Moines to discover the great world
those who do not travel read only one
single page." (St. Augustine)
Break moorings
was told: "Go is to die and to die is a bit much from !"
For me, this 16 September 1958 from the port of Montreal was languishing long.
With the whole family, we visited the Empress of Britain (1) from 11.00. It was the glare of the discovery. We had never seen anything like it.
A luxury that we know exist by picture books burst before our eyes, delivered to our touch in all parts of the mobile home over a thousand passengers who would be mine for eight days.
rooms with velvet chairs, the dining room all with lace tablecloths, napkins wrapped her in a ring, decorations, chairs at attention awaiting your guest corridors with handrails gleaming copper as by new, all bore the mark of another world, a noble class.
Bridges gray, trimmed chairs and entertainment appliances waiting for us. Could play hide and seek in the twisted stairs, browsing the many red carpets in corridors between the cabins floor that hid bunk beds.
The impressive fireplace and the muffled roar of engines, lifeboats suspended pending the big chains that hold the ship moored at the dock inspired scenarios of dreams or nightmares. What wonder!
For mine, I'm the king of this area, we envy me.
The Canadian Pacific does things well. We get lost, we find ourselves, we expressed our exclamations. I'm lucky! With eleven companions, brothers of the Sacred Heart, I will make the crossing Montreal / Liverpool, I have traveled en route to Rome, much of France, I see the Brussels World Fair for three years and I am European.
superiors enrolled me at the Institute of Jesus Magister Lateran University for courses in religious studies specifically aimed at teaching brothers.
We are four of the province to travel from Montreal on the Empress of Britain, the brothers Luc and Jean-Hubert (Haitian) that will make their big-novitiate [2] Rome, brother Raymond (Ottawa) and I themselves who have been appointed to Jesus Magister. All four of us occupy the cabin A-27, a large room about ten feet by twelve with porthole please
Suddenly, like a knell, the speakers resonate:
" Warning! Warning! All visitors must immediately leave the ship. The bridges will be removed in fifteen minutes. Please .... "
So time to say goodbye. Moton in a groove, kiss, I shook hands, few words, they do not pass, the tears bead commissure eyes. Everything was so beautiful, I had not anticipated this moment. This is far
Rome! It is not an ordinary start. My father feels that he does see me again. Her sadness and concern nodes tighten my gorgoton . In the silence of the lips that is our farewell.
But it's slow departure by boat!
They are all there on the dock in front of me, separated by a space that will soon be infinite proportions. Already, we do more than talk by signs.
Many paper tapes launched by visitors on the dock and return
born by travelers want to reduce this distance. They fly like dragonflies, to place as fine ivy that bind us together. They symbolize the relationship more intimate and more powerful than the moorings we already wrapped in a metallic sound of hell. Any action that initiates the separation of the boat's anchor to the mainland multiplies these confetti farewell. Each figure identified awakens memories that can not wear colored ribbons that take place, meet and break.
Mom and Dad, their pride and their concerns, each of the brothers and sisters squabbling for its place in this world and contributor for giving me this typewriter Smith Corona portable, so useful, so dear and so full of their affections. Reminder of holidays, maple sugar, blueberries, chores that we weighed, but whose memory is so light. All these lives that take place alternately with ribbons that crisscross and are forged.
Smile facade, the bye-bye-actuated robotic hands tear every time some sensitive fibers were kept well twisted deep into his bowels. They fail to contain the high voltage of white-hot emotions. Time stretches and twirls like a knife in the wound. I do
anymore. Before all these people, under the pressure of ambivalent feelings, the locks of my eyes shamelessly surrender. I weep bitter tears my affections silent. I do not wipe, they are the only voice of my loves. I wept like a Magdalen. Yet I am happy. Happy to go elsewhere for a shimmering promise.
Beginnings is to die a little. Going by boat is to die slowly.
This tear will last as long as a visual link is maintained between us. As if to pull one by one all the roots that bind me to my family, every breach of ribbon, each jerk of the ship departing trigger the showers and I can not do anything to block his affection torrents loaded.
Finally, following a series of planned maneuvers, the platform keeps his distance from the boat and, after the tug has bowed out when the dock will more than a small black dot anonymous, I can regain my cab and get my mind and my happiness.
A ship bound does not go away, it fades, it dissolves slowly in the gray mists of the horizon without boundaries.
Now, the ship sails blithely as if nothing had been broken. Reconnect
aster places that are familiar procession and reverence before him, is embellished with multicolored ribbons gift of his life. The tip of the island, the islands of Boucherville, Sorel, St-Pierre Lake, Nicolet, Trois-Rivieres, Quebec Bridge and the Citadel, a kaleidoscope of wonder. The crossing was extraordinary. It had everything to learn, just touch, taste just like children who wake up in Wonderland.
The gentle rocking of the boat, lazy in the hammock stretched between two sides, the play of colors that are adorned for the coming autumn, the night that lights the candles in the sky, on land and water.
Later, standing on its huge waves, flowing mountain threatens to engulf us, the sea launch repeated challenges as an ordinary glove
white foam that drops casually. It responds with bravado that the heart trembling and frightened does not support them. Water greenish veined with white foam and black filaments draws and redraws his tireless hieroglyphics, infinitely repeated sketches of the infinite that carries us. From the top of our second deck, fascinated, as before a game of scrabble large format, brother Raymond and I we are trying for hours to arrange letters and words that compose the message that this gives us infinite.
See immensity of the sea, the horizon is guess who rejected all balusters to unleash the light that marries heaven and earth, air to water.
is follow the game
s white sheep who jump on the backs of relentlessly nasty waves ready to devour them. It also host the dolphins escort us the time a photo is applauding the seagulls announce, like a spring, that the earth is here! 
The sea is so seasick that he should defy and challenge, but we will catch up, a wave or another, such as death or as a lot of love which draws on the fly energies of the strong and weak.
short, eight days on the sea, it's worth everything, nothing less than the SEA.
And our skiff, a small universe of wonders who let themselves discover.
The refinement of the English language label that decorated the slightest service bows of respect. Catering where everything is stored and measured manner, the order of menus planned with care and served with a nice all British.
cinema every day we planned films in Cinemascope high rating, bridges carry a wide variety of sports, the tradition of the "Ten O'Clock" and "four o'clock tea" that lift the tiny fingers of nobility, and especially the people from that place with all smiles and graces the finest treasures of wisdom and humor that they have accumulated under other skies.
A simple and naive brother shy because religion with a Protestant minister who listens without discrimination perspectives on the most varied life, happiness or malaise of our time, receiving the pride and ambitions of a young student and his dreams of one day becoming the Queen's Counsel, etc.. I tied on the occasion of these meetings on "the bridge" deep friendships, even ephemeral, had a density of eternity.
Moreover, living a crossing with a friend capable of all plays and all replicas, playful and brooding like a butterfly as an ox, a condition that is priceless.
During the crossing, brother Raymond and I have played ping pong and shuffle-board (hopscotch), defied the sea and taste its spray, learned some sweet sounding Italian language, traveled back and forth across the deck, chatting or praying, trails that go from earth to sky, from Montreal to Rome. We also have all resisted and succumbed to seasickness with humor and resignation.
The sea was very fertile place for the spiritual life. Each denomination had its temple, the smoker to the Freemasons, a small room for Protestants on Sunday, and for us Catholics who were in majority, the large theater where every morning he said three or four masses.
It also avoided serving of meat for Catholics on Friday, and the time of Ember was respected as if it was Ramadan for Muslims. It was not so "reasonable accommodations" for Catholics, but refinements of attention and label ordered by respect for diversity.
I've never eaten so much fish during that trip. But it was good fish, which taught me that fresh cod could have much better taste than our salt cod Lent.
The trip was so pleasant at all times that our last night on the boat, that of 23 September, we felt like the end of a wonderful dream. After being carried by sea, after we gorged like gluttons of his largesse, to live by ourselves, was a chore, the same that was imposed on our first parents out of paradise.
History is in rehearsal, an endless copy / paste.
Planning our sunsets, our meals and travel with anxiety before the end of exhausting the meager nest egg of $ 300 we were given to live for more than three weeks, we have to express in unfamiliar languages, have to stand the glare from onlookers who could we suspect all nonsense, get our crib every night, as our calculation, often and always, this was our award for us to be lounging in the gardens of the Queen-Sea for eight days. Painful yes! But I would do this penance anytime!
From London Liverpool, four hours after blowing his white vapor in a landscape of red brick chimneys which link all the same, the train deposited us at the heart of London. Monks without homespun, like chicks just hatched, the city has quickly Enfirouapé in its network in its habits and hubbub five hours. "Inhabitants" in the city. We had a good supper.
thing led to another, nervously, we risk a Chinese restaurant. I had probably never eaten in a restaurant. It is not too aware of the value of prizes in shillings or dishes that cover the high-sounding title of a menu written in Chinese "British .
You get what you did not expect. To correct what they say is not understood, reported swimming in the soup the same herbs suspicious because unknown. In short, many dishes are little affected, appetite remains low, note, sweet. : 2 pounds, 14 shillings, 6 pence, about $ 8.50 in Canada when we had ordered a meal to 10 people for three shillings or about $ 1.40. Too expensive for our means. It was explained British. A Quebecer, an Ontarian and a Haitian. The tower of Babel.
just leaving this adventure we call in the brothers of St. Albans. Question to communicate our details and our plans for the rest of the trip. It is three. Brother Jean-Luc, in effect, left with the brothers in St. Albans. He left us his suitcase but we do not have the key.
The phone is "out of order . Annoyed, the brother concerned with the fate Raymond telephone booth. A council was held outside on the street in the rain. Suddenly the brother Raymond is leaving in a rush. A fellow had just taken place in the cabin. The brother tapoche blows of his fist on the cabin door closed. The fellow does not intrigued case. "My wallet"
cried he, striking harder and harder. "My purse," he repeated.
He comes back, his wallet and his passport was already buried in the inside pocket of his jacket and, with the customary grin corner of his lips, he says. " I left there on the shelf with my passport and my money. Phew! "
There is a providence for the innocent!
The two and a half days in London fighting the same tempo: helpless and desperate appeals in St. Albans, visits precipitated by touch-on museums in London, looking for Catholic churches in order to make our devotions etc.. We are surprised and saddened to see how London is painfully bombing the last war. Everywhere, the walls torn, sad remnants of these horrors. The St. Paul's Cathedral still bore deep scars. No time to stop, one must visit, at the risk of seeing nothing.
Our departure from London was also quite incredible. Still no news of Brother Jean-Luc. The phone still in trouble, I decided the evening before departure, to go to St. Albans. No luck. Jean-Luc brother went to London with the brothers of Quebec. We do not know her anchor. I leave our details and come back to our hotel around midnight. Tomorrow we must choose. Take the ferry and we go directly to Paris or fly to Holland to visit our brothers and Oudenbosh spend two days in Brussels on the grounds of the Expo? The next day, the decision was quickly made. The flight over the Channel we tried. A first flight. We must act quickly. Complexity of schedules and procedures for reserving seats on scheduled flights London / Amsterdam, rat race taxi to arrive on time at the airport, the game currency, baggage, British language misunderstood or misinterpreted and know I? London has been for us a trail obstacle course.
Finally, we reached our seats. Just sitting, small propeller plane, fifty seats at most, took off immediately. The sky is gray. It colors the mood of his neck. The propellers are eating like a spiral staircase. Here and there some white cotton wool clouds shine in the sun like snow. For us, it is the dominant gray vapor colorless and tasteless. Before landing, we identify only a few squares of the checkerboard of Dutch culture by the sea Not even a windmill. In a gasp Holland greets us dressed in week: a paved asphalt marked with white lines. Our first
flight, a balloon that deflates dreams.
Holland
There are countries that are more beautiful in pictures than in reality. The opposite Holland.
No image may turn windmills, or count the number of workers on bicycles who invaded the streets in the morning or measure setbacks from the sea in the conquest of men, nor bite for lunch in a large slice of bread house, covered with a thick layer of white butter, or imagine the flirtations of lovers on the flowery banks of Amsterdam's canals, the Venice of the North.
brothers, our brothers
, courtesy same. With them in two days we went around the country. In Volendam, we even shot the famous clay pipe sailors pants with wide black felt. We'll see. And naturally
Rembrandt was at his post at all street corners or almost.
The soul of a nation free and strong as the sea oozing from every pore of Holland we traveled on 27 and 28 September 1958.
And then the Belgians!
In 1958, Jacques Brel, also born in 1929, had not yet conquered the airwaves. The star was the Atomium in Brussels Expo. I nothing
seen any other exhibition in Belgium. And I traveled alone for two days, his eyes elsewhere. Our black series continued. Coming from Oudenbosh, place of residence of our brothers, we arrived early morning at the station where the shuttle should lead us into the realm of the exhibition come and go with an indescribable frenzy. There
crowd. Several trains pass us by the nose. After yet another shuttle, I'm doing a little more or a little too much with two suitcases, I climb, I cling, the train, brother Raymond and brother Hubert remain on the station platform. I will wait. Unnecessarily. Frail hands moving in a swarm of ants. One of the bags is the brother Raymond. Travel is
handle bags. I need time to learn.
For two days, each flag, I ferret always hoping to encounter probabilities zero. We will meet in Paris. The expo, I saw everything but I have learned nothing except the Atomium, so my mind was elsewhere.
Pushed by the crowd, alone, I experienced a deep loneliness.
Ironically, I met the brother Jean-Luc, We have his bag but the brother Hubert, who took care of it. Where is the brother Hubert? God knows! And no time to seek God. Brother Jean-Luc must follow his group and I bury myself in my solitude.
Who wrote " Passengers without luggage ? I think Jean Anouilh.
Paris Central Station
I arrived in Paris in a fairly advanced state of disrepair. I was suffering from a cold tenacious degenerated into a malignant influenza. For economy and also because I knew neither the organization nor the Metro Transit in Paris, I made the journey on foot from the Gare du Nord the Brotherhood, dragging two heavy suitcases. I lay all round without greeting anyone.
The next was a new man. The adrenaline of the trip I had been redone. I was ready to pace the City of Light "pedibus cum legs."
It was found at lunchtime. All the brothers of the Sacred Heart, which went to Rome, brother and brother Jean-Luc Raymond with their suitcases, dragging his brother Hubert, who seasick and I who longed [3] For three days, and brother Raymond I have traveled to Paris to look travelers neophytes.
Touch at all but see nothing! Les Invalides, the Eiffel Tower, Notre-Dame de Paris, Sainte Chapelle, the Conciergerie ... names that have left few traces in my memory. I only remember some bizarre events.
At Bois de Boulogne we got water like ducks.
We ar
riveted to the Invalides at five o'clock, closing time. We did not have time to walk up to the top of the Arc de Triomphe.
The metro marvel, but it was lost in the stairways and long corridors to go!
Go to Paris and not climb to the top of the tower Eiffel is a shameful lack of travel expertise. On foot, it was too long and a lift, too expensive.
At the Louvre, "Sir, can we leave this stage it? - But sir it is not on the floor here, is on the ground floor! "
Cooler Near the metro," Ma'am, can you help us, it is removed "-" Draw your legs Sir! . Paris was the host in these postwar years. It still did not identify "the Ca - na-di-ens" that had Dieppe and Vimy Ridge and broke their guitar in Olympia.
short, Paris was over for us another race track multi-track a lookout for contemplation of the splendours of the City of Light.
Towards Rome via Lourdes
Friday, October 3, in the courtyard of the Brotherhood, sailed a six-seater Peugeot van pool leaving for Rome. We four were the province of the Montreal trip. Two brothers from New England had rented the vehicle from the priests of the brotherhood and we were invited to share the costs.
Lourdes was on our itinerary, first because of Bernadette Soubirous and the "miracles" she had known trigger. A brother of the Sacred Heart, cross the Atlantic without going to Lourdes was sulking as exceptional grace.
For us, Lourdes, in addition to being a place of pilgrimage of the highest caliber, served as a bond out of reproach to our taste for travel. The center of piety had the advantage of being located in the south of France. Even if we had the flexibility that our limited savings, I'm not sure he would have been "appropriate" to go from Paris to Rome via Bordeaux and the Cote d'Azur, just to see the country.
In community, in time, the pilgrims had better news for tourists.
Besides we had family on the journey from Paris to Lourdes. In Lyon first place of the founding of the Institute by Father Andre Coindre, then Chirac, capital of the province's second French Community and major training center for our French brothers.
Under the sign of poverty and indigence
trip rich, ten days in Europe into a comfortable limousine. It is the image we projected in the France still dilapidated and in our French brothers more trapped by their poverty as we are with our vow. In fact, as false rich, we had to travel under the rule of poverty or even destitution.
Thus, during raids in the Alps in the Massif Central, the driver stopped his engine to save gasoline.
The choice of accommodation always favored the lowest bid.
market products often have saved several meals. Lunch included at the hotel we also munissaient substantial free supplies for the day.
We very occasionally begged our food to tenants who were harvesting. " But says a lady these grapes we do not eat it, it's for the press. "
Six presses were soon hungry because of copious clusters nicely and we were free discounts.
Finally, to save a bed at the hotel, we even entered the wee hours of the morning at the Mother House Via del Casaletto.
This "poverty" had to help create a wonderful sense of community. No grunts and enthusiasm, teasing, this salt lasting friendships, unconditional support to all decisions taken have loaded this excellent travel memories. The marvelous thing is tenfold when it is shared. This was our daily bread.
Lyon Chrirac
We stayed at both places. Director of Lyon's brother has even served a valuable Cointreau. We had a little ashamed to be able to afford such a trip when our brothers were still alive, thirteen years after the end of the war, in a state of poverty that marked not only buildings but also the health of their occupants. We left them each a " generous" tip: Five Canadian dollars. The state
Juvénat of Chirac's (boys nine to thirteen years) was less dismal than Lyon, but there was already very cold and the house was not heated.
Lourdes - Faith slicing knife
From junk to wake Luther
Huge center of pilgrimage and a lot more important than the images of the cave of Massabielle us believe. We've done all the devotions of convenience: mass on mass, torchlight procession, parades of patients with miraculous sources, gathering water from Lourdes and souvenirs. Two days
immersed in the fervor People who have activated my counter
internal spiritual blessings. Conquering faith of events make you shiver your whole being and gain an accession without conditions. A crowd sings his prayer and supplication repeated incantations is a force able to "move mountains " says the Gospel but also to break the strongest resistance, to kneel toughest skeptics. But at the same time, we can hardly get rid of the feeling sly, omnipresent that fits under our skin, persistent doubts, questions insoluble, and pernicious suspicion about the deception works miracles on not only order but also the whole universe and its religious practices extravagant.
As promised, I collected water from Lourdes and I sent it in a bottle
ad hoc, my aunt and godmother, who was suffering from swollen legs. I never knew if the water had traveled to St. Zéphirin especially not if she had given to my godmother healing expected. Skepticism vs. filial piety. See Lourdes and die! I saw him, I'm not dead, my faith has been both an inspiration and a shock that will continue for some time to argue my soul.
È Morto il Papa!
The expression was in all the newspapers this Thursday, October 9, 1958. She was raised in Florence
by a colleague in the province of Granby, brother Jean-Pierre who was passing, also en route for Jesus Magister. In his autobiography "Lionel ... a life!" Brother Jean-Pierre, aka Lionel Pelchat, criticized the pope for not having waited ... ! And I was in Pisa, the day of my arrival in Italy, when I heard the news the death of Pius XII. Coincidence or cause and effect? Do not laugh. My question is even more plausible that a few years later, another Pope Paul VI died on the day of my arrival in Italy, August 6, 1978.
This means that my first days in the Eternal City were marked by a non-customary restlessness. I had a first experience of massage crowd during the passage of the remains of the Holy Father on St. Peter's Square. A few days later, I saw the Place St-Pierre's " Fumats bianca" (white smoke), which announced the election of John XXIII, we wanted to be a "transitional pope " but will surely be remembered as the pope has made since the Council of Trent (1545-1563), the most important "aggiornamento" of the Catholic Church.
few months later (January 1959), in fact, John XXIII announced the holding of the Second Vatican Council.
The swan song was not finished a new era began.
What will Jesus Magister in the period between two worlds which will also open the Quiet Revolution in Quebec in 1960? What it do? It
that future publications will try to clarify. ______________________________
1 - The Empress of Britain that we took was the third name. The first, built in 1906, was then the most luxurious liner in the world. Her brother Empres of England was wrecked May 29, 1914. Her wreck lies off Sainte-Luce (Quebec) and his story is told in the museum at Pointe-aux-Pères in Rimouski. The No. 2, built in 1936, was sunk near Southampton in 1940. The third, built in 1956, was from Montreal / Liverpool for seven years. It was sold to the Greeks in 1963.
2 - The Grand novitiate was a period of reflection and spiritual update that lasted one year for two or three brothers by province were appointed. It was the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius. Master's brother and his deputy gave them lectures on various spiritual and religious subjects.
3 - Every time I set foot on the first step of a staircase or on the curb I felt the same sensation of roll I had on the boat. It took me no less than three weeks before everything returns to normal. This discomfort is technically called "sea leg.
Next issue: # 22 in Rome, fraternity pioneers
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