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Happy Dickens Day: celebrating the Montreal-Boz connection
Looking for a way to mark the February 7th bicentennial of the birth of the greatest novelist who ever lived? (OK, if you insist, arguably the greatest. He’s definitely right up there.) You could do a...
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Letter: St. Patrick’s Society posthumously reinstated Thomas D’Arcy McGee
Re: “Case linked to assassination of McGee” (Second Draft, Sept. 6) John Kalbfleisch noted correctly that Father of Confederation and sitting Member of Parliament Thomas D’Arcy McGee was expelled as a...
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Second Draft: Mount Royal cemetery's first occupant
He was a wholly admirable man – conscientious, brave, energetic, God-fearing. Yet such are the accidents of history that he is remembered today, if at all, not for his life but for what immediately...
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Second Draft: ’Petit treason’ threatened the social order
It was the last weekend of 1826. William Hunter and his wife, Mary, called on their neighbours the Gordons, perhaps to get a head start that evening on seeing in the new year. After sharing tea and rum...
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Second Draft: Cannons were fired on Île-Ste-Hélène to honour Queen Victoria
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...
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Second Draft: In 1875, at the first indoor hockey game, guess what broke out?
We don’t see much fighting during National Hockey League games any more. But not so long ago, scarcely a game would go by, it seemed, without something happening that, in any other sport, would have...
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Second Draft: Prince Edward was here? Sniff. We hadn't noticed
In August 1792, royalty came calling in Montreal. And Montreal yawned. The visitor was 24-year-old Prince Edward Augustus, the fourth son of George III. He had landed at Quebec City the year before in...
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