All that was fundamental, of course, remains. Saint Anne is still “Saint Anne de Beaupré”, the Saint of the beautiful Meadow.
Her first miracle was wrought here long before there was any church. She saved the storm-tossed sailors of the Seventeenth Century on just such a night, from just such a gale.
Saint Anne is a character and must ever remain so, one of the very real personalities of Canadian life. An image of her rides in every fisherman’s pocket out of Percé, Baie de Chaleur outports, and in the mackerel-boats of Les Madeleines. A bisque or plaster figure of her stands above every habitant mantelpiece from Montreal to Tadousac.
But La Basilica belongs to a page of Canadian history, too. It was a part of a Canadian landscape for nigh on half a century, in which time it was the scene of many a miracle. Optimists encouragingly say “But it will be restored, or a better and larger church built. Anyway, that was even now almost too small for convenience. So many thousands of Pilgrims! Oh yes, a bigger church was needed.”
Thus the young folk look forward and plan. But the old, what of the old?
Aged men of the Côté feel that with the destruction of la Basilica something spiritual passed out of their lives. They felt it a gallery wherein were stored the life-pictures that they treasured. Memories of mothers and fathers in the old pews, themselves as boys by their side; memories of their own wedding, memories of first masses and of christenings ... of requiem masses.
What of the people who have received spiritual and physical aid here? Did not Saint Anne’s l’eglise fill a page in their life, a page licked up in the flames, and not to be re-written, as when an Hour-Book, finely illuminated, was lost in Time?
Who can restore the mazarene blue to the tablet of Labradorite that stood by the door? Who can bring back the voice of the great organ? Or who restore the exquisite lines of the old pulpit?
But the fundamental remains—the great out-doors, le jardin. Still the Pilgrims come. Still on calm evenings there will be the long processions through the dusk winding up the hill, faces aglow from the lighted candles in their paper ’sconces.
Still five thousand voices will sing “Magnificat, Magnificat!” Still, on midsummer mornings, the old Brother will go round, watering-pot in hand, among the flowers.