On His Way in the World

This previously unpublished diary was written by John Henry Molson when he was just fourteen. John Henry Robinson Molson was born in Kingston in 1826, a favored grandchild of the founder of Molson's Brewery in Montreal. He inherited the brewery upon John Molson's death in 1836. His grandfather had died when he was ten, and his father and uncles now ran the brewery, as well as a foundry, a ship-yard, and a line of steamships on the St. Lawrence. He was aware that this would be his last real summer as a child; in September his formal apprenticeship at the brewery would begin. In the spring of 1841, JHR, his father Thomas, and younger sister Mary Anne boarded the steamer Queen in Montreal. The three were on their way to Halifax where the would take the HMS Britannia to begin a four-month tour of Britain. By September 3 the family was back in Montreal. The diary was not resumed again until February 1842 when JHR chronicles this journey from Montreal to Toronto. The last entry is dated December 3, 1842. With the eye of a keen observer--sometimes ingenuous, sometimes self-conscious--the boy records the details of their trip, including descriptions of the 12,000-ton paddlewheeler, death and storms at sea, and whales and birds that he saw. When the Britannia arrived in Liverpool June 9, they discovered that the ship had been feared lost at sea. During their travels throughout England and Scotland JHR described with great detail the latest transportation and industrial developments of Great Britain.