Born at Thwaite Hall, Norfolk, 27 July 1789, he was the son of Jacob Mountain, a bishop and politician, by his wife Elizabeth Mildred Wale co-heiress of Little Bardfield Hall, near Thaxted, Essex. Mountain was directly descended from Michel de Montaigne who was exiled from France after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. In 1793 he moved with his family to Quebec City when his father was appointed the first Anglican Bishop of Quebec by his friend William Pitt the Younger. He lived with his family at Marchmont House, near Quebec, where he received his early education before returning to England at the age of sixteen to study under private tutors until he matriculated from Trinity College, Cambridge, graduating Bchelor of Arts in 1810, and Doctor of Divinity in 1819. He removed again to Canada in 1811, and, becoming secretary to his father, was ordained deacon in 1812 and priest in 1816, at the same time being appointed evening lecturer in Quebec Cathedral. He was rector of Fredericton, New Brunswick, from 1814 to 1817, when he returned to Quebec as rector of that parish and bishop's official. In 1821 he became Archdeacon of Lower Canada. On 14 February 1836 he was consecrated, at Lambeth, Bishop suffragan of Montreal, as coadjutor to Charles Stewart, Bishop of Quebec. Stewart shortly afterwards proceeded to Britain, and the care of the entire diocese was under Mountain's administration until 1839, when Upper Canada was made a separate see. It was through his earnest exertions that Rupert's Land was also, in 1849, erected into an episcopal see. He continued to administer all Lower Canada as Bishop coadjutor of Montreal until 1850, when he secured the constitution of the Diocese of Montreal, he himself retaining the Diocese of Quebec, by far the poorer and more laborious of the two. During the greater part of his ministerial career he had to perform long, tedious, and often dangerous journeys into the interior of a wild and unsettled country, paying frequent visits to the north-west territory, the eastern townships, the Magdalen Islands, and the shores of Labrador; also to Rupert's Land, some 3,600 miles, in an Indian canoe. He came to Britain in 1853 to confer with William Broughton, the metropolitan of Australasia, on the subject of synodical action in colonial churches, and he received the degree of Doctor of Civil Law at the University of Oxford. The greatest of his works was the establishment in 1845 of the Lower Canadian Church University, Bishop's College, Lennoxville, for the education of clergymen. Mountain was a learned theologian, an elegant scholar, and powerful preacher. He died at Bardfield in Sillery, on 6 January 1863.
Career in Education
From 1824 to 1835, he was the first principal of McGill University and professor of divinity. Many first-year students today live in the Bishop Mountain Residences which bears his name. In 1843, he was instrumental in the founding of Bishop's University in Lennoxville, Quebec. He is also responsible for creating the Link of Bishop's University with Bishop's College School who founded in 1836 which was then called Lennoxville Classical School. His missionary journey to the Red River Colony is recorded in The Journal of the Bishop of Montreal, during a Visit to the Church Missionary Society's North-West America Mission; it remains a lasting church historical and ethnographic resource.
Works
Besides many single sermons, charges, and pamphlets, Mountain wrote:
The Journal of the Bishop of Montreal during a Visit to the Church Missionary Society's North-West American Mission
Journal of a Visitation in a Portion of the Diocese, by the Lord Bishop of Montreal
Sermons published at the Request of the Synod of the Diocese
Streets named
Two adjacent parallel streets in downtown Montreal are said to be named in his honour: Bishop and Mountain. However, the origin of the first name is uncertain, and the name chemin de la Montagne for the second street is found in maps dating to 1761 and 1778, before his birth or the arrival of his father in Quebec.
