On March 12, 1786, Presbyterians from the English speaking community in Montreal gathered in a room on Notre Dame Street to worship together according to the usage of the Church of Scotland. Chaplains from Scotland may have preached in Montreal previously, possibly in the same rented room on Notre Dame Street, but in March of 1786, the occasion was of greater significance. [...]

Early records of the St. Gabriel Street Church are contained in the Presbytery Office of The Presbyterian Church in Canada located in the Dominion Square Building. There are none in the First Presbyterian Church in Montreal. The register of the St. Peter Street Church is to be found in the archives of the Church of St. Andrew and St. Paul although apparently, not the Minute Book of the Church Committee. A manuscript source of great value, if it could be located, is the diary of William Hunter, in which he is said to have noted the ecclesiastical events of his day. Before he helped form the St. Peter Street congregation, he had been an elder in the St. Gabriel Street Church. His diary was used by Robert Campbell in 1887. The most valuable printed material relating to the St. Gabriel Street Church and the individuals who formed its membership, is found in Robert Campbell’s book of 800 pages, entitled “History of the Scotch Church St. Gabriel Street, Montreal”, and published in 1887. It also contains useful information concerning the St. Peter Street Church. In addition we have a short, almost contemporary history of the St. Peter Street Church. It was written by Dr. Alexander Mathieson in 1832, and is found in “The Life of Alexander Mathieson”, published by James Croil in 1870.

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Extensive church building programmes and the relocation of existing churches were important features of Protestant congregational life in industrializing cities across Britain and North America. In Montreal, building booms in the 1860s, 70s, and 80s led many congregations to abandon their old churches in the centre of the city and rebuild on a grander scale 'uptown', closer to the residential neighbourhoods to which their wealthier members were moving. In the early twentieth century, when a new phase of growth engulfed the city, many of the same congregations again faced the dilemma of whether or not to move. Whereas the earlier period was characterized by a strong evangelical consensus, the subsequent period was associated with wider-ranging theological and social debates: the context of decision-making had changed. / For each period, I explore the impact of building decisions on 'domestic' ministries to church members and on the 'public' ministries that congregations carried out in the environs of their churches and in working-class neighbourhoods. In doing so, I draw on a variety of methodological approaches and on local sources that have not previously been synthesized. A database containing temporal and spatial information for every Protestant church built in Montreal between 1760 and 1914 was also constructed for this project. Case studies of six 'uptown' congregations, and of a downtown neighbourhood that was a popular mission field, are carried out. Investigation of documentary sources such as church minute books and correspondence is complemented by cartographic and sociological analyses of church membership using city directories, tax rolls, censuses, and the recently completed Montreal l'Avenir du Passe historical geo-database. A systematic sampling of local newspapers and denominational records brings to life the many congregational controversies and dilemmas that spilled over into the public sphere during a time of dramatic urban, social, and theological change. / A range of external factors, both material and spiritual, affected the choices that were made. I show how investment in religious edifices during the original phase of church moves, as well as the heightened social exclusivity that these moves generated, made it more challenging for the next generation to adapt their religious institutions to the needs of the twentieth-century city. Congregations simultaneously had to deal with a number of ongoing tensions: the logic of institutional maintenance versus the logic of mission, competition versus cooperation amongst Protestant institutions, and the dynamic between capitalist materialism and Christianity. Unless these tensions were skilfully negotiated by church leaders, they threatened to destroy either the viability or the integrity of religious institutions.

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