Cannons were fired to honour Queen Victoria

All of Montreal heard commemorative salvo on day of her funeral in 1901

Queen Victoria ascended the throne in 1837 and now, on Jan. 22, 1901, she was dead. Generations of Montrealers, like others among her subjects around the world, had known no other monarch.

Her funeral was held at Windsor Castle, in St. George’s Chapel, on Feb. 2. In faraway Montreal, the solemn day did not go unmarked.

One token of mourning and respect here, though on unpopulated Île- Ste- Hélène, would be heard — literally — throughout the city. No bridge then connected the island with Montreal proper, so that afternoon a detachment of 45 officers and men from the 2nd Regiment Canadian Artillery marched to the island over the hard harbour ice. Each officer had a black mourning band around his left arm, and their sword hilts were draped in black crepe.

Their duty was to fire a commemorative salute honouring Victoria’s long reign and even longer life. She was 81 when she died, so artillery pieces would be fired at one- minute intervals, a salvo for each of those years, beginning at 3: 42 p. m. The last would come at 5: 02 p. m., the precise moment, appropriately enough, of sunset.

These so- called minute guns were six muzzleloaded cannons still in position at Île- SteHélène’s old fort. The 32- pounders had been made obsolete not only by technology — the use of breech- loaded artillery had been growing steadily for more than 40 years — but also by the disappearance of the United States as a plausible invader.

British army units had been withdrawn from the old fort and other Canadian garrisons by 1870. They took their best equipment with them. Out- dated artillery left behind in Montreal might occasionally be used for ceremonial purposes; also, a gun was fired at noon and again at 6 p. m. Most often, however, the guns stayed silent, mute though picturesque reminders of days long gone.

As with other ceremonial uses, the guns honouring Victoria that sombre afternoon were not loaded with cannonballs but merely fired blank rounds. But what rounds they were! With each report a great cloud of smoke was discharged, and soon the fug began filling the waterfront. The immense roar of each salvo was unavoidable from Mount Royal to the South Shore and beyond.

Britain had begun fortifying Île- Ste- Hélène in the early 1820s as Montreal’s main defensive bulwark. After all, American armies had marched on the city twice in 1813 before being turned back at the battles of Châteauguay and Crysler’s Farm respectively. And the Americans had actually occupied the city in the winter of 1775- 76, seeking to bring the colony into the newborn United States.

Yet the small island was never a mighty fortress the way Louisbourg had been and the citadels at Quebec City and Halifax continued to be. Its most formidable defensive work was natural, the wide moat provided by the St. Lawrence River, and arguably its greatest importance over the years was as a munitions dump for Fort Lennox, on the Richelieu River near the U. S. border, and Fort Henry, in Upper Canada at the entrance to the Rideau Canal.

The Americans never did come again; the old fort’s guns were never fired in anger; and in 1874, once the British had left, the city acquired the island as a park. In 1908, a visitor could write, “The artillery that was once no doubt the pride of the island’s defenders now has an almost pathetic air, as though comparing past state to present.”

Today, a number of old muzzle- loaders, now dismounted, could still be fired were new combat bases built for them. And a 24- pounder dating from 1810 continued as the noon gun until 2009. But that year major renovations began at the old fort. The gun hasn’t been fired since.

The immense roar of each salvo was unavoidable from Mount Royal to the South Shore and beyond.