Well. I certainly was correct about the delights. We started our day with everyone being completely miserable after one full week of travel, people are a little unravelled. Including me. We find the one night stands particularly challenging and are looking forward to our three days in an apartment in Vieux-Quebec.
But that wasn’t the delightful part. We headed north-east toward Quebec City, with a planned stop at a National Parks historic site, and a stop at the Shrine of Notre-Dame-du-Cap. The historic site was the Forges St. Maurice in the town of Trois Rivieres. This site was one of the first industrial towns of the new world. In the midst of a completely agricultural setting, in the early 1700’s, permission was granted for an iron forge to provide pots, cooking utensils, stoves, ammunition and other iron goods to the settlers, instead of importing these items from Europe. The display was outstanding …nice to see our tax dollars at work for our personal benefit.
We spent the morning here, and then headed a short distance away, maybe 20 minutes to the shrine. We were completely taken aback by the magnitude of the shrine, grounds and basilica which exist primarily because of the miracles that occurred there in the late 1800’s. Acres and acres of park and walkways intended for prayer and pilgrimage, running alongside the St. Lawrence River, including the way of the cross, statues of the mysteries of the rosary, and the oldest existing stone chapel in Canada in its original state.
Late in the afternoon, we settled ourselves into the drive to an area just north and east of Quebec City, Beaupre and Montmorency. Just outside the downtown area of Quebec, lie the Montmorency Falls, a fantastic sight in the middle of Urbania. The falls are not nearly as immense and wide as Niagrara Falls, but are one and a half times the height. They lead out to the St. Lawrence, and this is the place where General Wolfe and General Montcalm squared off, in the beginning of the decisive battles over Canadian dominion-hood. We walked across a foot bridge that spans the falls, and took the four hundred step staircase that leads down to a seawall along the mouth (bottom, whatever the end of falls are called) out to the banks of the Big River.
Just so happens it was dinner time after our long hike down and up the cliff by the falls, and we were hungry. And there was a lovely restaurant that overlooks the falls, originally a mansion that some old and rich family built a couple hundred years ago. After a glass of merlot, I was living enough in the moment to not care all that much about the history of the mansion. Just enjoyed the good food, the good wine, the good company and the noisy children. All of us soaking wet from playing in the spray at the bottom of the falls.
Storms have hit here in the last couple of days, long tentacles of the Hurricane Irene, no doubt. The falls were high, and internet connections are not to be had. This is why posts are delayed, backed up and looking like I am an inattentive blogger. Not so. I blog away, then cut and paste. So much happens every day that I would never remember it all from one day to the next.
Tonight we lay our heads down in the town of Ste.-Anne-de-Beaupre, (a suburb of Quebec City, now) with the beautiful spires of the basilica of the Shrine of Ste.-Anne-de-Beaupre just outside our bedroom window. We will attend Mass there in the morning for First Friday.
After this two day shrine-fest, we will be spiritually prepared for some serious history-festing in Vieux-Quebec tomorrow, where we will hang our chapeaux for the next few days.
No comments:
Post a Comment