de Chomedey de Maisonneuve on the banks of the St. Lawrence, about where Pointe-à-Callière is today. It was not a military or trading outpost, but a mission dedicated to bringing the word of the Christian God to the indigenous people of the area.
The main building was a communal habitation that accommodated the four or five dozen settlers. The habitation included a couple of small rooms for a rudimentary hospital run by Jeanne Mance, a nurse and another of the community’s leaders. There also were a few outbuildings and a rough chapel.
The whole was surrounded by a stockade, for the settlers had every reason to fear that the area’s original residents would be not just indifferent to their proselytizing, but violently opposed.
But, as it happened, the first assault on the settlement came not from any human opponent, from the blind force of nature itself.
De Maisonneuve and his people were settling in for their first winter. The habitation was insulated as best they could manage against the growing cold. Snow lay about.
Then, a few days before Christmas, a thaw descended. At first the milder temperatures were pleasant enough, but then disaster loomed.
Snow and ice began to melt, and water from the overflowing river began licking at the stockade’s foundations. If it seeped through to the habitation and its supplies of food and ammunition, the settlers would be in grave danger.
Moving the settlement to higher ground was scarcely possible so late in the year. The only other option — and an obvious one for settlers as pious as these — was a redoubled faith in God’s mercy.
Guided by their two priests, Joseph-Antoine Poncet and Joseph-Imbert du Perron, the settlers prayed. De Maisonneuve went farther: he promised that, if God saw fit to restrain the flood waters, he would order the fashioning of a large cross; he would carry it himself up the mountain that rose behind the settlement and erect it there in thanks.
De Maisonneuve wrote out his promise and read it in front of the assembled colonists. He then placed the document by a small cross which itself was planted in the face of the rising flood. And, sure enough, on Christmas Day, the waters began to recede.
In the days that followed, the large cross promised by de Maisonneuve was assembled, probably by the settlement’s master carpenter, Gilbert Barbier. Other men began clearing a rough track up Mount Royal.
On Jan. 6, 1643, the Feast of the Epiphany, all was ready. The tiny community fell into order behind the two priests and began to move off toward the mountain. Some of them carried pieces of wood to make a pedestal for the cross and an altar in front of it. Last of all came de Maisonneuve with the heavy cross on his shoulders.
It could not have been easy going, the pathway slippery and clogged here and there with lingering branches. We can readily imagine de Maisonneuve having to pause from time to time to catch his breath. But at last the procession reached its destination, traditionally the very summit of the mountain, but probably much lower, near the corner of Atwater and Docteur-Penfield avenues. There they thanked God for the deliverance of Ville Marie and for success in converting the indigenous people.
Many new trials would follow. But Ville Marie — soon to be known as Montreal — would survive, and this year celebrates the 375th anniversary of its founding. And the illuminated, 31-metre cross atop Mount Royal, erected by the Société Saint Jean Baptiste in 1924, remains a constant reminder of de Maisonneuve’s act of faith so long ago.