Lives in Cricket No 24 - Edgar Willsher

69 Chapter Eleven Cricket on the Brain ‘Cricket’ is the talk in this city at the present time. For some weeks past Cricket has engrossed the public attention, and now that the grand contest is going on, everybody seems to be seized with ‘Cricket on the brain’. So wrote ‘Alpha’ in a letter sent from Montreal to the readers of the Boston Evening Transcript . He goes on to describe a city ‘laden with crowds of pleasure tourists’, reflecting the new-found confidence in the country after the passing of the British North America Act had created the Dominion of Canada only a year previously. Yet ties with the Mother Country could not be so easily broken; soon after becoming Canada’s first Prime Minister, Sir John Macdonald declared cricket the national sport. Indeed, the ‘Twenty-Two of Canada’ arrayed in front of Willsher’s men consisted of a mixture of Canadian civilians and British soldiers from the Montreal garrison. Despite its French origins, Montreal was now, with a population of at least 100,000, the largest city in British North America and the economic and cultural heart of Canada. However, cricket’s grip on the public imagination was to be short-lived. Although there was no showcase baseball match on this trip, as cultural exchanges with the United States expanded in the 1870s inevitably the quintessential American sport rapidly replaced cricket as the nation’s favourite pastime. For the moment, the tyranny of distance somewhat restricted the march of progress, as Ned and team discovered on their three-day trudge from New York to Montreal. After taking in the delights of Niagara Falls on Sunday, 20 September, they finally reached their destination at 10 o’clock on Monday night, having changed trains no fewer than three times. Once again, they were treated to top-class accommodation at the St Lawrence Hall, another of the Prince of Wales’ favourite haunts in the centre of the city. Unlike in New York, however, the tight schedule meant there was no time for acclimatisation: the match would start the next day. There was just time for Alfred Shaw to record another food-related incident from his time at the St Lawrence: At Montreal, where black waiters attended our table,