[ July 2019 ] According to our guidebook, there are many shops selling craft and accessories made in Quebec in Marche Bonsecours in Montreal in Canada, so we went there.
The building has the eye-catching silver dome, which was built in 1847 apparently.
It used to be the city hall between 1852 and 1878 and it was used for the parliament when the actual parliament building was burned down.
After that, it was used as the farmers market and as the concert hall, too.
Now it is a neat shopping mall.
After this place, we popped in to the church next door.
It is called Chapelle Notre-Dame-de-Bonsecours which was founded by a saint called Marguerite Bourgeoys.
It is also called the Sailors’ Church and there were some models of boats hanging inside the church.
The sailors gave these boat shaped votive lamps in thanksgiving for safe journeys apparently.
We have seen a similar church in Denmark some years ago.
There was the grave stone of Marguerite Bourgeoys in the church and the museum explaining her life was attached to the church (12 C$≒£7.25, €8.20, $9.00).
I do not why, but there were a couple of information boards in Japanese on the wall and according to that, Marguerite had the strong call from the Virgin Mary when she was 20.
She was “a Woman of Love” who consoled and cheered up the people even when she was still on the ship when she moved from France to New France (Canada) in 1653.
Also she was “a Woman of Action” who travelled anywhere without flinching from any difficulties and “a Woman of Future” who devoted herself to education for daughters of royal family as well as children of native people.
She started a new type of convent called Congregation of Notre Dame and worked hard with the nuns.
This religious community is still active and there are bases in 8 countries including Japan.
Within the museum, there was a room with shelves which contains windows of scenes of Marguerite’s life displayed by small dolls.
There were nearly 60 scenes, which were made for children to understand her life easily, I suppose, and they were very well made and very interesting.
It seemed that early days of Canada was largely created and established by these kind of enthusiastic nuns.
Only a few days before, we learned about another nun called Marie de l’Incarnation in Quebec City.
On top of this museum, there was an exhibition of paper dolls in the church and in the crypt there were artifacts dating back 2000 years.
Also, we could go up the tower and the view from there was very nice.
As I said, we just popped in, but had a great time in this church.
