Tag: French

Relics

Quebec (the province and the city) has a lot of history. In Vancouver, “old” just means turn of the century (Gastown, some of Strathcona and New Westminster). But Vieux-Québec? Try turn of the eighteenth century, then we’ll talk. Everything just feels old, every street corner has a hundred stories to tell.

Quebec (the province and the city) has a lot of history. In Vancouver, “old” just means turn of the century (Gastown, some of Strathcona and New Westminster). But Vieux-Québec? Try turn of the eighteenth century, then we’ll talk. Everything just feels old, every street corner has a hundred stories to tell.

Maison Leber, 1686

Most of that history is Catholic. Half the streets are named after saints, many of the historical buildings are churches, convents, presbyteries and so on. Every aspect of French-Canadian history is soaked in religious tradition. I don’t especially mind, when I see it purely as history. As much as I despise organised religion in general, and the Catholic Church in particular, it has inspired some beautiful art and architecture.

Mind you, Quebec’s not as religious as it used to be. A lot of these traditions are dying off, and so are the communities. Just as an example, Île-d’Orléans used to contain six parishes, one for each village, each with its own church and presbytery (where the religious folks lived). And maybe school, too, although I’m not sure about that. About twenty years ago, those six parishes were merged into two. Nowadays, there’s only one priest to serve the entire island, assisted by one other priest from the mainland to hold services at all the churches on the weekend. Which, let’s face it, is not a big trek, but still. It’s a hell of a change in just a couple of generations.

Many cash-strapped religious orders have also sold off buildings and property, which have been converted to other uses. Just as a for instance, the former presbytery of Sainte-Famille, Île-d’Orléans, is now a genealogy museum. Not to mention that Anglican church in Strathcona, converted to an art studio. A big improvement in both cases, I think.

Genealogy Museum

We had dinner with a family friend, a parish priest in downtown Quebec who used to be assigned to our parish in Ottawa. He had some fun stories about the Dominican order’s internal politics, at the local and provincial level. But also stories of shrinking, and aging, flocks as well as priest communities themselves. Part of me felt a little sad for him. It can’t be easy to see your community and your whole way of life implode like that in his lifetime. As much as I believe the world is better off with less oppressive tradition, dogma and blind faith, it’s nothing personal. This friend of ours, he’s good people, and though I don’t respect his beliefs I respect the fact that they’re important to him.

One of the upsides is that nowadays, and especially for children, religious differences are not such a big deal anymore. As the bonds of faith are breaking down, so have the walls between faiths. We visited an Anglican church in Vieux-Québec: Holy Trinity Cathedral (the first Anglican cathedral built outside the British Isles, dating from 1804). There happened to be a gaggle of schoolkids on a field trip, and a guide (or the teacher, maybe) was explaining to these presumably Catholic children some differences between Catholicism and Anglicanism. For one thing, Anglicans display the Ten Commandments in the church. For another, they arrange them a little differently.

Holy Trinity Altar

I’ve got a hard time imagining many pre-Vatican II Catholics willingly setting foot inside a hell-bound Protestant church, let alone having their children be educated on the finer points of Anglican worship and maybe learn that—gasp!—they really aren’t so different after all. Plus, Holy Trinity is supposed to be haunted. Those kids will go home thinking Anglicans churches are wicked cool.

But never fear, true believers. They say the heart of hardcore Catholicism is still beating, and from what I’ve seen I believe ’em.

Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré

Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré, a little ways from Quebec City, has been a major pilgrimage site for over 300 years. The faithful—who these days are more likely to come in coach buses than on foot—can enjoy the Jerusalem Cyclorama (IIRC, a big diorama of the Passion, with some multimedia thrown in), visit the Museum to Sainte-Anne (gawd knows what’s there, the woman only appears in apocryphal tales and Catholic tradition), browse the gift shop for that perfect tacky plaster Virgin Mary or whatever, and even get their swag blessed by a priest.

No, I’m not kidding. A priest was actually sitting in a little glass-enclosed booth near the gift shop, in full priestly gear, waiting to bless things (for a modest donation, I’ll bet). I just hope that booth was air-conditioned, because it was really hot, and those clothes looked heavy.

First Station

But then you’ve got all the really traditional stuff: the Stations of the Cross behind the church, as well as a couple of small shrines whose purpose wasn’t too clear to me. And the church itself, a huge newly-renovated monster of a cathedral hiding, amongst the pretty architecture and frankly fascinating artwork, some pretty creepy shit.

Fishermen

Exhibit A: genuine holy relic of Sainte-Anne. Yeah. Never seen a relic before, and frankly I could have gone longer without seeing one. It’s a fucking arm, people! Who goes around putting parts of dead people literally on a pedestal? And who accepts on faith that these bits, the earliest dating back to 1670, are really from a woman who was said to exist 2,000 years ago?

Relic

Exhibit B: Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré, as you may or may not be aware, is reputed to be a site of healing and other miracles. The front pillars of the main church are covered with dozens of crutches presumably left there by people who were healed. Not everybody was so lucky, though. We visited a smaller chapel in the basement, housing another tiny little shrine to Sainte-Anne. Most disturbingly, this one had a couple of photos of children propped up against the statue, and a few folded pieces of paper wedged under the statue’s base. Not hard to guess what that’s about.

I’ll never know how those kids are doing, or if those parents’ prayers were answered. I hope they’re doing better than these other pilgrims from a hundred years ago.

I’ll tell you this, though: at least Catholic faith healing is dressed up with nicer ritual than modern televangelists. Maybe that’s just me, though.

If I had to pick one word to sum up Sainte-Anne, it would be: horrifying. The whole complex, basilica and sideshows, is a monument to blind faith, superstition, and the fleecing of the sheep. It is a scary, scary look at old-school Catholic belief and I for one am so very glad I’m living in a time when the Church’s power is shrinking.

La Conscience

I’m in a French mood this time. Must be from reading Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables. So let’s cap off this month with one of Hugo’s most stunning and grandiose poems: La Conscience. Because some days, there’s just no substitute for a Biblical epic recounted in florid Romantic language. This is the story of Cain’s flight after killing Abel: he tries to run from his guilt (represented as a celestial Eye that only he can see), then tries to hide, to no avail.

I’m in a French mood this time. Must be from reading Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables. So let’s cap off this month with one of Hugo’s most stunning and grandiose poems: La Conscience. Because some days, there’s just no substitute for a Biblical epic recounted in florid Romantic language. This is the story of Cain’s flight after killing Abel: he tries to run from his guilt (represented as a celestial Eye that only he can see), then tries to hide, to no avail. This work is full of larger-than-life mythical figures and over-the-top emotions accompanied by violent weather, as befits a Romantic poem. The meter is flawless (alexandrine verse? oh yes), the language is exquisite, the images are gripping. Truly, a masterpiece.

La Conscience

Lorsque avec ses enfants vêtus de peaux de bêtes,
Échevelé, livide au milieu des tempêtes,
Caïn se fut enfui de devant Jéhovah,
Comme le soir tombait, l’homme sombre arriva
Au bas d’une montagne en une grande plaine ;
Sa femme fatiguée et ses fils hors d’haleine
Lui dirent : — Couchons-nous sur la terre, et dormons. —
Caïn, ne dormant pas, songeait au pied des monts.
Ayant levé la tête, au fond des cieux funèbres
Il vit un œil tout grand ouvert dans les ténèbres,
Et qui le regardait dans l’ombre fixement.
— Je suis trop près, dit-il avec un tremblement.
Il réveilla ses fils dormant, sa femme lasse,
Et se remit à fuir sinistre dans l’espace.
Il marcha trente jours, il marcha trente nuits.
Il allait, muet, pâle et frémissant aux bruits,
Furtif, sans regarder derrière lui, sans trêve,
Sans repos, sans sommeil. Il atteignit la grève
Des mers dans le pays qui fut depuis Assur.
— Arrêtons-nous, dit-il, car cet asile est sûr.
Restons-y. Nous avons du monde atteint les bornes. —
Et, comme il s’asseyait, il vit dans les cieux mornes
L’œil à la même place au fond de l’horizon.
Alors il tressaillit en proie au noir frisson.
— Cachez-moi, cria-t-il ; et, le doigt sur la bouche,
Tous ses fils regardaient trembler l’aïeul farouche.
Caïn dit à Jabel, père de ceux qui vont
Sous des tentes de poil dans le désert profond :
Étends de ce côté la toile de la tente.
Et l’on développa la muraille flottante ;
Et, quand on l’eut fixée avec des poids de plomb :
Vous ne voyez plus rien ? dit Tsilla, l’enfant blond,
La fille de ses fils, douce comme l’aurore ;
Et Caïn répondit : — Je vois cet œil encore !
Jubal, père de ceux qui passent dans les bourgs
Soufflant dans les clairons et frappant des tambours,
Cria : — Je saurai bien construire une barrière.
Il fit un mur de bronze et mit Caïn derrière.
Et Caïn dit : — Cet œil me regarde toujours !
Hénoch dit : — Il faut faire une enceinte de tours
Si terrible, que rien ne puisse approcher d’elle.
Bâtissons une ville avec sa citadelle.
Bâtissons une ville, et nous la fermerons.
Alors Tubalcaïn, père des forgerons,
Construisit une ville énorme et surhumaine.
Pendant qu’il travaillait, ses frères, dans la plaine,
Chassaient les fils d’Enos et les enfants de Seth ;
Et l’on crevait les yeux à quiconque passait ;
Et, le soir, on lançait des flèches aux étoiles.
Le granit remplaça la tente aux murs de toiles,
On lia chaque bloc avec des nœuds de fer,
Et la ville semblait une ville d’enfer ;
L’ombre des tours faisait la nuit dans les campagnes ;
Ils donnèrent aux murs l’épaisseur des montagnes ;
Sur la porte on grava : « Défense à Dieu d’entrer. »
Quand ils eurent fini de clore et de murer,
On mit l’aïeul au centre en une tour de pierre.
Et lui restait lugubre et hagard. — O mon père !
L’œil a-t-il disparu ? dit en tremblant Tsilla.
Et Caïn répondit : — Non, il est toujours là.
Alors il dit : — Je veux habiter sous la terre
Comme dans son sépulcre un homme solitaire ;
Rien ne me verra plus, je ne verrai plus rien. —
On fit donc une fosse, et Caïn dit : C’est bien !
Puis il descendit seul sous cette voûte sombre.
Quand il se fut assis sur sa chaise dans l’ombre
Et qu’on eut sur son front fermé le souterrain,
L’œil était dans la tombe et regardait Caïn.

Around The World In Eight Minutes

I just finished reading Jules Verne’s 1886 novel Robur-le-Conquérant. Quite an enjoyable little book, though not really Verne’s best. I did appreciate all his exploration of the science behind the Albatross, Robur’s wondrous flying craft—Verne’s work is meant to educate as well as entertain, and I’m a sucker for a good science history lesson.

I just finished reading Jules Verne’s 1886 novel Robur-le-Conquérant. Quite an enjoyable little book, though not really Verne’s best. I did appreciate all his exploration of the science behind the Albatross, Robur’s wondrous flying craft—Verne’s work is meant to educate as well as entertain, and I’m a sucker for a good science history lesson. And I’m no engineer, so I can’t say how far-fetched it really is, with the seventy-four counter-rotating propellors to provide lift and the two large propellors at fore and aft for horizontal movement, but it’s clear Verne’s done his homework: he spends a couple of pages describing in great detail past research into heavier-than-air flight. There wasn’t any practical success by 1886 (and wouldn’t be for quite a few years), though certainly not for lack of trying.

I won’t nitpick the Albatross’ fantastically sturdy materials, nigh-indestructible parts and impossibly efficient batteries; that’s just hand-waved away by reason of Robur being a brilliant engineer. Which is okay: this was a time when scientific knowledge and engineering moxie were basically super-powers in their own right. Likewise, I’ll just sigh and try to ignore Verne’s chauvinism and racism: non-Europeans are almost all depicted as savage brutes or, at best, ignorant bumpkins: Prudent’s Black servant, Frycollins, is a stereotypical Coon character, contributing nothing to the story except a bit of tiresome comic relief. Again, sign of the times. I guess that stuff was funnier a hundred years ago.

The plot is nothing to write home about, and has a few gaping holes. We never find out what makes Robur (you know, the title character) tick, or why on Earth he’d kidnap Prudent and Evans—revenge? pride? to increase the numbers on his island hideaway?—and take them on a trip around the world. But whatever the reason we’re glad he did, because we the readers get to go along for the ride.

And what a ride it is. Here we have a flying machine that can go up to 200 km/h, more than twice as fast as the fastest trains of the day and, as Verne notes, fast enough to go around the world in just eight days, cross oceans and wilderness with the greatest of ease, and carry a small crew in perfect comfort. It’s hard to imagine now just how mind-blowing that must have been: back then there were no flying machines except balloons, which weren’t much good for long-distance transportation. Trains were pretty fast but not always terribly safe, and of course were limited by rails.

I think this is what science-fiction is all about: to see how technology and science can make possible whole new kinds of stories. Forget the plot: stories like this helped make the world a lot smaller to Victorian readers. And it’s hard to imagine just how big the world was back then. In those days it would have taken me days instead of hours to travel from, let’s say, Vancouver to Ottawa, and that’s if I could afford a train ticket. To communicate with my family in Ottawa I could have sent a telegram, or used one of those newfangled telephone machines—assuming the infrastructure reached to the West Coast, which is doubtful. If I was curious about some faraway place, I could go to the library or bookstore (or, if I were rich enough, my own books). If I were really lucky, there’d be photographs. Nowadays I have at my fingertips a vast information network undreamed of by even the most delirious futurologists of the 19th century. I can easily look up any information on the places the Albatross visits and follow its path on Google Earth™.

The journey begins in Philadelphia. On to Quebec City (which Verne calls «la capitale du Canada»—though that was only true for a few years), then Montreal with the Victoria Bridge, and Ottawa with its Parliament. Next is Niagara Falls, then Chicago and Omaha, Nebraska—just a few decades old then, and rightly called “The Gateway to the West,” being the point of origin of the developing railway system linking the eastern States with California.

We see Yellowstone Park, whose mountains, lakes, wildlife and famous geysers Verne describes in loving detail—despite never having seen them. He also notes (remember, educate as well as entertain!) that it was the first U.S. national park. On to Salt Lake City with the brand-new Mormon Tabernacle. We then cut straight across Nevada and northern California into the Pacific.

At this point Robur takes us straight north to Alaska (with a bit of gruesome and gratuitous whale-hunting in the North Pacific), across to Kamchatka in far eastern Siberia, south to Tokyo—formerly called “Edo”—followed by a quick hop over Korea and the Yellow Sea to Beijing. Then, southwest over the Himalayas, passing by Srinagar before heading west into «Caboulistan»—probably referring to Afghanistan, whose capital is Kabul. Herat (now an Afghan province, but then an independent kingdom) is also mentioned. Verne calls it «la clef de l’Asie centrale,» and alludes to the struggles between Great Britain and Russia for control of the region. I thought it was an interesting look at long-ago politics, until I remembered that region is still being fought over. The USSR invaded in 1979, then the US in 2001. Plus ça change…

Tehran comes and goes, followed by a jaunt north across the length of the Caspian Sea, passing by Astrakhan, then north to Moscow and St-Petersburg. We cut straight across the Baltic Sea and Scandinavia in a line joining Stockholm and Oslo (then called “Christiania” after its founder King Christian IV). South to Paris, further south to Provence, Rome and Naples, and then we leave Europe.

Tunisia (a French protectorate at the time) is the first stop on the North African coast. We travel west to Philippeville (founded in 1838 and probably named after the reigning French monarch of the time, Louis-Philippe; it’s now called “Skikda” since Algeria gained its independence in 1962). Algiers follows, then Oran.

Southeast into the Sahara, with notable milestones the towns of Laghouat and Ouargla, and south to Timbuktu. The novel mentions «le Soudan;» this doesn’t refer to present-day Sudan, but to a French colony which formed present-day Mali in 1960. Our exploration of the African continent ends in Dahomey where Robur and his crew kill a lot of evil Africans. That part reminded me of the scene in Verne’s earlier novel Five Weeks in a Balloon, where Dr. Fergusson’s team witness a battle between two cannibal tribes. One of the explorers, revolted by the goriness of the fight and the gratuitous snacking on still-warm flesh, shoots one of the cannibals dead before the balloon flies out of range. Both of these scenes, in two novels a quarter-century apart, similarly exaggerate the evilness of “Darkest Africa” and implicitly assert the rights of Westerners to swoop in (literally, in both cases) and act as judge, jury and executioner to people or kingdoms they don’t like. Plus ça change…

After leaving Africa, the Albatross heads straight to Tierra del Fuego, passing between the islands of St-Helena (where Napoleon I died in exile) and Ascension; it flies along the Strait of Magellan to Puerto Hambre (French: «Port-Famine») in Chile, then briefly turns south towards Antarctica, which was then mostly unexplored. Verne repeats various hypotheses about what’s really at the South Pole: is it a continent, an archipelago, or a sea of ice like the Arctic? Nobody knew, back then. Since it’s July and therefore winter in the southern hemisphere, the Albatross turns back up the coast of Chile until the Chonos Archipelago. They are then driven south again by a hurricane, pass over the south magnetic pole near the 78th parallel, almost get killed by an erupting Mount Erebus, but eventually regain control and end up in the Chatham Islands where the kidnappees manage to blow up the airship. And then they go home, assuming Robur to be dead.

There. Wasn’t that fun? Personally, I had a hell of a time looking up all these interesting factoids—and finding out Verne may have been wrong or out of date in a couple of spots: Ottawa, not Quebec City, was Canada’s capital in 1886—but maybe Verne was being patriotic, since Québec is French and Ottawa isn’t. Edo was renamed Tokyo in 1868—but maybe he used its old name to heighten the drama. I do suspect he made up the location of the south magnetic pole. As far as I know it was never measured directly in his lifetime, though the north magnetic pole was pinpointed in 1831 (around 70º N 97º W). Then again, I don’t know what theories were floating about regarding Earth’s poles and their movement. And to be fair, most of his other facts, calculations and trivia are very precise and up to date. Even if Verne didn’t add to the store of human knowledge, at least he fed the fires of imagination in many hearts and minds. Though I take the internet and rapid travel for granted, and have flown back and forth across Canada many times, there’s still so much of the world I haven’t seen.

Robur may have given me a few ideas.