1883-1889: Quand Montréal avait son Carnaval!

Type of resource
Author/collaborator
Title
1883-1889: Quand Montréal avait son Carnaval!
Abstract
In 1882, Montreal lawyer Robert D. McGibbon, a member of the Montreal Snow Shoe Club, conceived the idea of organizing a week-long winter sporting competition between the city's various Anglophone sports clubs. The following year, 1883, the competition was organized and became North America's first winter carnival. Five winter carnivals were held in the city -- in 1883, 1884, 1885, 1887 and 1889. These carnivals served as winter tourism attractions for the city. The author outlines the conflict between Anglophones and Francophones over the initial success of the Montreal carnivals. As she points out, the carnivals were initinally shunned by the French Montreal elite, but their popularity and especially the economic spinoffs the carnivals generated awoke the "greed" of Francophone merchants and hoteliers in the city. In 1885, the city's Francophones held a separate winter carnival. By 1889, there were fewer economic spin-offs, as American cities begin holding winter carnivals, thus drawing off American tourists to Montreal, and the city's businessmen no longer wished to subsidize the carnivals.
Publication
Cap-aux-Diamants
Volume
No. 64
Pages
10-14
Date
Hiver 2001
Language
fr
URL
Citation
Dufresne, Sylvie. “1883-1889: Quand Montréal avait son Carnaval!” Cap-aux-Diamants No. 64 (Hiver 2001): 10–14. https://www.erudit.org/en/journals/cd/2001-n64-cd1043766/8382ac.pdf.
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