What could cattle, which had never sailed, feel, crammed into the hold of a ship for 10 days of pitching between the St. Lawrence and the British coast?
How many of these animals have never seen dry land again, thrown overboard during the crossing? And in this same hold, men barely better regarded than them, often young Irish immigrants, sometimes orphans, were hired as drovers (cattlemen) to take care of the livestock, without always being paid on arrival.
Far from being simple goods, did cattle and drovers contribute, through their needs and their resistance, to shaping the rhythm of the docks and commerce of Montreal and Quebec?
These are the questions that Catherine Paulin explored in her doctoral thesis, carried out under the direction of Professor Michèle Dagenais, of the Department of History at the University of Montreal. The student traces the transformations of the Canadian live cattle export trade to Great Britain between the 1870s and the early 20ecentury.