Читать книгу The Fair Dominion: A Record of Canadian Impressions - R. E. Vernede - Страница 8

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Ste. Anne de Beaupré is usually referred to as the Lourdes of Canada. When a metaphor of this sort is used it usually means that the spot referred to is in some way inferior to the original. In the case of Ste. Anne de Beaupré, the inferiority is not, I believe, in the matter of the number of miracles wrought there, but in the matter of general picturesqueness. Ste. Anne de Beaupré is not nearly so picturesque as Lourdes. If you wish to palliate this fact, you say, as one writer has said, that 'The beauty of modern architecture mingles at Beaupré with the remains of a hoary past.' If you do not wish to palliate it, you say, as I do, that Ste. Anne de Beaupré is not in the least picturesque. I did not particularly care for the modern architecture, and the hoary past is not particularly in evidence. Do not suppose me to say that Beaupré has not a hoary past. Red Indians, long before the days of railroads, travelled thither to pray at the feet of Ste. Anne. Breton seamen, who belong only to tradition, promised a shrine to Ste. Anne, if she would save them from shipwreck. They erected the first chapel. The second and larger chapel was built as far back as 1657, and miracles were quite frequent from then onwards. Nevertheless, the basilica is quite new, and so is the whole appearance of the place.

I visited it in company with a French-Canadian commercial traveller. He was a great big good-looking youth with curly hair and blue eyes, and he travelled in corsets or something of that sort for a Montreal firm. I could not help thinking that many ladies would buy corsets from him or anything else whether they wanted them or not, because of his charming boyish manner and his good looks. He asked me to go to Ste. Anne de Beaupré with him. He said that he supposed that I was not a Catholic, but that did not matter. He wished to go to the good Ste. Anne, and it would be a good thing to go. He had been several times before, but he had not been for several years. He could easily take the afternoon off, and first of all we would go by the electric train to the good Ste. Anne, and then on the way back we would step off at the Falls station, and see the Montmorency Falls, and also the Zoo that is there. It would be great fun to see the Zoo. He had not seen the Zoo for several years, and the animals would be very interesting.

So we took an afternoon electric train. There are electric trains for pilgrims, of whom a hundred thousand at least are said to visit the shrine yearly, and there are also electric trains for tourists. We took a tourist train, and having secured one of the little handbooks supplied by the electric company, had the gratification of knowing that even if the car was pretty full it was, so the company claimed, run at a greater rate of speed than any other electric service.

At times in Canada I found myself getting very slack in attempting descriptions of things simply because some company that had rights of transport over the particular district had, so to speak, thrust into my hand some pamphlet in which all the description was done for me. Thus it was in the case of the district line between Quebec and Ste. Anne de Beaupré. 'It is difficult,' I read in the electric company's handbook which we had secured, 'to describe in words the dainty beauty of the scenery along this route.'

'That is a nuisance,' I said to my companion, 'because words are the only things I could describe it in.'

'It is much better to smoke,' said he.

So we smoked; and now I tell you straight out of that illogical pamphlet, that 'The route from Quebec to Ste. Anne may be compared to a splendid panorama. There are shady woodlands and green pastures, undulating hills and sparkling rivers, whose banks are lined with pretty villages, the tinned spires of the parish churches rising above the rest of the houses, sparkling in the sun.' There, a little ungrammatically, you have the scene 'to which,' adds my pamphlet, 'the Falls of Montmorency river add a touch of grandeur.' Ste. Anne de Beaupré itself is twenty-one miles from Quebec. We went straight from the station into the church, where the first thing to catch the eye are the votive offerings and particularly the crutches, walking-sticks, and other appliances left there by pilgrims who, having been cured of their infirmities by miracle, had no further use for these material aids. It is difficult to arrange such things in any way that can be called artistic, and since the general effect is nothing but ugly it might be wise for the church officials also to dispense with such material aids to faith. Apart from these the most striking object is the miraculous statue. It stands on a pedestal ten feet high and twelve feet from the communion rails. The pedestal was the gift of a New York lady, the statue itself was presented by a Belgian family. At the foot of it many people were kneeling. A mass was being said and the church was very full, and every time a petitioner got up from his knees from the feet of the statue another moved down the aisle and took his or her place. I suppose we were in the church fully half an hour before my companion found an opportunity to go and kneel at the feet of the good Ste. Anne, and having watched him there, I got up from my place and went out into the village. It was rather a depressing village, full of small hotels and restaurants and shops stocked with miraculous souvenirs. I suppose more rubbish is sold in this line than in any other. After inspecting a variety of it, I bought a bottle of cider and a local cigar and sat on a fence smoking until my friend reappeared. He came out most subdued and grave—not in the least the boisterous person who had gone in—and said we would now go back. As we had to wait half an hour for a returning train, I suggested that we should go and have some more cider, but he said no, he would rather drink from the holy spring. 'Although this water,' said my pamphlet, 'has always been known to be there, it is only within the last thirty or thirty-five years that the pilgrims began to make a pious use of it. What particular occasion gave rise to this confidence, or when this practice first spread among the people, cannot be positively asserted. However it may be, it is undeniable that faith in the water from the fountain has become general, and the use of it, from motives of devotion, often produces effects of a marvellous nature.' Unfortunately, the fountain was not working, owing, I expect, to the water having got low in the dry weather, and my friend had to go without his drink. He said, however, that it did not matter, and remained in a grave, aloof state all the way back in the train as far as the Falls station, and indeed till we got to the Zoo in the Kent house grounds. There, the exertion of trying to get the beavers to cease working and come out and show themselves to me—an exertion finally crowned with success, for the fat, furry, silent creatures came out and sat on a log for us—livened him up a bit. But he fell into a muse again in front of the cage containing the timber wolf, and remained there so long that I was almost overcome by the smell of this ferocious animal. I got him away at last, and I do not think he spoke after that until we got to Quebec and were walking from the station to our inn.