Camping Alouette, Quebec, Canada (Montreal)
Do not withhold good from those who deserve it, when it is in your power to act. ~ Proverbs 3:27
There was a lot of walking today. Certainly more than was necessary. But I’ll cover that later. In the meantime, grab a chair. It’s gonna be a long one. . . .
Right next to the campground is an RV sales and storage place. It took a bit to realize that the name of their place was “RV St-Cyr”, because as you can see, the sign doesn’t exactly say that. But we’ve learned that sometimes, the French say things backwards from us. 😊
Our destination today was supposed to include a stop at this famous and very old wood-fired bagel shop, then a stop at a famous and very old Jewish deli to pick up a sandwich or two (depending on how large they were) for our lunch later, and then Mont Royal, another of Montreal’s National Parks. There were also a couple more destinations on our list after that.
However.
Once we got to Mont Royal and paid to park for the day, we discovered that the bagel and deli place was about an hour’s walk. So scrap that. Good thing we brought other boxed lunch stuff “just in case”. (Thank the Lord Blaine’s a former boy scout!)
Now we find ourselves at Maison Smith – or “Smith House”, the visitor center for Mont Royal, and they have no English maps. Which is okay. Blaine can follow a map in any language. 😊
But today, he forgot to close the driver’s side door on the Jeep! We were inside the Visitor Center, when a man with a heavy French accent walked up to him and said (as much as we could discern) “Jheep?” Blaine was wearing his Jeep hat, thank goodness! The guy then proceeded to tell us that the door was open. God is so good to us to send that guy looking for us! We thanked him profusely, in French, of course. We happen to know, “Merci!”
Mont Royal’s peak sits 764’ high. Way above the city, as you can see in the pictures. The property was purchased by Canada from a guy in 1872 for $110,000. That’s the equivalent of $2,309,486.07 today! That’s a lot of moola! It’s a wannabe volcano that’s never erupted and has no plans to. It welcomes several million visitors each year, but we noticed that many just walk to the observation point and then back. And they’re dropped off by the busloads.
There’s also a lot of people crazy enough to bike to the top! We were kinda surprised by that, and at the end of the day when we were leaving, we almost witnessed a car/bike accident when a car changed their mind and turned right in front of them! Yikes!!
Gorgeous views from the observation area! We couldn’t find out why that huge building is up here either. It’s not because we can’t speak or read French. There’s just no information. Maybe they assume everyone knows?
There was another “public” piano with another young man playing his heart out.
After we were done drinking in the view, we went looking for the infamous cross. The story seems to be that during a flood many, many years ago in 1643, a Priest prayed for safety for the town and bartered with God that if He’d spare the city, the Priest would plant a wooden cross on the highest point of the city. That’s here, on Mont Royal. The city was spared and the Priest kept his promise – on January 6th (that’s the middle of winter, by the way!) The wooden cross is now long gone, but in 1924, the current cross was set in place. It weighs about 26 tons. That’s pretty heavy to carry to the top of a mountain! In 2009, the lights were replaced with LEDs.
Our walk continued around the mountain until we returned to the Visitor Center and asked the girl working there about a walk to St. Joseph’s Oratory. She said it was doable and worth the 30-45 minute walk.
They seem to be sort of like giant June bug catchers.
It’s a beetle of some kind, but we don’t know what.
And off we went, through the Park and around a Lake where we stopped for lunch, then into a building they had near the lake. We think they use it more during the winter. I was so busy looking around and following the man in the green hat, I walked right into the men’s room! Almost. . . fortunately, Blaine was paying more attention than I was and shooed me out at the door. 😊
There’s another building just like it on the other side of the driveway arch.
Oh boy, was it worth the long walk!! Except that once there, we discovered that we could’ve driven and parked there! Our parking pass at Mont Royal was good for all day, so we could’ve left and come back, but the walk was interesting. It was more difficult walking back to the Jeep. 😊
If you look at the steps in the middle of the shrine, the ones that go through the grass? The center row?There’s 99 of them, and the most devout climb those stairs on their knees as they petition and pray to St. Joseph, who also happens to be the patron Saint of Canada.
By the way, you can walk up either side, but the center is reserved for the devout.
But what an incredible place!
It’s the brainchild of Saint Brother Andre (Alfred Bessette). He came to Montreal and joined the Catholic Congregation of Holy Cross in 1870. By 1904, he was ready to build a small chapel to Saint Joseph. Now we know who Joseph is. In fact, there are a couple of them in scripture that we know. But this one’s the Joseph who’s mentioned most. You know him too. Husband to Mary. “Step-father” to Jesus. But we didn’t realize it was that Joseph when we were there. We actually thought it was some Catholic Priest from way back when. The Catholic church made him a saint in 1870. What I want to know is, what took ‘em so long?
Anyway, this Brother Andre decided that Joseph needed a shrine. And so, when the visitors to his small chapel became too numerous, he set out to build the biggest shrine you’ve ever seen! This is not a church. It’s a shrine. A monument. A memorial. A place to come for prayer and worship, specifically to Saint Joseph. That’s it. There’s no committees. There’s no pot lucks. There’s only mass a couple of times a day for whomever shows up, and that’s in another chapel area. But with so many tourists (up to 25,000 a day!), who can really pray or worship in here? The only prayers we offer, are to God through Jesus Christ Himself. No one else is qualified. But then again, we’re not Catholic.
So the place was built over a period of years. A very brief timeline – – in 1904, Father Andre built his first chapel. By 1912, it was on its fourth expansion. In 1915, they received approval for the basilica. Between 1915 and 1924, several outlying portions of the basilica were put in place, including the Crypt Church which we visited today – but only a look through the back door because Mass was going on. On August 31, 1924, Brother Andre blessed the basilica’s cornerstone before a crowd of about 35,000! But the foundation work didn’t begin until 1926. Work continued, seemingly at a snail’s pace until construction ended in 1931, due to an economic crisis. Then in January, 1937, Father Andre died and for 6 days, 1,000,000 people passed by his open casket! Enter 1937 and work resumes on the basilica, but it wasn’t officially opened until 1956! The interior was completed in 1967, and the exterior lighting in 1979. This was a very long process!
On March 16, 1973, Father Andre’s heart (in a glass case) was stolen from its marble pedestal beneath the basilica and held for $50,000 ransom. The church refused to pay, despite donations coming in from around the world, as the story made headlines. Eventually the police received a tip (for a lighter sentence) about the location of the heart and they were able to recover it and return it to its rightful place on December 21, 1974 after 645 days of captivity.
You can’t make this stuff up! My question is . . . . why were they keeping his heart in a glass box on a pedestal in the first place?
Let’s get back on track.
After 20 years, the government is finally working on making improvements for parking, etc.
Guess every government is the same, huh? : )
Every picture that I found online, looks just like mine, with the brilliant bright light.
We have no idea what it is, but one would think it would have something to do with Joseph.
Quite a few escalators! Pretty sure those were added fairly recently. : )
You had to pay to go in. We didn’t go in.
The dome height from the floor is 318′ and the diameter is 128′!
It has 5,811 pipes divided into 78 stops. I know what stops are,
but I don’t know how you get that many pipes into that few of stops.
We sat and listened for awhile.
Beautiful!
Don’t know what or who it is.
Did you notice that the candles are different colors and spell something?
There was a constant flow of people in and out of the upstairs which showcases his room.
after praying at the shrine to St. Joseph.
I did a little bit of it while Blaine waited on me.
When we left, Blaine checked his step counter. 18,000 steps by 1:30pm! But wait! There’s more! 😊
We stopped for ice cream to eat on the way, and also took a minute to look through the fence at the Notre Dame des Neiges Cemetery. It’s 354 acres and was founded in 1854. Turns out, it’s the largest cemetery in Canada, and third largest in North America. There are more than 34 miles of road and over 1,000,000 people buried here. Yes. You read the zeros right. One . . . . Million. They have more than 65,000 monuments and 71 family vaults. And you’re wondering why we didn’t go in and check it out? Our view from the sidewalk was just fine.
They sure pack ‘em in tight!
On our way back to the Jeep, we stopped at the overlook again and took some new pictures.
Time to walk to the opposite side of the mountain. There’s a path (well, actually it’s more like a staircase) that takes you to the bottom of the mountain and drops you off at Peel Street, the address of our next destination – the Barbie Expo. Yep. I made Blaine go. Hey! It was free! He likes free! If that ain’t true love, I don’t know what is. But to be fair, some guy on Tripadvisor said he went reluctantly and was surprised that he actually enjoyed it. I think Blaine went for the pure adventure of walking all those steps. 563 steps plus the sharp incline to actually get to the flat part of the street and the address of the Barbie Expo.
We had the address, but it was a huge mall, and we had some trouble finding the Expo. We were tired. We were getting hungry and had no idea where we were going to eat. And there were no signs to help out. We walked around unnecessarily quite a bit before we discovered it in a back corner.
It was nice, but not exactly what I wasexpecting. There were indeed a lot of dressed up Barbies and more than a few squealing girls, but there was no history anywhere and no vintage dolls. It was more like a Barbie wax museum of clothing styles and some famous people made up Barbie doll size.
Dinner ended up being Italian tonight. Just a bit of a walk, and very good food!
Oh! And I almost forgot (because we didn’t take any pictures), there was an enormous sidewalk sale going on that included some street vendors. The road was closed for many blocks so people could sell stuff outside their shops. There must’ve been a thousand people in the street! The St. Catherine Street Sale is the largest one in Canada. And we walked right into it.
After dinner, it was time to climb back up the mountain. Ugh!!!! I stopped more than once. Actually, more than twice. But we made it. My advice to you? Don’t try to climb a mountain on an extremely full belly, nor after already putting in miles and miles.
There were some couples who passed us, who were taking the steps two at a time. Sure they’re half our age and weight, and probably didn’t eat a bunch of pasta, bread and dessert right before they headed up, or spent the day walking 26,000 steps already, but still . . . Show offs!
And that’s right at the area where we were walking around tonight.
We were going to hang around till sunset, but with an hour and a half to go, we were just too tired.
We walked, hiked, climbed, descended, ascended and almost crawled (by the end) just short of 13.5 miles today. Yep-per. In a single day.
I’ll let you know tomorrow if it was worth it. . . .