The first epidemic of Asiatic cholera in Lower Canada, 1832.

I. LOWER CANADA IN 1832 IN 1832 Quebec and Montreal were the major cities of Lower Canadawithpopulations of twenty thousand and thirty thousand respectively. The rest of the population lived in smaller towns and villages scattered along the shores of the St. Lawrence. When the ice melted in spring, much of the travel in the province was done by boat along the river systems, and the St. Lawrence was dotted with hundreds of craft of all sizes in a traffic that was difficult to regulate. Conditions in the towns and cities of the province were the usual ones of the early nineteenth century. In Quebec, most of the population lived closely packed together below the cliff that dominates the city. Montreal was less densely settled but the bulk of the population lived crowded together in the cove.' The houses were small, dirty, and oftenjammed with permanent and transient residents. "It was not unusual for six or seven families to occupy a tenement formerly inhabited by one" according to one commentator who reported that in Quebec in 1831 "in a house containing two rooms. . . fifty persons were found . . ."2. Water for the residents came from wells, from water-carriers, or directly from the river itself, and the water of the St. Lawrence was well known for its evil effects. The houses and the streets in cities and towns were dirty and piled with garbage. Slaughterhouses operated within city limits and the refuse was frequently dumped in the streets. There were few provisions for cleaning houses, yards or streets and the atmosphere was ripe with the odour of decay. These common conditions of urban life endured partly because the government of the towns was in the hands of the local magistrates rather than of muncipal governments. Lower Canada was just on the verge of incorporating the cities and giving them self-government. There was little co-ordination between local government bodies and in Quebec the magistrates were reduced to prosecuting the Inspector of Roads for failing to clean the streets of the city.8 The public health problems of Lower Canada were intensified by the waves of emigration that reached North America in the 1830s. In 1831, fifty thousand emigrants