Glossary
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It is difficult today to imagine the condition of travel during the nineteenth century on board a boat like the P.S. Lady Sherbrooke. We do know that the upper class passengers travelled in relative comfort, at least based on the standards of that period. However, the experience of the immigrants was probably very different. In fact this boat was a microcosm, a kind of slice of life of the society of the period with distinctive class barriers.

A list of the regulations for passengers on board the ship gives us some hints about what the experience would have been like. For example:

• it is forbidden to smoke in the cabins;
• it is forbidden to spit on the floor;
• it is forbidden to wash in the cabin;
• all game playing must stop a 10:00 P.M.;
• no alcoholic beverage will be served after this time;
• it is forbidden to sit on tables; and
• it is forbidden to wear shoes to bed.

These regulations were obviously directed at cabin passengers. The immigrants crowded on the open deck would have had their own rules. Records show that some did their own cooking in open braceros. This is quite strange since on a wooden boat, like the P.S. Lady Sherbrooke, a major safety concern would have always been fire.

A typical down river trip (Montréal to Québec) would start around 2 o'clock A.M. at the river edge behind Bonsecours Chapel. At 8:00 A.M. the steamer would make its first scheduled stop at William Henry ( now Sorel, Québec). There, the crew would load on 2 cords of wood to feed the ships hungry boilers. The steamer would then depart at 9:00 A.M.. After crossing Lake St-Peter, it makes its arrival at Trois-Rivières around 11:00. The stop there would usually be very short, perhaps 20 minutes, just long enough to get another two cords of wood. Finally, the steamer arrived at Québec, at the Molson's dock around 5:00 P.M.. Remarkably this was considered a very fast trip for the period, just 16 hours. We know that some took more than 20 hours to complete. That same journey today, by car, takes well under three hours.