Montreal's Legendary Beaver Club
SUSAN HALLETT looks into the spirited history of Montreal's famous Beaver Club.
…To become a member, the men had to have spent at least one season in the “upper country ”…
ON A WALK around Old Montreal, you will catch glimpses of sights that have scarcely changed in over 350 years. If the hardy souls who lived in the missionary centre called Ville-Marie, which later became Montreal, were to make a miraculous return to see what time has done to their settlement, they would have no difficulty in finding their way about.
If they were to return 200 years ago, they would certainly have heard about the wild goings-on at the Beaver Club, now commemorated by Beaver Hall Hill, where fur dealer Joseph Frobisher's home, Beaver Hall, was located. The area is not far from the railway station and is fairly close to the Fairmont Queen Elizabeth Hotel, which revived the famous club in 1958. Entering the Beaver Club restaurant was like stepping into a small palace but it was also a minimuseum because of the many artifacts and archival material adding to the decor. The collection included a stretched beaver pelt and numerous fine paintings depicting le vieux Montreal. When I dined at the restaurant there were 900 members, including 30 women, on the club's roster. Special dinners for members and their guests consisted of five courses with appropriate wines. The Beaver Club was recognized far and wide and had many prestigious awards including the CAA Four Diamond, the 4-Star Debeur Award, the Dirona Award and the Wine Spectator's Award of Excellence. Closed in 2014, the Beaver Club is remembered with affection by many gourmets.
Examples of items on the menu included such epicurean appetizers as Pan-Seared Duckling with Foie Gras from Quebec and Crispy Calf's Sweetbreads with Wild Mushrooms and main dishes such as Pan-Seared Breast of Guinea Fowl with Chanterelle Mushrooms, and Lard and Argan Oil Jus as a main dish, and what I chose: Grilled Bison Filet Mignon with Mushroom Ravioli Enhanced with a Truffle Oil Emulsion. For dessert, I couldn't resist trying the Grand Marnier Souffle, which was superb.
The original Beaver Club was founded in Montreal in February, 1785 with 19 members, all of whom had explored the North West. Among the founders were Charles Chaboillez, James and John McGill and Benjamin, Joseph and Thomas Frobisher.
All were fur traders who made their headquarters at Beaver Hall. The group included explorers, woodsmen and trappers. While most of the members were of French or Scottish descent, several distinguished Americans, such as Benjamin Franklin, John Jacob Astor and Washington Irving, attended many of the club's first meetings.
To become a member, the men had to have spent at least one season in the “upper country”, the pays d'en haut as the North
West was then called. The explorers who came to Canada were originally looking for the Northwest Passage; instead, they discovered the beaver and for 200 years the history of what was to become Canada centred around the quest for beaver pelts. According to Up North, written by Doug Bennet and Tim Tiner, until logging overtook it in the 18th century, when the beleaguered beaver was acclaimed as national mascot, the fur trade was Canada's number one industry.
Today it would be difficult to judge whether it was the tobacco lords of Virginia or the fur barons of Montreal who enjoyed more privileges and power in the New World. Both groups certainly formed the first of North America's aristocracies. So regal were the fur barons that their portable social club and their feasts became very famous. So complete was the enchantment of an evening I spent in 1998 dining in Beaver Club splendour at the Queen Elizabeth that it was easy to imagine just how privileged was the world of Montreal's wealthy fur traders.
Colonel Landmann, in Adventures and Recollections, wrote of a Beaver Club dinner he attended as a guest of Sir Alexander Mackenzie and William McGillivray:
“At this time, dinner was at four o'clock and after having lowered a reasonable quantity of wine, say a bottle each, the married men, Sir John Johnson, McTavish, Frobisher, O'Brien, Judge Ogden, Tom Walker and some others withdrew, leaving a dozen of us to drink their health. Accordingly, we were able to behave like real Scottish Highlanders and by four in the morning we had all attained such a degree of perfection that we could utter a war-cry as well as Mackenzie (sic) and McGillivray. We were all drunk like fish, and all of us thought we could dance on the table without disarranging a single one of the decanters, glasses or plates with which it was covered. But on attempting this experiment, we found that we were suffering from a delusion and wound up by breaking all the plates, glasses and bottles and demolishing the table itself; worse than that, there
were bruises and scratches, more or less serious, on the heads and hands of everyone in the group … It was told to me later that during our carouse 120 bottles of wine had been drunk, but I think a good part of it had been spilled.”
The club was formed “to bring together at stated periods during the winter season, a set of men highly respected in society who had passed their best days in a savage country and had encountered the difficulties and dangers incident to a pursuit peculiar to the fur trade of Canada.”
The real purpose, however, was to unite the various fur traders under the name of the North West Company in order to resist the ever more powerful Hudson's Bay Company. At Beaver Club gatherings the members discussed business, especially trading prospects, as they feasted the long winter nights away. Members were known as the “Honorary Wintering Partners” and the club's governors were called “The Lords of the Lakes and Forests.”
In 1804 the club's activities ended; they resumed in 1807, continuing fairly regularly until 1817 when the Beaver Club ceased to exist. In 1827, there was an effort to revive the club under Sir George Simpson, governor of the Hudson's
Bay Company with which the North West Company had merged. After three meetings, the original Beaver Club finally disappeared.
Banquets of the club, as told in Remarkable History of The Hudson's Bay Company, went something like this:
“They served bear meat, beaver, pemmican and venison in the same way as in trading posts to the accompaniment of songs and dances during the evening; and when wine had produced the sought-for-degree of gaiety in the wee hours of the morning, the trading partners, dealers, and merchants reenacted the “grande voyage” in full sight of the waiters or voyageurs who had obtained permission to attend. For this purpose, they sat one behind another on a rich carpet, each equipping himself with a poker, tongs, a sword or a walking stick in place of a paddle and roared out such voyageurs' songs as `Malbrouck” or `A la Claire Fontaine', meanwhile paddling with as much steadiness as their strained nerves would permit.”
Nowadays you don't have to be a member of the Beaver
Club to try the celebrated cuisine of Montreal's early days.
Examples of dishes you might make include filet of caribou, or any venison (bison or elk) with Canadian port wine served with wild rice, smoked corn and squash; roasted fillet of northern walleye (often called pickerel) with glazed fennel and sautéed mushrooms; or duo of quails with a black currant vinegar from Ile d'Orleans and one or two of what the indigenous call “the three sisters” which are corn, beans and squash.