men of the Beaver Club, a gentlemen's dining club, provided the financial backing and necessary management to take control of the fur trade. The new merchants were associated with the North West Company, the Hudson's Bay Company and the agents of the East India Company, and eventually dominated the fur market in most of British North America. As many of the wealthy French Canadians moved from Canada to France following the Conquest, British merchants were able to cheaply purchase vast tracts of land upon which to build factories, and take control of the banking and finance of the new Dominion. The growing fortune of the Montreal mercantile elite of this era was consolidated through marriage and company mergers. After the collapse of the fur trade in the 1850s, the mercantile elite turned its interest to railways and shipping. By the mid-19th century, the Montreal mercantile elite, residing in the Square Mile, firmly held the reins of Canada's economy. The merchants successfully connected Canada by building a network of railroads and exploiting maritime routes and the port of Montreal, which l remained the principal port through which immigrants arrived, and also through which Canada's produce was shipped to and from Britain and the Empire. For decades, the wealth accumulated from the fur trade, finance, and other industries made of Montreal's mercantile elite a "kind of commercial aristocracy, living in lordly and hospitable style," as Washington Irving observed. In 1820, John Bigsby penned his impressions of the city:I found, but did not expect to find, at Montreal a pleasing transcript of the best form of London life — even in the circle beneath the very first class of official families. But I may be pardoned; for I had seen in the capital of another great colony (Cape Town) considerable primitiveness of manners.. (In Montreal) at an evening party at Mr Richardson's the appointments and service were admirable; the dress, manners, and conversation of the guests, in excellent taste. Most of the persons there, though country-born, had been educated in England (Britain), and everything savoured of Kensington. There was much good music.. Some of the show-shops rival those of London in their plate-glass windows, and its inns are as remarkable for their palatial exterior as they are for their excellent accommodation within.. Montreal is a stirring and opulent town.. Few places have so advanced in all the luxuries and comforts of high civilisation