Churches

Last Friday we visited two of Montreal's biggest churches, or should I say basilicas, the Notre-Dame Basilica and Saint Joseph's Oratory of Mount Royal. The difference between a basilica and a cathedral, I hear, is that basilicas not only have to be huge but also beautiful.

So, remember the picture in my very first blog entry? No of course you don't. However, if you had paid attention back then you would remember a shot of a gargantuan church and a casual mention that Jon lives right next to it. This is what it looks like inside that massive stone building, ie. the Notre-Dame Basilica:



It's pretty cool, eh? Wrong again. Well, it would be if Celine Dion hadn't had her wedding in there. Now the place is tainted with her evil presence and I'm sure it'd take more than a few the power of Christ compels yous to purge the building of her malicious spirit. But yes, if you're filthy rich, you can have your wedding in there. There's room for 4000 of your closest friends and relatives, too. I'm not kidding, four thousand.

However, if you're not filthy rich, but perhaps only moderately loaded, you can have your wedding here:



This is a tiny little chapel in the very same building, and I'm pretty sure then you don't have to worry about getting married in a room polluted by Celine Dion and her posse.

Back to the bigger place soiled by Mrs Dion. This is what their computer controlled organ looks like:



Oh my god, it's so huge it needs to be computer controlled! How awesome is that! It has over 7000 pipes, the biggest of which reach the height of 10 meters, and it's beaten in size only by an organ somewhere in the Bible Belt region of the States with 35000 pipes but let's not talk about that.



My heaaart wiill goooo ooooooooooooooonnn...



Apparently the French actor Gerard Depardieu spent four hours in this pulpit/booth/whatever reading some stuff to people in the church. Don't know what, don't know when, don't know why, but he did. Unless our guide lied to us.

All the windows in the basilica were made out of stained glass:



This one was with a bearded dude, a woman, a kid, and a bunch of dorks gawking at them. I dunno what that was about...



I know this picture features stairs and I know stairs are really cool and all that, but the stairs are not the main thing here. Check out the shiny goodness behind the stairs.

This one tells of how the Notre-Dame Basilica was built:



Somehow I think it wasn't that easy. Oh but what's this then:



They didn't forget the indigenous folks! Or the First Nations as they are called here. However, unlike the previous one which said something like 'the construction of Notre-Dame Basilica' this one doesn't have a tag. I wonder what it would have said? "This is how we stole the land from these stupid pagans!"

What about this then? Is it another church?



No of course not! It's a shopping mall/market hall. Geez!

How about this? It's a castle, right?



Why, of course it isn't! It's an old, abandoned railway station! Wake up, these are easy! Apparently it's also completely empty inside.

These are very common, you see them everywhere:



In Kirkland they have spelled 'Kirkland' like that. Shocking, isn't it?

This is what a very typical street in the city of Montreal looks like:



A street, trees on both sides, a sidewalk and houses with 2-3 floors. The curved stairs, which aren't that visible in this pic, are a trademark. There's usually one apartment downstairs and two upstairs. Dunno what's up with that.



That's what the upstairs sometimes looks like. Yes, more stairs, curved stairs.

A random insert:



These folks are the legendary Magical Elves of St Viateur that produce one of the most heavenly food items in the world: BAGELS!!! No, not the bland kind of bagels you're used to, but the super awesome massively delicious Montreal bagels, which people in other parts of Canada bribe airplane pilots for. You know, to get the pilots to bring a couple of dozen to them once they fly back. Yes, they're that good.

Erase the building in the background and it's almost like from... which TV-series?



If you know the answer you're a nerd, if you don't you're an idiot. It's a lose/lose situation, baby. It's Twin Peaks obviously.

Here's a picture of one of Montreal's many parks:



This one is located in the Jewish district. Didn't stop there, but it looked nice what with the water and weirdo art things.

Anyway, after walking for what seemed like months, we arrived at our destination:



It's way bigger than it looks there. It's the Saint Joseph Oratorio of Mount Royal thingy I mentioned earlier. It had a lot of these:



Yes, stairs! So what the cool kids around these parts do is they walk up the stairs on their knees and recite a prayer on each and every step. Now that's dedication! I think the tour guide said there are like 3000 steps here, so it's not for the weak-hearted.

Here's one of the rooms inside:



While this room didn't have stairs, it was still an awesome place. It had like 5000 candles which a) made the room pleasantly warm, b) lit the place up in a really nice way and, c) enhanced the cosy relaxed atmosphere of the area. Some of the nooks and crannies in the area contained ridiculous amounts of candles:



Oh wait, there were stairs after all. The status of the room just changed from 'awesome' to 'totally awesome'.

So here's the grave of the dude who started all this:



...and here's where they keep his heart:



Yes, you heard me: his heart. The dude, Father Andre, was a guy with magical powers of healing and back then the custom was to save the hearts of people like him. Father Andre is going to become a saint soonish, btw. You need three confirmed miracles to get the official stamp of approval from the Vatican and Father Andre had two notches on his belt. However, when they dug him up to make sure it really was him, they noticed that his hands were in such a good condition that it was a miracle in itself and boom, third strike and you're out of here. To become a saint that is.

The place was so huge that you needed escalators to move around in there:



Notice the colossal picture next to the escalator too. I'm sure you would have missed it if I hadn't said anything about it. You'd be just gushing all over the magnificent escalator.

Here's the view from somewhere up there:



This is not the highest point, but still pretty high. Father Andre had his thing going up here on the mountain in a tiny little one-room chapel, but since he was so good at this healing business, more and more people came by every day and he felt he had to expand a bit. So he hired some people and they came up with this:



It kinda makes you wonder how all the sick and injured people managed to get up there on the mountain to see Father Andre, doesn't it? Well, exercise is good for you, right?

They got enough money for another one of those massive organs:



I don't know how many pipes it has. I do know that the guy who plays it has to use four keyboards in order to do so.

The walls inside the church were lined with wooden old men:



I know you can't see it in the picture, but they were like 6-7 metres tall. They also had really cool doors there that looked like the crown of thorns that one dude wore 2000 years ago back when it was still fashionable, but I honestly can't be arsed to drag another picture all the way from up there to down here just to prove it. Maybe later.