Glossary
Back to "Time and Place"
Homepage

Many people, some famous and some not, travelled on the P.S. Lady Sherbrooke. Chief Justice Sir James Monk embarked on the steamer on May 9, 1820. He was accompanied by his daughter and three servants. His luggage included two horses, one buggy, nineteen trunks, and a number of boxes. He was not travelling light! Curiously Molson will only receive payment for this trip two years later. The rich have a tendency to forget!

On passage from Montréal to Québec (down river) there were always less passengers than on the trip in the opposite direction. In fact the trips upriver often carried many newly arrived immigrants. For example, on 25 June 1825, 800 Irish immigrants from Cork and Londonderry, booked passage on the P.S. Lady Sherbrooke. This trip was a record breaking voyage for the ship in terms of passengers.

Also many soldiers travelled on the steamer to get to their posting. Using the passenger list, we can estimate the number of people who travelled on our boat at around 75,000. Simply stated this means that many Canadians probably have an ancestor who was a passenger of the P.S. Lady Sherbrooke.