Snowshoers ascended Mount Royal ‘at rattling pace’
I’m sure you will agree with me that … all Canadians thoroughly enjoy our winter.
– Gazette, Monday, Feb. 28, 1881 Robert Davidson Mcgibbon was preaching to the choir. He was speaking at the annual dinner of the Montreal Snow Shoe Club, the Tuques Bleues, and had chosen to sing the praises of winter. Yet if ever there was a body of Montrealers who didn’t need convincing, it was his fellow club members.
Mcgibbon was just 23, a recent Mcgill law graduate and already a vice-president of the Tuques Bleues. The club, in turning to him as their speaker, had a pretty good idea they would not be disappointed. He was blessed with uncommon eloquence, an eloquence already serving him well at the bar.
The dinner was held in the St. Lawrence Hall, one of Montreal’s finest hotels, and more than 100 club members and distinguished guests were there. The Gazette reported that “the recherché banquet having been done full justice to,” various toasts and a few introductory speeches followed. Then it was time for the main event.
Mcgibbon began by admitting the difficulty of speaking about something so familiar to his audience – but he leaped right in anyway.
The heart of his speech was a lively description of a tramp over the mountain to the village of Côte des Neiges.
It was an event the club held throughout the winter, with the snowshoers gathering each Wednesday evening at their clubhouse at de Maisonneuve and Metcalfe.
What a delightful scene he evoked. On the president’s command, the men “in picturesque costumes of blanket coat and knickerbockers, red sash, scarlet stockings, moccasins and tuque bleue” fall into line and start up the slope of Mount Royal. At a familiar spot part way up, they often would look back to admire the city beneath their feet, “its myriad lights in all sorts of irregular constellations. … But our leader’s voice is heard inquiring if we are all up,” and soon they are off once more.
“We plunge into the forest and are still climbing,” Mc- Gibbon continued – and more than 130 years later, you can still picture his eyes shining. “Up! up! up! ’neath the leafless maples and the naked elms; not a sound is heard save the regular tramp of the toilers, the peculiar grating of the shoes, or the heavy breathing of some novice or old stager.”
Presently, the column arrives at an open spot, beyond which lay a place of mystery and extra darkness, a dense stand of trees known as The Pines. But first, another pause: “A loose shoe is fastened on, a sash made tight, the men number off, the whipper-in assures the leader that the men are ‘all up,’ and away across the open we go, at a rattling pace of four miles an hour.”
They reach the thicket, “a magnificent knot of trees, sacred in the eyes of all snowshoers as the grove of a deity to the Romans.” Not a voice is heard as they thread their way “through its labyrinthine intricacies,” and perhaps a little regret is felt as they leave the trees to emerge near Côte des Neiges Cemetery. The end of the tramp is nearly in sight.
“Through the silent city of the dead,” Mcgibbon continued, “past the great vaults and the stately monuments we tramp. … The lights of the little village of Côte des Neiges soon appear, and as we all have our second wind, the president breaks into a sharp trot, and we follow until, within a short distance of Prendergast’s, that famous asylum for snowshoers, the leader cries ‘tally ho!’ and all are off at full speed, each one anxious to be first in.”
At the little hotel, “a plain and frugal meal” is served. There are songs; one snowshoer might tell an amusing anecdote and another recite a poem; a few might even get up to dance a jig. Yet, all too soon does 10 o’clock come, when God Save the Queen is sung, the snowshoes are strapped back on and the homeward tramp begins.
It’s faster this time, being mainly downhill, and soon they all are back in town, “ready to appreciate the delicious sleep which our exercise has induced, and sure to arise in the morning with fresh vigour and strength.”
Earlier this month, Les Amis de la Montagne once again staged its annual Tuques Bleues Celebration on Mount Royal, complete with races, a lanter n-lit tramp up the mountainside and finally a gourmet buffet, entertainment and good cheer in the Chalet. Robert Mcgibbon and his friends were surely there, if only in spirit.