Glossary
The P.S. Lady Sherbrooke
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Rue Sherbrooke

Who was Lady Sherbrooke???

It is unfortunate that today we know very little about who Lady Sherbrooke was. We do know that she born Katherine Pyndar in Worcestershire, England, and that she married Sir John Coape, Lord Sherbrooke, a man with a long and distinguished career in the British military, in 1811.

The P.S. Lady Sherbrooke, the subject of this site, was not the first vessel which was adorned with the name of Lady Sherbrooke. Ship registries from the 1800s show that in 1812 a ship constructed in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, and another from Arichat, Nova Scotia, were named the Lady Sherbrooke. An additional vessel probably constructed in Saint John, New Brunswick in 1816, and a schooner registered in Québec, Québec in 1817 (the same year as the P.S. Lady Sherbrooke) were also given this same name.

Lord Sherbrooke was named Governor of Lower Canada in 1816. By the end of 1817 five vessels carried the name of Lady Sherbrooke. Although they only stayed in Canada two years, Lord and Lady Sherbrooke established many strong connections, not the least of which was with the Molson family and the City of Montréal. They were among the first guests to stay at John Molson's new luxury hotel for steamship passengers, the Mansion House Hotel, and Molson payed tribute to Lady Sherbrooke by naming the fourth vessel in his fleet of steamships for her. A visible tribute to the Sherbrookes was the naming of a fashionable Montréal street, and the town of Sherbrooke, after them.