Note 50 — Chapter VI
Reading edition
This spot, named Pointe à Callières, "ad confluxium magni et parvi fluminis," was at the junction of the River St. Peter and the St. Lawrence opposite Ile Normandin, and took its name from the house of the governor, then Chevalier Hector de Callières, built there in 1668. It is now occupied by the custom house (1914). The plans of the Château Callières are preserved in the plans of Montreal, 1723, by M. de Catalogne, and in those of 1761 by M. P. Labrosse. This remained a cemetery till 1654, when, owing to the inundations, the burials were transferred to a plot occupied in part today by that Place d'Armes, which, being in the neighbourhood of the hospital, was called in the act of burial of 1654 the "new hospital cemetery." The bodies were not removed, out of respect, till 1793, when the land had been ceded by the seigneurs to Louis Guy, notary, by an act passed before Joseph Papineau, November 22, 1749. The Hôtel-Dieu ground was used as the cemetery for twenty-five years.