The Politics of Display: A ‘Literary and Historical’ Definition of Quebec in 1830s British North America
Author(s)
Stanworth, Karen
Abstract
It is at the geographic acme of political, social and cultural dominance in Quebec, the Union Hotel situated in the Place d’Armes, that one finds the Museum of the Society for promoting Literature, Sciences, Arts, and Historical Research in Canada. It is this museum and the collecting strategies of its proprietary society which provide the impetus for this chapter. Although the contents of the museum were dispersed just over a hundred years ago (1890) and its activities quickly faded from the public conscience, I will argue that, both for the stranger to Quebec and for the city dwellers who daily passed its prominent façade, the museum, as a repository of ‘literary, historical, and scientific’ objects, held a strategic position of both geographic and socio-political significance in the colony in the 1820s and 1830s. I will first briefly outline the historical, financial, and physical dimensions of the museum.
