A Country In Progress

 This beautiful sleigh was made in Montreal during the first half of the 19th century.

Medals and chalices- a nod to the growing use of precious metals in British North America.

Montreal also saw the rise of sports clubs- from cricket to curling to lacrosse. That last sport, a game played for thousands of years by indigenous peoples, is one of Canada's two national sports.

William Logan was the first director of the Geological Survey of Canada, a government organization that went out to study the land, advancing knowledge as they went. Their first headquarters was in Montreal before moving to Ottawa.

Medals and an octant presented to Logan for the work of the GSC are displayed here.

The 1830s saw a time of rebellions in the colonies. In their wake, two colonial legislatures- Upper Canada and Lower Canada, what is today Ontario and Quebec- were fused into one. It was an ungainly fusion. And yet it would lay the groundwork for Canada becoming what it is today.

The Canadas had two co-premiers, Robert Baldwin and Louis-Hippolyte LaFontaine, who went to work with an agenda for responsible government by the people. 

They had the support of the governor-general at the time, Lord Elgin. Their work would lead to Confederation in the years following their time in office.

Colonial politicians would come together to discuss the formation of a country.

A big factor in that lay south of the border, where the Americans had ambitions looking north, and spent years locked in the brutal fighting of the Civil War. Canadian leaders looked at what was happening to the south, and took it as an example of what not to follow.