George-Etienne Cartier: Montreal Bourgeois

Front Cover
McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP, 1981 - History - 181 pages
Through the use of new sources, this study gives prominence to Cartier's business, social, and family milieu. It examines his emergence as a corporation lawyer, company director, landlord, and railway promoter as well as his political battles with his in-laws, his disintegrating marriage, and his long liaison with the unorthodox Luce Cuvillier. A rebel and political exile in 1837, Cartier by the 1850s was a member of the militia, a government minister, and a perennial defender of British traditions. His solid conservatism brough him support and rewards from the English-speaking bourgeoisie, the Grand Trunk Railway, and the Seminary of Montreal. After confederation, Cartier's political energies lessened, and his interest turned to his country estate and to pleasures of the table, drawing room, and stable. His degenerative disease and his alienation from his working-class voters in east-end Montreal made him vulnerable to his opponents, and his life ended in political defeat and implication in the Pacific scandal. His career, Young concludes, illustrates the development of bourgeois hegemony in Montreal after 1840 and the progressive integration of institutional, political, and economic structures to preserve that power.
 

Contents

Two Business Family and Social Position
12
Urban revenue properties 1873
18
Rural properties 1873
20
Portfolio of stocks bonds and bank deposits 1873
21
Income 1873
24
Estate
26
Three Working Politician
53
Elections
57
Some political offices held by or offered to Cartier
60
Directorships
64
Four Institutions
86
Five Conclusion
119
CHRONOLOGY
138
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
170
Copyright

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About the author (1981)

Brian Young is James McGill Professor (emeritus) of Canadian history at McGill University.

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