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THE CRAIG STREET DRILL HALL:
THE 2ND REGIMENTAL HOME OF CANADA’S BLACK WATCH
by Earl John Chapman
THE 1ST CRAIG STREET DRILL HALL – ‘A NOTORIOUS BUILDING’
In 1869, thirty-seven years before the opening of its Bleury Street Armoury, Canada’s Black Watch – then known as the 5th Battalion, Royal Light Infantry of Montreal – proudly marched into its new quarters in the Craig Street Drill Hall. Prior to the opening of the new drill hall, the 5th Royal Light Infantry, usually referred to as the 5th Royals, were sharing quarters with other Montreal volunteer militia units in the Bonsecours Market on St. Paul Street East, drilling in the “upper flats” of the City Concert Hall, as well as sharing a few rooms in the building’s lower levels, presumably to store arms and ammunition. Obtaining permission to use the market building was no small accomACity Hall, and space was at a premium, in fact, the Montreal volunteers were forced to find other quarters to serve as orderly rooms and messes. The Bonsecours Market, known to the 5th Royals as the “City Hall Armoury,” would be their regimental home for twenty-three years, broken down into two periods, 1862- 1869 and 1872-1888, as will be discussed below.
This unsatisfactory arrangement – the co-habitation of the market building by both militia and civilian tenants – continued for some years despite the many complaints lodged by both parties.1 However, it would take the first Fenian Raid in 1866 to finally move the City Corporation (the old name for the Montreal City Council) to action, pushed by public opinion and pulled by the federal government. Late in 1866, the city agreed to build a new drill hall on Craig Street, opposite the Champ de Mars, large enough to house most of Montreal’s volunteer militia force in one building. The Craig Street property cost the City Corporation $55,000, a considerable sum in those days, and the federal government agreed to pay for the building’s construction, a whopping $70,000. While the city would be responsible for the building’s lighting, heating, and maintenance costs, the federal government agreed to offset these expenses by paying an annual rental fee back to the Corporation. While the land was a former swamp – which would later complicate construction – it was in other respects an ideal site as the troops could march out of the drill hall, cross Craig Street, and be drilled outdoors, weather permitting. But, like many joint federal and local
projects, the original Craig Street Drill Hall was a disaster from start to finish.
While authorized late in 1866, it took until the following Spring before a contract to build the drill hall was awarded to architects Alexander Fowler and Victor Roy. While known to Montrealers as the Craig Street Drill Shed, it was actually an imposing limestone structure with Gothic Revival details, vaguely suggaestive of a medieval fortress. The hall, measuring an impressive 123 feet (width) by 300 feet (length), was built as an economy measure – a single building that could house all local militia units would be much cheaper than building separate armouries for each one. The huge structure, taking up an entire city block, featured one-story “wings” on either side of a central drill hall, with each wing sub-divided into separate apartments – orderly room and armoury – one for each of Montreal’s volunteer rifle, cavalry and artillery corps. A unit’s location in the wing apartments was determined by its precedence on the Militia List. The more senior 5th Military District occupied the west wing apartments, while the 6th District occupied the east wing. Within each wing, the senior corps occupied the apartment closest to Craig Street, with the next senior corps taking the adjacent apartment, and so on. Thus, in the west wing, the 1st Prince of Wales Rifles occupied the first apartment, followed by the 3rd Victoria Rifles, and then the 5th Royals. The apartments were also used by the unit’s musicians for band practice.
Quickly-prepared plans and specifications, coupled with somewhat shoddy construction necessitated costly design modifications during construction. The large hall was covered by a gable roof supported by “a wooden Howe truss braced from beneath by a latticed, two-hinged, tied arch.” The weight of the arch was carried by the strong lateral walls. Originally, the ends of each arch were tied together by a single 2-inch round iron tie rod, but part way through construction it had been decided to strengthen the roof by replacing the single rod with two larger rods, each 4 3⁄4-inches in diameter. This type of ‘tied arch’ was used in the construction of a number of railway sheds in the 1850s and 1860s, but, “unlike these station sheds, the Craig Street Drill Hall had to contend with Montreal winters, and its roof survived for only five years before collapsing in 1872.” 2
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