The Grand Trunk Railway Literary and Scientific Institute was a mechanics' institute and library established by officers and employees of the Grand Trunk Railway (GTR) in 1857 in the Point St. Charles neighbourhood of Montreal in the Province of Canada.
Incorporated in 1871, the institute remained active until 1923, when GTR was purchased by Canadian National Railways.
[3] The lecture hall, a large room equipped with tables and benches, also featured a heating chamber to keep men's lunches hot.
[1] Among the powers of the Managing Committee were: deciding the charges for lectures and classes, purchasing, exchanging, and accepting gifts or loans of books, and establishing regulations of use of the reading room, library, lectures and classes.
The committee also had governance over membership with the ability to reprimand, fine, suspend or expel a member for acting contrary to the rules of the institute.
The directors of the Grand Trunk Railway handed over the sum to the committee of the institute for the purchase of new books.
[1] On March 27, 1879, the Point St. Charles branch of the institute received a gift from J. Curtis Clark, in the form of five framed pictures of Queen Victoria, the Governor General John Campbell, Marquess of Lorne, the Princess Louise, Marchioness of Lorne, the late Governor General the Frederick Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood, Earl of Dufferin, and Hariot, Countess of Dufferin.
[6] The institute was also located in GTR stations in the Ontario towns of Belleville, Stratford, and Lindsay.
[7] The institute in Lindsay operated from 1890 to 1923 with a reading room and library on the second floor of the station at Durham and William Streets.