The Past Whispers: St. Lawrence River

Showing posts with label St. Lawrence River. Show all posts

Tuesday, April 2, 2019

Irish Catholic Churches of Quebec - B is for Bonsecours Church Notre Dame de Bon Secours

courtesy Jean Gagnon

A jewel of history and heritage

For over 350 years, the Chapel of Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours, a jewel of history and heritage, has made its way into the hearts of generations of visitors and pilgrims. As you step into the church, you will immediately notice the peaceful atmosphere and feel a palpable link to Montreal’s past.

This is the chapel of 1771, built over the ruins of the first stone chapel of pilgrimage whose foundations were recently uncovered. This is the site where officers of the British regime considered setting up barracks to house the military. This is the silent witness to the faith of Montrealers who rebuilt a chapel when it seemed impossible.

Marguerite Bourgeoys’ historic chapel

You turn to two cameo paintings by Ozias Leduc on the back wall. One shows Paul Chomedey de Maisonneuve, founder of Montreal, who donated the land for the original chapel. The other is of Marguerite Bourgeoys, the first teacher and founder of the Congrégation de Notre-Dame. In 1655, she rallied the colonists to build a chapel of pilgrimage outside the settlement, a stone chapel finally erected in 1675. After a second trip back to France in 1672, Marguerite returned with the wooden statuette of Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours for the chapel, the one in the reliquary on the left side-altar.

Along with the chapel, the little statue has an interesting history. Possibly the most spectacular moment for both was that fateful day in 1754 when fire ravaged the first chapel, and the statue and its reliquary were found intact among the smoldering embers.

Cradle of the English-speaking Catholic community

After the fall of Montreal six years later, the British garrison included Irish and Scottish families who attended services at Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours. It was from this community that money was raised to begin construction of Saint Patrick’s, Montreal’s first parish for the English-speaking community.

Under the choir loft, you spot an intriguing painting, the gift of Bishop Bourget in 1849. This votive offering was a gift in thanksgiving for the end of the typhus epidemic that struck the city in 1847 with the arrival of immigrants in fever ships. Another of his gifts, the statue by Charles Dauphin called Star of the Sea, was raised to the roof of the chapel overlooking the port.

The Sailors’ Church

As the port grew in importance in the 19th century, the chapel became a favourite place of prayer for sailors. The carved replicas of sailing ships hang from the vault of the chapel as a reminder of their faith in Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours.

View from the harbor

Generations leave their mark

Succeeding generations have contributed to the decoration and renovation of the chapel: Beaulieu’s windows, the statues of Gratton and Laperle and of Guardo, and the 1886 works of Meloche uncovered in the late 1990s on the vault of the chapel.

The tomb of Saint Marguerite Bourgeoys

In 2003, celebrations marked the 350th anniversary of Marguerite Bourgeoys’ arrival in Montreal. And in 2005, the 350th anniversary of Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours was especially joyful when the “mother of the colony” returned to the chapel in Montreal’s historic district where she had lived as a beloved friend and valued counsellor to all. Her remains were placed in the left side-altar below the statue of Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours. A few weeks later, the remains of Jeanne Le Ber, the recluse of Montreal, were interred in the east lateral wall of the chapel.

Thursday, March 21, 2019

Quebec Bridge Disaster

High above the St. Lawrence River, on a hot August day in 1907, a worker named Beauvais was driving rivets into the great southern span of the Quebec Bridge. Near the end of a long day, he noticed that a rivet that he had driven no more than an hour before had snapped clean in two. Just as he called out to his foreman to report the disquieting news, the scream of twisting metal pierced the air. The giant cantilever dropped out from under them, crashing into the river with such force that people in the city of Quebec, 10 km away, believed that an earthquake had struck.

Fate or just blind luck determined who survived the catastrophe. The timekeeper Huot, who had been just about to whistle the end of the work day, ran in panic as he felt the deck collapsing below him, reaching safety as the last girder snapped behind him. Beauvais went down with the bridge but managed to wriggle free from the debris, escaping with a broken leg. A train engineer plunged with his locomotive into the river but was dragged out alive by a rescue boat. A group of sightseers looked back in horror when they heard the sound, for they had only left the bridge minutes before.

Of the 86 workers on the bridge that August 29, 1907, 75 died, many of them local Caughnawaga, famous for their high steel work. Some of the dead had been crushed by the twisted steel; others by the fall. Still others drowned before the rescue boats could reach them.

The Quebec Bridge was to be one of the engineering wonders of the world. When completed it would be the largest structure of its kind and the longest bridge in the world, outstripping the famous Firth of Forth Bridge in Scotland. American engineer Theodore Cooper was chosen to design it. He was a proud even arrogant man who had numerous prestigious projects to his name, including the Second Avenue Bridge in New York.

Cooper chose the cantilever structure as the "best and cheapest plan" to span the broad St. Lawrence. That word "cheapest" would come back to haunt him. In order to cut the cost of building the piers farther out in the river, Cooper lengthened the bridge span from 490 metres to 550 metres. When Robert Douglas, a Canadian government engineer, reviewed Cooper's specifications, he criticized the very high stresses the longer span required. Cooper was outraged at the criticism by this nobody. "This puts me in the position of a subordinate," he raged, "which I cannot accept."

Cooper refused to supervise the construction on site, claiming ill health, and trusted Peter Szlapka, who was little more than a desk engineer. By the summer of 1907 the consequences of Cooper's design and of the lack of leadership on the site began to show up on the structure itself, especially in the "compression members" - the lower outside horizontal pieces running the length of the bridge.

A young engineer by the name of Norman McLure was the first to see the problem. On August 6 McLure reported to Cooper that the lower chords on the south arm were bent. Cooper wired back almost plaintively "How did that happen?" McLure reported two more bent chords on August 12 but Chief Engineer John Deans insisted that work continue. On August 27 McLure measured the bend again. The deflection had grown. He informed Cooper who wired the bridge company in Pennsylvania: "Place no more load on Quebec bridge until all facts considered." Cooper assumed that the work had stopped. Deans had read his wire but ignored it.

It took two years to clear the debris from the river. The site became a pilgrimage for engineers come to consider the vast destructive forces of human error. The Canadian government took over the bridge project and rebuilt it with much heavier (and much uglier) cantilever arms. The ill-starred bridge suffered a second disaster on 11 September 1916 when a new centre span being hoisted into position fell into the river, killing 13 men.

The bridge was finally completed in 1917 and the Prince of Wales (later Edward VIII) officially opened it 22 August 1919.The Royal Commission of Inquiry investigating the calamity excoriated John Deans for his poor judgment in allowing work to continue when it was obvious that the bridge was in danger. The brunt of the blame, however, was placed on the shoulders of Theodore Cooper, who had committed grave errors in design and his calculation of loads. There was criticism of the bridge company for putting profit above safety and for engineers who neglected their professional and moral duties.

Thursday, January 18, 2018

The New Elegant Steam Packet St. Lawrence for Three Rivers and William Henry - 1828

Monday, July 3, 2017

Niagra-On-The-Lake

More than 40 Tall Ships will be sailing Canadian waters to honour the 150th anniversary of the Canadian Confederation in 2017.

They are scheduled to stop at host ports in Ontario, Québec and the Maritimes, giving thousands of people the opportunity to admire the majestic beauty of these cathedrals of the seas.