Sisters in the Wilderness - Charlotte Gray [131]
Prince Edward, eldest son of Queen Victoria, had arrived in the colony for the first ever royal overseas tour. One of his first public appearances was in Montreal, where he was to lay the last stone of one of the most splendid structures in the British Empire: the Victoria Bridge, which spanned the two-mile width of the St. Lawrence River and was named in honour of his mother. The bridge, designed by the great British engineer George Stephenson with an innovative construction of tubular girders, had taken almost five and a half years to complete and was the longest bridge in the world. On August 25, the slim young prince clambered onto a train pulled by a huge Grand Trunk Railway locomotive and was taken to the centre of the bridge to hammer into place the final rivet. He and his entourage then clambered back into the train and returned to the immense locomotive shed at Pointe St. Charles, where the City of Montreal had laid on a luncheon for one thousand guests. “‘God save the Queen’ was played as His Royal Highness entered, and when he was seated the whole company sat down and fell to,” reported The Daily Globe. With the opening of this engineering masterpiece, the Prince of Wales had inaugurated Canada’s magnificent Railroad Era.
One of the first steam engines (with a cow-catcher at the front) of the Grand Trunk Railway. Canada’s Railroad Era had arrived.
The Victoria Bridge was more than just an engineering triumph. Its glorious opening ceremonies allowed the young, sprawling colony, with its rapidly swelling population and fractious politics, to show itself off to its future sovereign. For the first time in most of their careers, cabinet ministers donned the British civil uniform designed for colonial officials. It was a flattering costume that included a sword and navy jacket with lashings of gold braid and facings. The Globe carped that John A. Macdonald, joint premier (along with George-Etienne Cartier) of the United Provinces, had no idea how to walk with a sword sheathed at his side, and with his “devil-may-care air, managed to get his cocked hat stuck on one side … in a most ridiculous fashion.” But none of those present at Montreal could be oblivious to a shared pride in the dignity and autonomy of their own government.
Ottawa’s splendid Gothic Parliament Buildings in the 1860s, during construction.
From Montreal the Prince of Wales proceeded to Ottawa, to lay the cornerstone of the new Parliament Buildings. Susanna was one of the few people in British North America to laud Queen Victoria’s choice of the swampy lumber town as the new capital, instead of either Toronto or Montreal. “A very few years will make Ottawa worthy of the royal favour. In natural beauty it far surpasses all its more wealthy rivals…. The Queen showed much taste in picking it.” The young Prince must have been overwhelmed by his welcome, and by the peculiar Canadian tradition of building triumphal arches of leafy boughs along the official route. “Here is the universal programme,” declared one newspaper reporter. “Spruce arches, cannon, procession, levee, lunch, ball, departure; cheers, crowds, men, women, enthusiasm, militia, Sunday school children, illuminations, fire works, etcetera, etcetera, ad infinitum.”
It soon became evident, however, that the wild enthusiasm for the Prince was getting out of hand. John A., in particular, was perturbed by a nasty undercurrent in the outpouring of loyalty to the British Crown, thanks to the machinations of the Orangemen. In the United Kingdom, the parades and banners of the Orange Order were illegal, so the Prince of Wales’s advisers had told Canadian authorities that the Order could make no public demonstrations during the