Print

This color engraving by Eugène Haberer (1837-1921), entitled Royal Albert Bridge, was published in February 1876 in the Canadian Illustrated News. Eugène Haberer was an engraver known for his depictions of monuments in the second half of the 19th century. Here, he offers an illustration of a proposed rail and road bridge across the St. Lawrence between Montreal and Longueuil, whose plans and technical drawings were developed by civil engineer Charles Legge in 1875. However, it was never built. The idea for this infrastructure was revived 50 years later when the present-day Jacques Cartier Bridge was built.

The Canadian Illustrated News was a weekly English-language magazine published in Montreal by Georges Desbarats between 1869 and 1883. It illustrates an era marked by industrial, technological and commercial renewal, notably with the development of transportation and means of communication, with projects such as the Royal-Albert Bridge. The newspaper’s aim was to disseminate a new image of Canada through the publication of illustrations, as did its French-language counterpart, Opinion publique. At a time when the press was essentially focused on politics and the publication of specialized texts, the Canadian Illustrated News renewed the medium. It is one of the most innovative newspapers in the history of printing in Canada, and one of the main sources of iconography for Quebec at the time.

Although the published texts are of high quality, it’s the illustrations that attract readers. These drawings were reproduced using the leggotyping process invented by Desbarats’ associate William Augustus Leggo. This process enables photomechanical reproduction of drawings and engravings, printed at the same time as the text.