From the archives: Montreal's military origins

This story was first published on July 8, 2007, in the Montreal Gazette.
“I was agreeably surprised to see a very numerous and respectable muster of the Battalion of Montreal Militia.”
The Gazette, Friday, July 7, 1854
Well might Looker-On, which is how a letter to The Gazette was signed, be surprised. For some time, the annual muster of Montreal’s sedentary militia units had been a joke – and a joke in bad taste, at that. Each year, a growing number of men ignored the la