Roadwork unearths remnants of 1800s Montreal zoo run by the ‘Canadian Barnum’

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Lengthy earlier than the Plateau-Mont-Royal turned one in all Montreal’s trendiest neighbourhoods, the world was house to a Nineteenth-century botanical backyard and zoo the place Montrealers marvelled on the sight of hippopotamuses, acrobatic circus acts and a stay whale in a tank.

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This piece of historical past has resurfaced in latest weeks due to an archeological dig that unearthed what’s believed to be a part of a fountain marking the previous web site’s entrance.

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Jonathan Choronzey, an archeologist with the agency Ethnoscop, mentioned the fountain was found throughout roadwork happening on Pine Ave.

“I don’t know if there’s a vacationer attraction as we speak that might examine,” Choronzey mentioned in a telephone interview. “It was as a lot English as French, wealthy and poor who may go there to admire the unique animals and the reveals.”

Historic data counsel the fountain base was a part of one of many metropolis’s first botanical gardens, which was based by Joseph-Edouard Guilbault within the Nineteenth century.

Choronzey mentioned Guilbault was initially a horticulturalist who moved his backyard a number of occasions earlier than touchdown close to what’s now Pine Ave., round 1860. On the time, the world was nonetheless largely rural, which gave him loads of area to broaden and embody an unique animal menagerie and area to host travelling circuses.

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Justin Ber, a board member of the historic society for the Plateau-Mont-Royal neighbourhood, mentioned Guilbault began out promoting unique vegetation to the wealthy however quickly branched out to different types of leisure.

A poster from 1862 marketed the arrival of the Hippozoonomadon circus, that includes the “largest elephants the world,” a hippopotamus, in addition to horse using and comedy reveals.

The Montreal Herald, in the meantime, supplied a glowing account of a tightrope walker named Farini, whose high-flying antics have been so daring that “not just a few of those that silently watched him appeared awestruck at his temerity,” the reporter wrote in 1864.

Newspaper accounts from the day advised the entrepreneurial Guilbault even employed somebody to seize a white whale — most likely a beluga — which he deliberate to move to the zoo web site in a tank by prepare.

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“The monster is, we’re informed, as massive as anybody has ever tried to switch from one place to a different,” learn a Montreal Herald article from Could 1863. The 19-foot animal was “bigger than the one exhibited by Barnum, and by which he realized such immense revenue,” the article continued, in reference to P.T. Barnum, founding father of the American travelling present Barnum & Bailey Circus.

The backyard on the outskirts of the town included inexperienced area in the summertime, an indoor skating rink within the winter and the travelling circuses. Different historic sources reference a circus college, in addition to picnics, balls and theatre reveals.

“Bear in mind, we’re effectively earlier than the invention of cinema, earlier than the invention of radio, so individuals for leisure want issues that occur in actual life,” Ber mentioned.

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Bernard Vallée, a historic tour information who has studied the gardens, described Guilbault as a “Canadian Barnum” who understood individuals’s want to flee their powerful lives.

“There was a visionary facet to this entrepreneur who noticed that residents in a rising metropolis want hobbies, want nature and, as neighbourhoods develop and a sure city distress exists, they want an escape,” he mentioned.

Choronzey mentioned that up to now, the fountain is the one merchandise that has been introduced up throughout the dig that may be definitively linked to Guilbault Gardens.

Aside from a close-by public sq. named after the founder, which options diving pink hippopotamus sculptures, there may be little hint of what was as soon as one of many metropolis’s first nice amusement parks.

Nonetheless, Choronzey mentioned the dig has additionally introduced up objects typical of Victorian life, together with dishware, house foundations and outdated latrines. He mentioned there may be nonetheless lots to find below Montreal’s streets, together with traces of historical Indigenous inhabitation, the French regime or Victorian life — relying on the world.

“There are all the time fairly just a few surprises hidden below our ft,” he mentioned.