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Subject: Excerpt Of History
Date: Sat, 23 Oct 2004 09:01:24 EDT
"Notre Dame de la Recouvrance was burnt on June 14, 1640. In a few hours the
residence of the Jesuits, the parochial church, and the chapel of Champlain,
where his bones had been placed, were destroyed. The Relation of 1640 gives a
short description of the catastrophe, " A rather violent wind, the
extreme drouth, the oily wood of the fir of which these buildings were
constructed, kindled a fire so quick and violent that hardly anything could be done.
All the vessels and the bells and chalices were melted, the stuffs some
virtuous persons had sent to us to clothe a few seminarists, or poor savages, were
consumed in this same sacrifice. Those truly royal garments that His Majesty
had sent to our savages to be used in public functions, to honour the
liberality of so great a king, were engulfed in this fiery wreck, which reduced us to
the hospital, for we had to go and take lodgings in the hall of the poor,
until monsieur, our governor, loaned us a house, and after being lodged therein,
the hall of the sick had to be changed into a church." The conflagration was
a great loss. The registers were burnt, and the Jesuits had to reproduce
them from memory. The chief buildings of Quebec had disappeared, and it was
seventeen years before a new church was built."
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