Saving Endangered Heritage

The first Catholic mass on Canadian soil was celebrated on September 7, 1535, at L’Isle-aux-Coudres, in the St. Lawrence River, by the two chaplains accompanying French explorer Jacques Cartier and his crew. In the winter that followed, the exploration party stayed in Stadacona, the site of present-day Quebec City, where twenty-five of Cartier’s men died of scurvy. Cartier erected an altar at the foot of a tree in the forest, where he prayed for divine intervention. He placed an image of the Virgin Mary at the altar and organized all of those who could still walk into a procession that chanted psalms and sang “Ave maris stella,” a popular hymn among Breton sailors.

The first mass and first pilgrimage in the country required the use of liturgical clothing and objects, statues, and song books brought from Europe. These objects were probably taken back to France; but the ones that the first colonists and missionaries brought later, along with those made on Canadian soil, would go on to comprise an important part of the country’s cultural and artistic heritage.

In Quebec and elsewhere in Canada, the churches that became the centre of towns and villages were embellished by painters and sculptors who often produced the bulk of their work for this purpose. People of different communities and nationalities each brought their own characteristic traditions, architecture, and religious objects. Amid this heritage, the contribution of male and female religious congregations is distinguished by the sheer quantity of objects and archives they conserved, and by the diversity of establishments they managed.

The Founding Communities

The first religious community to settle in New France, the Récollets, arrived in 1615 with the French navigator Samuel de Champlain, eighty years after Jacques Cartier’s stay in Stadacona. The Récollets soon built a chapel near Champlain’s base at the Habitation de Québec, and began travelling across the territory to encounter Indigenous peoples.

Five years later, the community built a monastery and a church on the banks of the Saint-Charles River in Quebec. The Hôpital général de Québec stands on the site today, bearing traces of the original establishment.

A Heritage at Risk

Religious congregations expanded significantly in the second half of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century. In Quebec, in particular, they took charge of small and large schools, specialized teaching establishments, hospitals, asylums for the treatment of the mentally ill, services to the clergy, places of pilgrimage, Catholic outreach chaplaincies, places of contemplative prayer, missionary activity around the world, and religious publishing houses.

From convent to museum

Some of the objects in the collection served a sacred purpose. They were used in prayer, devotions, and liturgical rituals. While they may have lost their religious purpose in moving into the museum, they nevertheless remain evocative objects. They tell the story and bear witness to the faith of those who made a place for them in their lives.

Once it has made its way into a museum, an object is no longer in a sacred context, yet it remains an exceptional item. Like any collection piece, it is handled with care and stored in a way that ensures its safety and preservation. When it is exhibited, it is placed in a display case with lighting that highlights its artistic, ethnological, and historical values. It becomes part of a museological record, an object that is part of the memory of the world from which it came, paying tribute to the artist or artisan who made it. The different view provided by the museum setting contributes, in another way, to the “sacralization” of the religious object.

At a crossroads

With the closing of convents and monasteries taking place over a relatively short period of time, many objects and important archives are at risk of disappearing if they are not put in the care of competent institutions. Congregations are currently working on innovative solutions in this regard. Some are seeking partners to ensure their efforts are successful. But the challenge remains for most of them. As the keepers of memories die, the understanding of what this heritage represents for those who knew it is also lost. Given the advanced age of most monks and nuns, the next decade will be critical to the proper preservation of this heritage whose priceless value is often unrecognized.