Montreal: Marie-Reine-du-Monde and Place du Canada

After a morning wandering around Mount Royal, it started to rain, so I ducked into Café Humble Lion for coffee and a fresh-from-the-oven scone. Once the rain stopped and my feet were rested, I searched around for something nearby to explore quickly before catching the bus back to the airport. I settled on Cathédrale Marie-Reine-du-Monde, a minor basilica (all of of the major ones are in Rome) and the seat of the Roman Catholic archdiocese of Montreal, which also borders the Place Du Canada and Dorchester Square.

This cathedral was built to replace the previous cathedral, which burned down in 1852; the ground was broken in 1875 and construction was completed in 1894. Many other churches in the area, such as the Notre-Dame Basilica, were in the neo-Gothic style, but the bishop of Montreal decided instead to build the new cathedral as a scale model of St. Peters Basilica in Rome (at a scale of 1:5), with a few exceptions.

Even the ciborium imitates St. Peter's Baldachin.

This is the view of the cathedral from the Place du Canada, an angle from which the resemblance to St. Peters is perhaps even clearer.

The Macdonald Monument, built to honor Canada's first Prime Minister, is in some ways the focal point for the whole plaza. There's an interesting photo of the sculptor, George Edward Wade, working on the sculpture of Macdonald.

Across the street is Dorchester Square, which together with Place du Canada once made up Dominion Square before the two were officially separated in 1967. There are several monuments in the square including the Wilfrid Laurier Memorial, the back of which shows the provinces of Canada as the trunk of a single tree.

Random fact: the Boer War Memorial is the only equestrian statue in Montreal.

As I wandered around the square, the rain started again, which I took as my cue to catch the next bus to the airport. But I was already looking forward to the next weekend when I'd spend another 24 hours or so wandering the city.