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magazine / so06
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September/October 2006 issue |
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Messieurs of Saint Sulpice
Twenty Sulpician priests and visitors are enjoying a traditional
Quebec lunch of pea soup, ham and pouding chômeur inside
the Vieux Séminaire, Montréal’s oldest building. The priests have
lived within these fieldstone walls, next door to Notre-Dame
Basilica on Place d’Armes, since 1685.
"The Sulpicians have always been here, they remain here, and
they will still be here in 50 years," says chief archivist Rolland
Litalien. Currently numbering 112, the Canadian Sulpicians are
responsible for Notre-Dame Basilica. They also train future priests
at the Grand Séminaire de Montréal, where 20 candidates for the
priesthood are currently enrolled.
Signs of the Sulpicians are everywhere, even in Montréal’s
street grid. Superior François Dollier de Casson laid out the city’s first 10 streets in 1672.
He also designed the original Notre Dame
Church, completed in 1683, and the Vieux Séminaire. He started
work on the Lachine Canal, a project that would not be completed
until 1825. And he wrote the first history of Montréal. The
Sulpicians’ former mission on Sherbrooke Street West, with its two
1685 stone towers, is one of the city’s best-loved landmarks.
Marian Scott
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