La République des incinérés : Histoire croisée des mouvements crématistes de Paris, du nord de l'Italie et de Montréal au XIXe siècle

The author discusses how and why radical liberals in nineteenth-century Quebec, nicknamed the Rouges, were committed to the cremation of corpses. He places the history of their advocacy in the context of the transnational development of European and American cremationist movements. The cremationist demands formulated by some Rouges echoed earlier appeals of anticlerical and republican cremation advocates in Paris and northern Italy. However, unlike the latter two groups, Rouge cremationists in Quebec did not live in a republic and did not have a secular cemetery at their disposal. Moreover, until the late nineteenth century, the Rouges suffered serious repression at the hands of Quebec's Catholic clergy. They therefore did not found a crematorium in Quebec. However, the author points out, Rouge cremationists in Montreal rubbed shoulders with a significant Anglophone Protestant community, some of whose members, tied to cremationist movements in Boston, established a crematorium at Mount Royal Cemetery.In 1901, Quebec's Legislative Assembly enacted a law authorizing the creation of the first crematorium in Canada, at Montreal's Mount Royal Cemetery. Montreal's Unitarian Church was a strong advocate of cremation, and John H. R. Molson (1826-1897) and his wife, Louisa Frothingham (1827-1910), both Unitarians, with the aid of William Macdonald (1831-1917), all members of Montreal's English-speaking elite, were instrumental in getting the 1901 law passed. It was at this facility that some Rouges were able to match words with actions and have their corpses cremated in the early twentieth century.

Histoire sociale / Social History

Vol. 49

no. 100

453-474

Novembre 2016

fr