The Cemetery and Cultural Memory: Montreal Region, 1860 to 1900
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The cemetery and cultural memory: Montreal region, 1860 to 1900. Meredith G. Watkins Department of Geography McGill University, Montreal A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Suesand Research in partial fülfilrnent of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts. August 1999 O Meredith G. Watkins NaCional Library Bibliothèque nationale 1+1 ,CU(. du Canada uisitions and Acquisitions et '9Bib iographic Services services bibliographiques The author has granted a non- L'auteur a accordé une licence non exclusive licence allowing the exclusive permettant a la National Library of Cana& to Bïôliothèque nationaie du Canada de reproduce, 10- distribute or sen reproduire, prêter, distribuer ou copies of this thesis in microform, vendre des copies de cette thèse sous papa or electronic formats. la forme de microfiche/film, de reproduction sur papier ou sur format électronique. The author retains ownership of the L'auteur conserve la propriété du copyright in this thesis. Neither the droit d'auteur qui protège cette thèse. thesis nor substantial extracts fiom it Ni la thèse ni des extraits substantiels may be printed or othenivise de celle-ci ne doivent être imprimés reproduced without the author's ou autrement reproduits sans son permission. autorisation. The common conception that the cemetery holds the memory of al1 who died and were buried before us is a false one. There were certain biases in who was king cornmemorated, a fom of selectivity to the mernorial process, that caused a great number of people to erode from the landscape. The argument is based on observations from a sample of seventeen hmdred individuals fiom the latter half of the nineteenth century in Montreal and surrounding villages. A selection of twelve surnames fiom archival data includes the three main cultures present in Montreal in the nineteenth centuxy (French Canadians, Irish Catholics and English Protestants) and allows me to reconstitute fmilies, to identifj. their kinship ties, and to detennine their situation in life. Records fkom the cemeteries on Mount Royal and from the parishes of three rural villages confinn the burial of individuals from the sample. The presence or absence of these inâividuals in the cemetery landscapes depends on different comrnemorative practices innuencecl by religion, culture, gender, statu and age. L'idée que le cimetière nous remémore tous ceux dont les corps y sont enterrés se révèle fausse. De la plupart on ne retrouve, au bout d'un siècle, aucune trace dans le paysage commémoratif La sélectivité de ce processus d'érosion est démontrée à partir d'un échantillon de 1 700 individus prélevé au cours de la deuxième moitié du MXe siècle et ce, parmi trois groupes: Canadiens ûançais, Anglo-protestants et Catholiques originaires de l'Irlande. À partir des registres de sépulture des paroisses, l'échantillonnage par nom de famille permet de situer chaque décédant dans un réseau familial, d'en préciser le sexe, le statut social et l'âge au décès. Les registres des cimetières du Mont-Royal et de trois villages de la Plaine de Montréal permettent d'observer l'effacement séculaire dû aux pratiques commCmoratives influencées par la religion, la culture, le sexe, le statut et l'âge. CONTENTS i Z Abstract ........................................................ 11 ... Contents ....................................................... III Lis~ofFigures .................................................. iv Acknowledgements ............................................... vi CHAPTER 1 Introduction ..................................................... 1 CWTER 2 Literature Review ................................................. 5 NineteenthCentury Cemetery Landscapes ....................... 5 NineteenthCentury Montreal and Surrounding Villages ........... 13 Cemetery Studies .......................................... 17 CHAPTER 4 TheCemeteries ................................................. 30 Montreal Cemeteries ....................................... 30 Village Cemeteries ......................................... 37 CHAPTER 5 TheGravestones ................................................. 45 Urban Catholic Sarnple ..................................... 48 Urban Protestant Sarnple .................................... 56 UrbanComparison ......................................... 61 Rural Catholic and Protestant Samples ......................... 72 Urban-Rural Cornparison .................................... 78 CHAPTER 6 Conclusion .................................................... 82 Bibfiography ................................................... 86 ... 111 LIST OF FIGURES FrGURE 1 'Mrs. Barrett's Dead Child' ........................................ 15 FIGURE 2 Mount Royal Cemetery Gates ...................................... 3 1 FIGURE 3 Notre-Damedes-Neiges Cemetery Gates ............................. 3 1 FIGURE 4 New Sections in the Notre-Damedes-Neiges Cemetery .................. 34 FIGURE 5 Notre-Damedes-Neiges Cemetery - older section overlooking new area .... 34 FIGURE 6 Weeping Wi l low in the Notre-Dame-des-Neiges Cemetery ............... 3 5 FIGURE 7 The Popular Use of the Cross in Notre-Dame-des-Neiges Cemetery ........ 36 FIGURE 8 The Popular Use of the Um in the Mount Royal Cemetery ............... 36 FIGURE 9 Mount Royal Cemetery circa 1895 .................................. 37 FIGURE 10 Monument Classifications ......................................... 47 FIGURE 11 Sarnples of Catholic Deaths in Montreal .............................. 48 FIGURE 12 'Identified individuals': by age and gender ............................ 49 FIGURE 13 Photograph of a Fallen Tablet Taken in the Mount Royal Cemetery ........ 54 FIGURE 14 Individuals Referenced to Temporary Graves, 1884-1900: by type ......... 55 FIGURE 15 hdividuals Referenced to Temporary Graves, 18û4-1900: by age .......... 55 FIGURE 16 Sample of Protestant Deaths in Montreal ............................. 57 FIGURE 17 Occupational Status of Referenced Individuals ......................... 57 FIGURE 18 Bowman Child Monument, Mount Royal Cemetery ..................... 59 FIGW 19 Samples of Catholic and Protestant Deaths in Montreal .................. 62 FIGURE 20 Occupational Status of Identified individuals .......................... 63 FIGURE 2 1 The Ryan Family Monument, Notre-Darne-des-Neiges Cemetery .......... 71 FIGURE 22 Samples of Rural Deaths .......................................... 73 FIGURE 23 HairArt ....................................................... 74 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS When doing my research, 1 received assistance from many informative people that 1 would Iike to thank, including Myriam Cloutier, Director of Public Relations, Mount Royal Cemetery Company, for her readiness to respond to my endless inquiries and her assistance in the location of individuals fiom the sample; Joanne Duchesne, Notre-Damedes-Neiges Cemetery, who provided me with access to the original Iedgers in the archives; Betty MacKenzie, director of the Hemmingford Archives, for her enthusiasm and assistance with my research in the am, and to the volunteers at the archives who gave up their afiemoons; Tara Manh, my good Wend, who provided me with her knowledge and ability to reproduce images in any medium; Patricia Thomton (Concordia Univenity) who helped me grasp the complexities of the urban and rural Protestant samples; and Raphael Fischler (McGill University) who offered valuable assistance in the earlier stages of the project and saw the thesis through its final phases. 1 owe a great debt of gratitude to Sheny Olson. Without her constant encouragement and assistance my research would never have been realized. Thanks also to my family for their love and encouragement, to my husband Christian who supported my decision to retum to schwl and dealt with my long absences, and to the unconditional love of our dog Chewbacca. Chapter 1 Introduction The cemetery is an evolving cultural landscape that represents, al kit slowly, social changes in communities. The individual gravestones are crystallizations of the emotions and ideas of the deceased, of the people who moumed them and of the society within which they lived, and the cemetery as a whole is a residue which we can use as evidence of social trends, cultural patterns and prevailing ideologies. My research provides an aoalysis of present cemetery landscapes as cultural artefacts of nineteenth- century Montreal and surrounding villages, inciuding cornparisons between Catholic and Protestant, niral and urban comrnunities. There is a common misconception that the cemetery is a landscape that conserves memory, a visual remembrance of deceased individuals dating back decades or centuries, but this is not the case for all. Why? Who is no longer commemorated? Does the social status, age, sex or culture of the deceased have any bearing on this erosion process?' For those who continue to be represented in the landscape, who are they? Does status, age, gender or culture have an effect on whose monument is present? Do these same factors have any correlation to the shape, size or style of the gravestone? By examining the history of cemeteries in Europe and North Arnerica, 1 discovered changes in cornmernorative practices at al1 levels of society. To create a context for the research 1 needed to review the story of the mal cemetery movement, 1 The term 'erosion' is used here to ddbea slow process of removal. how it emerged as a response to urbanktion or 'crowding', and how this very problem arose in Montreal in the nineteenth century. New