One of the things I love the most about my job is the opportunity to visit historical sites throughout Quebec. Lately, I've spent most of my time on the island of Montreal, and earlier this week, I had a chance to visit le Sanctuaire du Très Saint Sacrement, on Mont-Royal avenue. I spend a fair amount of time on the
Plateau, since my favorite
french bookstore is located right across the street, so I walk by this place often enough.
The congregation of les Pères du Très Saint Sacrement was founded in Canada soon after the arrival of Father Albert Terniere in 1890. The building was designed by the architect
Jean-Zéphirin Resther, who would later go on to design the
Pensionnat Saint-Nom de Marie on Cote Ste-Catherine, among other buildings. This building, completed in 1894, consisted of a church at the centre, with two spacious chapels, the upper portion being the sanctuary, the lower portion being the crypt, and two wings: the right consisting of various studios and the left consisting of other studios and a small printing house. The sanctuary was decorated in 1898 and much of it remains intact today, including the pews. Not surprisingly, the studios and solemnic rooms, as well as the printing house have now been converted into office space for various community associations. In October of 2006, one of the smaller buildings behind the main construction was destroyed by an electrical fire.
While Montreal boasts hundreds of striking
religious institutions, this one is of particular interest because of a few individuals connected to the first decade of its history. Eugene Seers (1864-1945), one of the founding fathers of the Montreal sect of les Pères du Très Saint Sacrement, ran the modest printing house, publishing
Le Petit Messager du Très Saint Sacrement, the french-canadian counterpart to the edition published in Paris. Seers is now best-remembered under his alias Louis Dantin. Under this pseudonym he became one of the first serious literary critics in French Canada. He is also well known for his collaborative work with the doomed poet
Emile Nelligan.
Seers, ordained in 1888, spent some time studying in Paris and Rome. After an intense crisis of faith which would return to plague him throughout the course of his life, he returned to Montreal in 1894. While religious imagery and themes were a constant source of his early writings, Seers, quite unothodox for its time, wrote beyond that spectrum, reflecting on many levels of art, culture, and politics. One of his first major critical essays, "Emile Nelligan et son oeuvre", was published in 1902 in the periodical
Les Débats. Published over the course of seven issues of the periodical, Dantin introduced Nelligan to the world, which then led to the publication of Nelligan's first collection of poetry in 1904. While important, Dantin was criticised by later editors of Nelligan's work for not presenting certain poems in their original form, and for refusing to print other poems that would help frame the young poet's psychological profile. A near-complete collection of Nelligan's work wouldn't surface until 1952.
Prior to the publication of
Emile Nelligan et son oeuvre, Dantin's crisis of faith overcame him, and he left the order of les Peres du Très Saint Sacrement, exiling himself in New England. There, he married, fathered a child, and founded numerous publications, small presses, and edited many periodicals over the next forty years. His critical work helped accept and introduce many francophone writers from North, Central, and South America. He also translated the work of anglophone writers. As a testament to his literary legacy, the prestigious
critical editions wing of La Bibliotheque du Nouveau Monde have published
wonderful editions of
Emile Nelligan et son Oeuvre as well as two volumes of Dantin's critical essays.
In 1938, Seers, in correspondence with
Louvigny de Montigny, once again declined de Montigny's offer to return to Canada: "Despite intimate friendships, what attraction could there be? How can I conceive of a
Quebec which is frought with tyranny and intolerance, intent on barring, with nothing but obstacles, all avenues towards a better future? You are all free men, yet exiled, stranger to your own land than I am here in Boston!"
(1.)I spent about 45 minutes in the building, and after conducting business, got a tour of the installations. The sanctuary itself was a marvel to see, especially the pews, where as myth dictates, a young Nelligan would sometimes be caught sleeping under the bench. Robert Favreau's film
Nelligan shows a scene where Seers escorts an mentally exhausted Nelligan out from the pews, but not before giving him some coins from the collection box. I can't recall ever reading such an admission in Dantin's works, but hey, it most certainly could have happened. I did venture to where the printing house once laid, but with the changes made to the offices, you'd never know that in 1898, this place once published
(2.) a number of Nelligan's poems before his internment in a Longue-Pointe asylum in August of 1899.
While nobody was hurt, one of the downsides of the fire that occured a few months ago is that in the post-incendiary cleanup, a plaque commemorating the work of Eugene Seers was destroyed. It appears a new one will be erected before the end of the year.
1. Translated from: "Quel attrait (sauf celui d'amitiés precieuses) pourrait-on concevoir a un Québec voué aux plus tyrannique et plus sorts intolérances, occupé a barrer d'obstacles toutes les avenues d'un meilleur avenir? Vous y etes vous-memes commes tous les esprits libres, exilé, etranger plus que je ne suis a Boston!" Louis Dantin, Essais Critiques I, p.94. Les Presses de l'Université de Montreal2. While Le Petit Messager du Très Saint Sacrement is one of the few places where Nelligan's works were published before his internment, it was not the first - his poem, "Reve Fantasque" appeared in the Montreal-based Le Samedi, June 13, 1896, under the pseudonym Emile Kovar.
3. The black & white image at the top left corner is of a celebration inside the Sanctuaire sometime in 1898. The image on the right-hand side is of Louis Dantin, circa 1938.
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Last week's excursion to the Sunday Antique Market proved pretty swell as I walked away with a couple of nice little cameras. Since picking up my first Brownie a few weeks ago, I did come across a heck of a lot of information about their variety, value, and availability, so I had a better idea what to look for. Melissa got me a Brownie Six-20 Junior, which has a spring-loaded, operational shutter, and a dusty, albeit clear viewfinder, which is the only non-working part on the Brownie Target Six-20 I picked up recently. It is missing its leather strap, although it doesn't hamper its look too severely. The Brownie Six-20 Junior was first manufactured in 1934, and although called the "junior", it is nearly twice the size of the later Brownie Target Six-20. It has one of the nicest Art Deco designs I've seen on a Brownie - a real statement of the period. It is by all accounts functional, and I did 
Since many studios of the late 20's and early 30's used sound as pure gimmick, very few early talkies used the new medium to their full potential. 
Melissa offered me an early Christmas present tonight, which turned out to be Warner Bros. 
