Notes on St. Michael’s Church, Mile End, Montreal (one)

Fr. Luke Callaghan

Harvey Shepherd, writing in The Gazette, on 26 July and again on 21 September 2003, informed readers of tours of St. Michael’s Church available to the public. St. Michael’s is a landmark in Montreal, visible from several miles away at the lookout on Mount Royal facing towards the Plateau and the east end of the city. The church is built in the style of Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, Turkey. St. Michael’s is a large domed structure with an entrance façade and minaret on the east side to the rear of the church building. Shepherd writes, “Back in the early 20^th century, it [St. Michael’s] was said to be the largest English-speaking parish in Quebec, with more than 1,800 families or close to 15,000 parishoners, mainly Irish in origin.” Of course, after reading this article with its offer of a tour, I soon visited St. Michael’s Church, which I had so far only seen from the outside. As you enter, on the far left side on the ceiling, is Father Luke’s name written in Latin. St. Michael’s now serves a predominantly Polish congregation. The church was built in 1914-1915 with funds largely raised by Father Luke Callaghan.

Aristide Beaugrand-Champagne, the architect of St. Michael’s, achieved what was then highly innovative in his design and construction of the dome of the church. The magnificent dome is constructed with reinforced concrete, a first in Montreal until duplicated, but on a much larger scale, at St. Joseph’s Oratory on Queen Mary Road. The dome at St. Michael’s has a diameter of 23 metres and is flanked by two half domes; covering the nave that reaches 40 metres from the centre of the dome are two arches with a diameter of 16.5 metres each. The inside of the church seats 1400 people and in Father Luke’s day simultaneous services were held in a large basement auditorium, seating over 1200 people, because of the capacity attendance inside the church. Incidentally, Beaugrand-Champagne also designed the award winning Chalet de la Montagne, facing south on Mount Royal and overlooking the downtown of the city. Now called Parc du Mont Royal, the design of this prominent park, inaugurated in 1876 and located in central Montreal, is by Frederick Law Olmstead who also designed Central Park in New York City. Original art work at St. Michael’s was created by Guido Nincheri, who was born in Prato, Italy, in 1885. In 1914 Nincheri moved to Montreal where he and his wife lived until his death. Nincheri’s first large commission in Montreal was to create the frescoes and stained-glass windows that decorate the dome and walls of St. Michael’s Church. The stained-glass windows, circling the entire circumference of the dome, flood the entire church with light and colour. When standing on the upper pulpit overlooking the interior of the church—as I have done—one is overwhelmed with sunlight and the magnificence of this building. Later, between 1928 and 1951, Nincheri designed the interior of the prestigious St-Léon-de-Westmount Church on Boulevard de Maisonneuve in Westmount. Although Nincheri lived for a few years in the United States he considered Montreal his home and was buried at Notre Dame des Neiges Cemetery after his death in 1973. St. Michael’s Church deserves some much-needed restoration work and the church could then be used, at least part-time, as a concert hall. It is a remarkable edifice—both magnificent and majestic—and well worth visiting on a Sunday morning when open to the public. I am grateful to Mr. Kevin Cohalan, the Executive Director of the Volunteer Bureau of Montreal, who was instrumental in organizing the summer-long open-house at St. Michael’s which was an invaluable opportunity to visit the church pretty much at one’s own convenience during daytime hours. I was given, generously, carte blanche to go where I liked in the church on my two visits there last summer.

Blaise Cendrars Cut Up (four)

Gibet et de la Roue

Paris, 1913.

Avec les gestes piteux et le the oaths of the cardplayers in the

sous la pluie

Bella, Agnès, Catherine et la ne

Et celle, la mère de mon amoucles who paced nervously up and

looked at me as he passed

Il y a des cris de sirène qui me heart tears rise

Là-bas en Mandchourie un mistress…

dans un accouchement and,

Je voudrain depths of a bordello

Je voudrain n’avoir jamais fait

Motley

Like my life

And my life doesn’t keep me a full speed

Shawl

And the whole of Europe see

gold wheels whirling madly along in

universe

______________________________
Cut up of “Prose of the Transsiberian and of Little Jeanne of France”, by Blaise Cendrars

Thomas D'Arcy McGee at Cote des Neiges Cemetery

The row of mausoleums, McGee's is second from the left...

Blaise Cendrars Cut Up (three)

The wings of our seven sins

And all the trains are the devil’s cup and ball

The poultry yard

The modern world

Speed is useless

In the modern world

Distances are too great

And at the end of the trip it's terrible to be a man with a

woman…

We can’t go to Japan

Come to Mexico!

On the escarpments the

Riotous vines

They seem a painter’s

Colors booming like

Rousseau was there

His life was dazzled

At Chita we had a few day’s piano and I had a raging

Five days stopover because of b

We spent it with Monsieur Iae that calm interior the father’s

me his only daughter in daughter who would come each

Then the train took off again.

And amputated limbs dance tulip trees are in bloom

raucous air tresses

Fire was on all the faces in alette and brushes

Idiot fingers rapped on all the ngs

And in the press of fear glance

In all the stations where all the

And I saw

Sleep

I would so have liked to sleep camels

I can identify all the countri more than 500 kilometers

closed it’s all I saw

And I can identify all the train

______________________________ 

Cut up of “Prose of the Transsiberian and of Little Jeanne of France”, by Blaise Cendrars

Thomas D'Arcy McGee at Cote des Neiges Cemetery

A Fountain at the Jardin Botanique, Montreal

The Window at Natalie's Hat Shop on Decarie Boulevard, Montreal

The importance of this photo isn't evident in the photograph itself. Here it is: after my father died my mother purchased a new hat for the funeral at Natalie's Hat Shop facing Decarie Boulevard. The viewer couldn't have known this, which is, after all important to the reason why this photograph is included here. There is more to the story, including poems I wrote about the hat and what became of the hat. Also, that Natalie, the hat shop's owner, later lived at one of Hoolahan's flats on Oxford Avenue; in fact, she lived in the flat next to where we had formerly lived... so there is quite a bit of synchronisty to this.

The Vehicule Poets in 2002

Artie Gold (SM in background).

Endre Farkas.

Tom and Marlene Konyves.

From left: CZ, Stephen Morrissey, Artie Gold, Endre Farkas, Tom Konyves.

Photographs taken at a Chinese restaurant on the corner of St. Denis and Sherbrooke Street West in Montreal.

Cendrars cut-up, original text

Fence in Tree...

Notes on Photography (unrevised) Four

Alexis Nihon Plaza, solarium, 2013

21. The Observing Eye: What photographs reveal is what the eye (the consciousness of the photographer) finds of interest, observes, and pays attention to. This is the observed world of the photographer, it shows a consistent and cohesive vision of the world. It is the documentation of the observing eye.

22. Krishnamurti writes, “The content of consciousness is consciousness.” What is recorded in the photographs is the consciousness of the photographer. 

23. A photograph records how a specific time and place is seen by the observing eye, photographs are the record of what is observed. In my photographs, I am aiming for an elegant austerity. 

24. Krishnamurti writes, “The observer is the observed.” What you think you are observing turns out to be… yourself.

25. Whatever I photograph has a deeper, personal meaning for me; some of the most obscure photographs refer to an image or a line or phrase from one of my poems. So, “Between Chaston and Green” refers to where my father is buried; “Natalie’s hat shop on Decarie Boulevard” refers to where my mother purchased a hat to wear to my father’s funeral; and so on.

26. Artists have access to what the public knows little about but feels is important, has value, and wants: it is access to the unconscious mind. 

27. Today, many people want to be artists. They want to publish their poems, they want to exhibit their drawings and photographs, they want to be creative. They want to fill the emptiness within themselves with their artistic expression, with their poems, their music, their photographs.

28. There is more to being an artist than creativity and talent, there is hard work, being alone, and an obsessive personality.

29. Why would anyone be as obsessed about death as I have been? or as consumed with the ancestors? or have taken so many photographs in cemeteries and churches? or have written obsessively about the same subjects, book after book, diary after diary, decade after decade?

30. It is necessary to speak one’s truth. I can say this with conviction, as someone who has always taught others not to censor their words, their vision. And yet, I have censored myself, I have held back what I wanted to say, I have doubted myself, been silenced by others, not wanted to offend or cause arguments, been too concerned that others not think badly of me and so remained silent. And yet, I have been happiest when I have spoken my truth; when I have not spoken my truth it has gotten me nowhere.

31. (from) Letters of Arthur Rimbaud: May 15, 1871: 

… The first study for a man who wants to be a poet is the knowledge of himself, entire. He searches his soul, he inspects it, he tests it, he learns it. As soon as he knows it, he cultivates it: it seems simple: in very brain a natural development is accomplished; so many egoists proclaim themselves authors; others attribute their intellectual progress to themselves! But the soul has to be made monstrous, that’s the point:… Imagine a man planting and cultivating warts on his face… One must, I say, be a visionary, make oneself a visionary.

Trees and Roots

Fountain at St. Joseph's Oratory, Montreal

Blaise Cendrars Cut Up (two)

An old monk was

Novgorod.

And I, the bad poet who Still, I was a very bad poe

everywhere I couldn’t go to the end.

And also merchants still I was hungry

To go make their fortune And all the days and all

And all the shopwindows glasses

And all the houses and all I should have liked

And all the wheels of cabs and all the streets

pavements those lives

I should have liked to plus turning like whirlwinds over broken

nge them into a furnace of swords

the square

And my hands took fligh The great almonds of the

wings And the honeyed gold of

And those were the last An old monk was reading

Of the very last voyage I was thirsty

And of the sea. And I was deciphering

When, all at once, the pig

I was in Moscow, where too,

with the rustling of albatross flames

And I was not satisfied of the last day

that my eyes turned

Their train left every many dead out there

It was rumored there we rates

One took along a hundred accounts I the bank.

clocks from Blac Malmö filled with tin cans and cans

Another, hatboxes,

Revolution… omen

And the sun was a fierce hire which could also be useful

That burned like live

It was in the time of my And I should have liked

I was scarcely sixteen And tear out all the

And dissolve all those

garments that enrage

I could sense the coming

______________________________
Cut up of “Prose of the Transsiberian and of Little Jeanne of France”, by Blaise Cendrar

2226 Girouard Avenue, Montreal

SM and his grandmother, Edith Sweeney Morrissey, back porch at 2226 Girouard, around 1953.

SM in front of 2226 Girouard Avenue, around 1998.

SM at St. Patrick's Cathedral in NYC

Blaise Cendrars Cut Up (one)

o grind up all the bones cathedrals all in white

the bells

all bodies, naked and strange under me the legend of Nizhni Novgorod

me…

of the great red Christ of the Russian letters

eons of the Holy Ghost flew up from

wound adolescence

I had already forgotten my birth

it was war

Love carted away millions of corpses

the last trains leaving

because they weren’t selling any ging to me the legend of Nizhni

going away would have liked to

didn’t want to go anywhere, could go

had enough money

corkscrews

Still another, coffins from I was trying to nourish myself with

of sardines in oil

Then there were many with the bell towers and the stations

Women with crotches for stars

Coffins

They were all patented day morning.

It was rumored there were many dead.

They traveled at reduced boxes of alarm clocks and cuckoo

And they had savings Forest

and an assortment of Sheffield

the women in the cafes and all In Siberia cannon

Hunger cold plague

them and break them And the muddy waters

In all the stations I saw

Nobody could

more tickets

And the soldiers who

stay. . .

______________________________

Cut up of “Prose of the Transsiberian and of Little Jeanne of France”, by Blaise Cendrar

At the Montreal Botanical Gardens

At the Getty Museum, 1997

Sealed Doors, Mount Royal