The burning of the Parliament Buildings in Montreal was an important event in pre-Confederation Canadian history and occurred on the night of April 25, 1849, in Montreal, the then-capital of the Province of Canada. It is considered a crucial moment in the development of the Canadian democratic tradition, largely as a consequence of how the matter was dealt with by then co-prime ministers of the united Province of Canada, Sir Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine and Robert Baldwin.