Less than thirty kilometers east of Quebec is a very powerful and dramatic waterfall called Chute de Montmorency. The Montmorency is a very long river that drains a vast wilderness area and pours a huge volume of water over a cliff and then flows into the Saint Lawrence River. It is one and a half times the height of Niagara Falls, but only about 150 feet wide.
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| Montmorency Falls and River |
The parking lot is about a 45-minute walk from the base of the falls. The path crosses the Montmorency River —broad, shallow, rippling—then goes along the other shore, a barren, tree-less landscape with a featureless rock wall on one side. Featureless except for a wooden staircase—some people actually pay money to walk up a gazillion unshaded wooden stairs to the top of the falls. The day was very warm and humid, and the sun was hot on our backs as we walked. The light had a gray quality, hazy and dull.
We arrived at the closest view point where the mighty river falls into a deep hole. The spraying mist made it hard to take photos and we got a little wet. The fall is impressive, but it doesn't create a romantic atmosphere.
After we walked back to the visitor center, we took a cable car to the top of the cliff. A path follows the edge to a suspension bridge over the crest of the falls. Crossing over the falls and looking down on the rushing water was fascinating. On the other side we hiked to an outcropping where we had a different view. Various facilities and trails were on the other side, but we were hot and hungry.
Lunch was sort of a bust. Back on the other side of the river is an elegant old inn called Manoir Montmorency that has both a fine dining restaurant and a casual restaurant. Unfortunately, seating for the dining was on the porch, where the wind was hot and the light was glaring, whereas the casual section was somewhat air-conditioned, dark, and calming, so we chose the latter.
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| Manoir Montmorency |
The waiter was from La Paz, Mexico, and when he discovered that Dan speaks Spanish he became quite friendly and clowned around a little.
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| Waiter from La Paz |
We took the cable car back to the visiter center and found our car. We drove another 10 kilometers east to the village of Beaupré, where we toured another significant landmark, the Basilica of Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré. This church has an extraordinary amount of high quality and unusual religious art.
The huge church is dedicated to Saint Anne (mother of the Virgin Mary), as patron saint of sailors and of Quebec. It started as a chapel 350 years ago, when Quebec was French, on land donated by a local property owner to the Catholic church. Because that chapel held a statue of Saint Anne that was said to have miraculous healing powers, it became a place of pilgrimage and was enlarged several times.
The present-day basilica was built in 1922. It's architecture is basically Romanesque Revival, with important Gothic features.
The interior design is unique in many ways. As a Romanesque design, the ceiling is a rounded, barrel arch, instead of the more common pointed Gothic style, and the vault is continuous with the apse for the altar, creating one basic smooth shape, with many elaborations. From this internet grab of the floor plan, you can see the full ambulatory extending behind the altar, giving access to several small chapels, each in its own apse. Unfortunately, when we were there, access to this area was blocked because a concert had just finished and an army of roadies was dismantling the sound system around the altar.
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| Internet Grab of floor plan of Basilica |
The great glory of the interior decoration is the mosaic covering the entire vault, which depicts in simplified images and statements (in French), scenes from the life of Saint Anne. These were quite high and required a lot of neck-craning, but they were readable.
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| Scenes from the life of Saint Anne line the barrel vault. |
Here's the statue of Saint Anne that has inspired so much veneration. The radiating halo, billowy clouds, and the lovely facial expressions of Anne and the child Mary make this an inspiring artwork. I couldn't find a credit for the sculptor, but it dates from the early 1600s.
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| Miraculous Statue of Sainte Anne holding the child Mary, virgin mother of Christ |
Like the ceiling, the floor was decorated by charmingly simple mosaics.
Mosaics were also used to decorate the vestibule, that is the long porch that serves as an entrance. The use of a flattened iconic style seems primitive, but it is consistent with art produced in the Romanesque period, and it is delightful.
This church had much more art and architecture on the lower floor, in a small museum, and on the grounds, but heat, humidity, fatigue, bad food and good wine at lunch combined to diminish our appreciation of this unexpectedly beautiful and interesting place.
Notre-Dame-de-Saint-Roch
A more consistently Romanesque church was located only a few blocks from our hotel, called Notre-Dame-de-Saint-Roch. Notice that the façade lacks the tapering Gothic spires, but its arrangement of arches is much the same. The square in front was so small that I couldn't get back far enough to photograph the whole façade.
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| Notre-Dame-de-Saint-Roch |
Like the Basilica of Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré, Saint Roch has a barrel vault ending in a rounded apse. The decoration of this church is simple but effective, emphasizing its architecture.
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| The apse and the altar |
Saint Roch is perhaps less known than some of the martyrs but his story is homey because he is the patron saint of dogs. While on a pilgrimage in the late 1300s, he came into Italy during an epidemic of plague. He devoted himself to the care of the sick and effected many miraculous cures. Nevertheless, when he contracted the plague himself, he was kicked out of town to die alone in the woods. He was saved by a spring that miraculously appeared nearby and by a hunting dog that brought him food and licked his wounds, thereby healing them.
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| Saint Roch was cared for by a hunting dog |
I went out looking for a proper salad. After a little exploring I found a classy pizza joint where they didn't seem to mind a single diner, and in fact, gave me the premier seat next to the open street window, where there was good people-watching and an occasional breeze. My salad had asparagus wrapped in a slice of cured pork and broiled. The first bite was so good that my eyes watered.
