The QuÄbec Seminary is one of our few surviving seventeenth century structures and its appearance in 1886 was recorded in this oil painting by the artist Henry Bunnett. Construction was the industry which employed the largest number of workers in the towns during the French regime. Carpenters, masons and other craftsmen quickly perfected their skills. creating an architectural style based on French traditions but adapted to such distinctively Canadian factors as extreme cold, snow, and spring thaws and flooding. Moreover, the houses, convents and churches were extremely beautiful in their simplicity. Fires and, even more, a lack of concern on the part of many generations of profit-motivated real estate promoters are to blame for the low survival rate of these buildings.
