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38 Hours to Montreal : William Weller and the Governor General's Race of 1840
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| Author/collaborator |
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| Title |
38 Hours to Montreal : William Weller and the Governor General's Race of 1840
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| Abstract |
William Weller (1799-1863), known as "The Stagecoach King", owned a well-established fleet of brightly coloured Royal Mail Line coaches that ran from Niagara to Montreal. In February 1840, newly-appointed Governor General Charles Poulett Thompson hired Weller to urgently drive him and his aide-de-camp, Captain Thomas Le Marchant, from York (Toronto) to Montreal. Poulett needed to be in Montreal in less than forty-eight hours to ensure the passage of the Act of Union legislation through Lower Canada's legislature. The 595 kilometre trip in winter by sleigh normally took five to six days. Weller completed the feat in less than forty hours, and won £1,000 for the feat. The author describes the stagecoach stop by stagecoach stop along the route (most of which was in present day Ontario), including those stops once Weller and Poulett crossed into Quebec at Rivière-Beaudette and on into Montreal.
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| Place |
Victoria, BC
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| Publisher |
Friesen Press
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| Date |
2018
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| # of Pages |
xvi-276p.
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| Language |
en
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| ISBN |
978-1-5255-1989-5
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| Citation |
Buchanan, Dan. 38 Hours to Montreal : William Weller and the Governor General’s Race of 1840. Victoria, BC: Friesen Press, 2018.
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Page 32 of 788
