A Duel Over A Hospital
How two men shot each other five times over building a hospital in Montreal
Duels aren’t extremely common in Canadian history. They have happened, but there is nothing as famous duel between Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton in the United States.
That being said, there is an interesting story related to two men and their dispute over building, of all things, a hospital.
Michael O’Sullivan was a member of the Legislative Assembly of Lower Canada, representing Huntingdon County. He was an officer in the Lower Canada militia in the War of 1812 and fought at the Battle of the Châteauguay.
In 1814, he was elected to the Legislative Assembly. where he would remain for the next decade.
The next person in our story was William Caldwell. Born in Scotland, he was a veteran himself and had served with the Royal York Rangers and the 13th Light Dragoons and was a veteran of the Napoleonic Wars. In 1817, he moved to Montreal and became a medical examiner.
In 1819, Montreal had two hospitals, Hôtel-Dieu de Montréal and Hôpital général des frères Charron. Both were operated by the Catholic Church. John Molson, the creator of Molson Brewery, petitioned for a third hospital that was non-denominational.
Caldwell supported this but O’Sullivan, a devout Catholic, strongly opposed it. He argued that Hôtel-Dieu was more than adequate to handle extra patients and he claimed this third hospital would conduct experiments on the patients.
Caldwell responded to these claims by writing a letter to the Canadian Courant and stating O’Sullivan lacked personal courage.
Reading this, O’Sullivan was enraged and he challenged Caldwell to a duel.
Caldwell readily accepted.
On April 11, 1819 at 6 a.m., accompanied by their seconds, at the future site of the Victoria Bridge, the two men faced off. Both men agreed to fire five shots instead of the customary two.
And with that, they turned and fired at each other.
In the duel, both men were severely wounded. Caldwell was shot in the arm, causing the bone to shatter. The injury prevented him from ever performing surgery again. O’Sullivan didn’t fare any better. He was shot twice. One ball hit him near the spine in an inoperable position. He walked with a limp and had severe pain for the rest of his life.
Did it stop the hospital from being built?
Nope.
The Montreal General Hospital was built in 1823, financed by private donors. It was the forerunner of the McGill Medical School. Caldwell taught medicine there until he died of typhus fever in the winter of 1832.
Caldwell died of the same disease just a couple months later in January 1833.