The Cemeteries

THE CEMETERIES

You will no doubt remember that a few years ago the Conseil d'Hygiène du Québec stated in its bulletins that it was unhealthy to settle near a cemetery! Miasmas and will-o'-the-wisps, superstitions, dances of death, dread — no one dreamed of exposing themselves to such morbid company.
But all that was ancient history. Today, if you travel even a little along the roads of Québec, you will come upon privileged places, huddled shyly beside the old churches, where you will find genealogies engraved on wood, granite, marble or stone; the history of a parish, of a whole people. A few years ago we were travelling with friends along the côte de Beaupré when our vehicle broke down and obliged us to stop. So, for as long as the repair lasted, we set off to explore the ground around the church! All those gathered names had the effect on me of a vast history lesson: here a young woman lay buried, an infant at her side, young for all eternity, probably dead of a difficult childbirth, or of puerperal fever, as was so often the case in those days. There, a whole family wiped out in a few days, cut down by the notorious Spanish flu epidemic. In short, from that day on I was seized with an interest in all such places, and deciphering epitaphs remains a kind of posthumous duty. (Larousse gives “épitaphe”, from the Greek “epi”, upon, and “taphos”, tomb – hence, an inscription on a tomb).

In the winter issue of the magazine “Continuité” (1998-1999, p. 12), we are told that it is at Pointe Callières that the first Catholic cemetery is found, where both French and Amerindians are buried. It seems that at the time of burial the two were kept apart from one another by a fence. All of them, however, were laid in pine coffins — a remarkable fact, since in the same period in Europe the dead of humble birth were buried in common graves.

If we were to wander a little through the pages of our French literature, among the well-known authors of the twentieth century we find Paul Valéry, who wrote a very beautiful poem about the cemetery of Sète, the town in the south of France where he was born and where he is buried. The singer Georges Brassens also celebrated, in his own caustic way, the tribulations of a grandfather seduced by the petticoats of DEATH. And that other, snobbish singer who “veut qu'on l'enterre dans un suaire de chez Dior” [wants to be buried in a shroud from Dior] …Who has not read Georges Bernanos, that tormented soul, and “Les Grands Cimetières sous la Lune”, and who said this: “notre vie est pleine de mort” [our life is full of death]. Might he have inspired our poet Félix Leclerc, who declares in his peremptory way “la mort, c'est plein de vie dedans” [death has plenty of life inside it].

Among the famous cemeteries there is that of Père Lachaise (1624-1709), confessor to Louis XIV. His name has remained attached to the principal cemetery of Paris, created on the site of his gardens. How many well-known artists, painters, writers, actors, musicians and politicians sleep their last sleep there. You need a detailed plan of the cemetery to find your idols, and a pass to get in.

Here at home, in Saint-Pierre-les-Becquets, as soon as the present church was built the bishop of the day, Mgr Signay, asked that the bodies be exhumed from the old church (the one of 1764). The remains were to be laid elsewhere. In 1883, there was another exhumation of bodies buried beneath the church, in order to install a furnace. In 1900 the cemetery was raised by several feet. A charnel house was built there, crowned by a calvary whose figures were of wood covered in gilded sheet metal (Fig. 2). Under the guidance of Father Gouin, a very fine way of the cross was set up (Fig. 1). The parishioners were none too fond of leaving their dead in the charnel house, and so Father Gouin would go with them and recite a De Profundis. The dead were buried in the spring, and a Libera was sung. The curé also required that epitaphs be reviewed by him before being put in place, so as to avoid mistakes in French. One has one's pride. Did you know that the way of the cross was introduced into Canada around 1822?

Another sadly famous cemetery is that of GROSSE-ILE, where thousands of typhus victims arrived from Ireland, in boatloads intercepted at the gates of America so that they might serve a quarantine meant to protect the populations of the New World. A tragedy whose mark the country still bears. Bishop Cooke, of Trois-Rivières, had sent bilingual priests there to comfort the sick, among them the young Joseph Bailey, who afterwards was curé at Saint-Pierre-les-Becquets from 1855 to 1866, where he died at the age of 47, a victim of the aftermath of his contact with the sick of Grosse-Ile.

In the Côte-des-Neiges cemetery, a great many Montrealers, known and unknown, lie buried. Closer to us, the magnificent cemetery of Gentilly, our neighbouring parish in its territory and in its people — that fine shaded cemetery gathers itself in beneath the tall pines. The funerary chapel built in 1896 holds the murals of Joseph-Adolphe Rho (1839-1905), portraitist and sculptor, some of whose work still survives in our own church.

May he rest in peace, the famous FRERE UNTEL, alias Jean-Paul Desbiens, who died recently, on 23 July of this year, at the age of 79. His “Insolences du Frère Untel”, dealt out like so many lashes of a whip, struck the world of education like a thunderclap.

May they rest in peace on the heights of Saint-Pierre, in that cemetery spread out in the broad sunlight: all those who lived in this corner of the country and came back to it as to a home port, inscribed for ever in our local obituary. Yes, just as much as our churches, cemeteries are considered religious heritage.

YOLANDE ALLAIRE-ROUX