It's Ste-Jean-Baptiste Day today, the national holiday of Quebec, and very much an east-end party here in Montreal. As it turns out, the parade formed on rue Fullum, which borders our community garden,a dn from there went up Sherbrooke to Parc Maisonneuve for a day-long celebration with music. I went over around noon, dodging the showers that have fallen intermittently all day, and took a look at the parade units which were forming up and down the street. It was amusing to see so many people in period costumes - from gentleman soldiers in tricorn hats and velvet jackets to nearly-naked Huron Indians and just about everything inbetween - sitting on the curbs eating box lunches. The parade, a celebration of Quebec's French history and culture, includes huge figures of important historical people. These figures looked like they were made out of papier mache and cloth; some had articulated arms and all were on wheels; I guess a person got inside to propel them down the street. Each figure was accompanied by a group of people in period dress who marched along with it to give some flavor of the life at that time.
I decided to sketch the group accompanying "Jeanne Mance" because they were closest to the garden, but she's also a favorite of mine. In the drawing you can see her towering over the "nuns," "priest," and "peasants" who were discussing how they should set up for their walk on the parade route. Jeanne Mance, who must have been one of the most courageous women to come as an early settler to North America, arrived here in 1641 with Paul Chomedey de Maisonneuve after an Atlantic crossing that took three months. In 1642, he founded the city of Montreal, but she was with him and perhaps should be given as much credit for the city's founding as he.
Jeanne Mance was the daughter of a wealthy man. She had cared for her eleven siblings after her mother's death, and later the victims of the Thirty Year's War and the plague. While on a pilgrimage to Troyes, she received a sense of calling to come to New France as a missionary. Her most enduring legacy in Montreal is the hospital she founded in her home and became the Hôtel-Dieu, the first hospital in North America. Though her house and the hospital were destroyed by fire, the Hôtel-Dieu still exists in a different location as a working hospital -- I go by its grey stone walls almost every time I bike back from downtown.
Today the blue-and-white flags of Quebec, adorned by fleur-de-lys, were everywhere -- carried by people in the parade and spectators on the sidewalks, flying on car antennae and bicycles, hanging from balconies. Yes, some of the French Canadians are die-hard separatists and that is their symbol, but after the failures of the last referendum I've gotten the impression that Quebec flagwaving has become somewhat less about separatism and more about maintaining French culture, language, and a sense of pride in their history. The biography of Samuel de Champlain that I'm reading right now is giving me a much greater appreciation of that remarkable man and the earliest years of the first French colonies, first in Acadia and then in what is now Quebec City, several decades before the arrival of de Maisonneuve and Jeanne Mance.
In today's atmosphere, when the Catholic church is so discredited in Quebec, you rarely see priests on the street, let alone nuns, so I was surprised when someone pressed a brochure into my hand. "Pourquoi le 24 juin?" it asked. "Why June 24th?" Good question, I thought. I've always figured it was the feast day of St. John the Baptist, but why that date indeed? "Because John the Baptist was born six months before Jesus," it continued. "24 juin -- 24 decembre." Oh! Scriptural reckoning has its own bizarre logic, but that's one more mystery solved.
