The Morrin Centre is at the heart of Quebec City’s history. It once housed Quebec’s common jail, the Presbyterian-
run Morrin College, and the scholarly activities of the Literary and Historical Society of Quebec (LHSQ). Today, it is home to the city’s main English-language cultural centre and library.
The colourful stories of each of these institutions reveal unknown aspects of the tumultuous history of Quebec’s capital city and bring some of its forgotten characters back to life. This book takes you from the dark prison cells on the building’s ground floor to the stately library and college classrooms above it.
Did you know that Quebec’s first French-language novelist, Philippe Aubert de Gaspé, did time in the jail, that Morrin College admitted women on equal terms with men some sixty years before Université Laval, or that the Literary and Historical Society of Quebec helped establish Canada’s National Archives?
This book can be purchased at the Morrin Centre or by contacting us at 418-694-9147, ext. 0.
Authors: Louisa Blair, Patrick Donovan and Donald Fyson
Foreword by Louise Penny
Baraka Books (English) and éditions Septentrion (French)
Illustrated
260 pages
$34.95 (+GST)
In the media:
3 600 secondes d’histoire, CHYZ, Episode aired on July 27, 2016
“The magnificent library at the heart of Anglo Quebec City“, Maclean’s, July 6, 2016
“Étagères et barreaux de fer” : Une histoire du Morrin Centre, Première Heure, Radio-Canada, June 21, 2016
New book about Morrin Centre history, Breakaway, CBC Radio One, June 16, 2016
References for the section “PRISON REFORM AND PRISON SOCIETY: THE QUEBEC GAOL, 1812-1867.”
References for the sections on the Morrin College and the LHSQ will be shared soon.