Monday, July 13, 2009

Quebec - Notre-Dame-de-l’Annonciation Church

Well, another day, another big church. We got up, went for a brisk 90 minute walk in the sun. Just delightful, a recently repaved road, low traffic, things to look at. What a beautiful bicycle ride it would make if it would just stop raining. Right after we got back a fairly impressive thunderstorm rolled in and then rolled out.
We've been seeing a big church with spires north of town, we finally found it on Google Earth so we could get the name and an address. Since the weather was iffy we drove up to see it.
This is the street leading up to the church, is it not picturesque?

The following text is cut and pasted from here:
The history of Notre-Dame-de-l’Annonciation Church goes back to the time of the Huron mission. Pierre-Joseph Chaumonot, a Jesuit priest, was in charge of this mission. In 1697, the Hurons had to leave their territory and move to a new village further north, which they called “la Jeune Lorette” (young Lorette). The former mission, that would eventually become the site of the parish, therefore took the name of “Vieille Lorette” (old Lorette) that eventually became, in 1722, l’Ancienne-Lorette.
The present-day church was erected between 1907 and 1910, following the plans of architect David Ouellet and his adopted son Pierre Lévesque, the latter being the architect of several churches throughout the province of Québec (Saint-Étienne-de-Lauzon, Saint-Louis de l’Île-aux-Coudres, and others). Notre-Dame-de-l’Annonciation Church follows the Beaux-Arts style that mixes both classical and gothic styles in order to produce an extraordinary result.

It is a beautiful church. It's interesting that unlike so many churches in the southwest, this did not come about as part of the effort to convert the native peoples, but was erected after they had been relocated.



The church is known for its paintings and other artifacts, but there was some sort of religious programming coming from the speakers, and people were praying; so it seemed sort of sacrilegious to be moving about taking pictures. There is a huge pipe organ somewhere, we may go back and look some more later.





I think this is the building where the priests live.


So, it was a pleasant outing. Then we came back and saw this sky just before we turned into the KOA. I feel so bad for the people who are here tent camping, some of them with infants. Can you imagine the misery index?

This is what weatherunderground had to say about it. We put the tv antenna down because of the wind, so we may be missing any weather updates.

Weather forecast for Quebec and outlying areas -

Weather conditions for these regions are favourable to the
development of severe thunderstorms. Some of them could produce
of the hail - high winds - heavy rain and frequent lightning.

People in these regions should take the necessary precautions
and listen for subsequent weather warnings, particularly a
severe weather warning which may be issued as severe weather
becomes imminent.

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