Mount Royal Club

45.501127°N 73.577857°W / 45.501127; -73.577857The Mount Royal Club is a private social club in Montreal, Quebec. The club was founded as a gentlemen's club in 1899 by a breakaway group from the Saint James's Club, but in 1990 became mixed-sex. In its prime, the Mount Royal was Canada's most prestigious club and was an integral part of Montreal's Golden Square Mile society. During the age when Montreal was the center of commerce in Canada, the club's membership counted the many of the country's most powerful executives, bankers, and financiers. The Mount Royal's clubhouse on Sherbrooke Street was completed in 1906 and was designed by McKim, Mead & White of New York.

Mount Royal Club
Formation23 September 1899 (1899-09-23)
TypePrivate club
Headquarters1175 Sherbrooke St West
Location
Websitemountroyalclub.com

In the latter half of the 20th century, the Mount Royal underwent significant upheaval. Until the 1960, the club's membership was almost entirely of English or Scottish descent, which mirrored the Protestant nature of Montreal commercialism. In the wake of the Quiet Revolution, the corporate center of Canada shifted to Toronto, and much of the city's Anglophone élite migrated out of Quebec. As Montreal decreased in economic significance, the club ceased to serve as the social epicenter of corporate power in Canada.

History
The 1906 clubhouse, designed by McKim, Mead & White

The Mount Royal Club was founded in 1899 by a group of members of the Saint James's Club of Montreal who believed their club had become too crowded. The club's first president was Sir George Alexander Drummond. The club purchased the former Sherbrooke Street home of Sir John Abbott, Canada's third prime minister, to use as its clubhouse. On 5 January 1904, the house burned down. The club then undertook to build a new clubhouse on the site, which opened in 1906.[1]

In 1984, Governor General Jeanne Sauvé was made an honourary member. In 1990, the club elected to end its status as a gentlemen's club and become mixed-sex. Sauvé became its first female member.[2]

In a 2013 article in Maclean's describing the fall of Canada's old establishment, Newman cited a 1993 event at the Mount Royal Club as marking the death of this class. That year, Lynton Wilson held a cigar dinner at the club whose speaker was Marvin Shanken. Among the guests was Governor General Ray Hnatyshyn. After dinner, Hnatyshyn asked Shanken "do you begin the day with a tiny cigarillo and work your way up to a man-size cigar, or what?" Shanken, who was unaware how to address a governor general, responded, "no way, your admirable. I just light up one big motherfucker at seven in the morning and it keeps me in orbit all day." In Newman's words, "thus died the Canadian Establishment—at the Mount Royal Club, vaporized by cigar smoke and Yankee slang."[3]

Club histories
  • Stikeman, H. Heward. The Mount Royal Club, 1899-1999. Price-Patterson, 1999.

See also

References
  1. Peter C. Newman, The Canadian Establishment, (McClelland and Stewart, 1975), 426.
  2. H. Heward Stikeman, The Mount Royal Club, 1899-1999, (Price-Patterson, 1999), 96-97.
  3. Peter C. Newman, "The fall of the titans," Maclean's (Vol. 126 No. 10, 6 March 2013), 36.
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