Montreal City Mission 100 th anniversary

One hundred years ago this fall W. Bowman Tucker was arrested for handing out pamphlets in Romanian around the Main and St. Catherine. Tucker was an Englishman who had bagged a PhD before coming here and opened up the Montreal City Mission in 1910. He helped prostitutes, the poor and abandoned children. He was acquitted of handing out the pamphlets on the basis that they were eventually discovered to be of a religious nature and did not therefore violate the ban on pamphlet distribution. 
   Bowman wrote at least three books, Song of the Wayside (Lovells 1918), The Camden Colony (1908) and Laurentian Tales. From 1912 the Mission was based at 287 Cadieux, which sits between Dorchester and St. Catherine on the street now known as De Bullion. The two storey building at the corner of Demarais had a room for boys in the basement, as well as baths, offices and a chapel on the main floor and accomodations and a place for girls upstairs. It was a highly-ethnic area and Bowman concentrated his work on immigrant outreach. It was reported in 1912 that the Jews of the area welcomed his initiative, believing it would help land values in the area but one year earlier Rabbi Glazer bitterly denounced Tucker for trying to lure Jewish children to Christianity through "ice cream, candy and free moving picture shows." The Rabbi said that Tucker's five year attempt to bring Jewish children had been a total failure as no children had converted to Christianity but several people had converted to Judaism.

   Tucker suffered an accident that "lamed him" in 1933 and died on a trip to England with his daughter in 1934

   His All People's Mission continued at its spot until July 1965 that is when the building was demolished. The mission was moved to St. Dominique south of Pine after that. The bell was said to have been put into storage. The Montreal City Mission moved to the side entrance of that Church on City Councillors just north of St. Catherine in the 80s.