There is nothing quite like it: Le Vieux-Montréal on a winter’s night, the twilight sounds baffled by the curtain of snow. The old streetlamps struggle to throw their light as you walk—crunch, crunch, crunch—down the cobbled streets to Basilique Notre-Dame. You slip in and sit and marvel at a church designed in 1829 by a Protestant architect so moved by the final product of his work that he converted to Catholicism. In a city of which Mark Twain said “throw a rock and you’ll hit a church,” Notre-Dame is a place of gilt and grace that lets you put all the world aside. The hush is so palpable it is as if the church breathes. And so, as you step out of this haven and back into the night, you feel touched and blessed.
Sheila F.