We roadside crosses have been there for a long time, discreet presences along your paths, at the crossroads of your ranks. Sometimes at the edge of a field, sometimes on a promontory from where we silently contemplate your work and your days.

The oldest among us are over a hundred years old. All of us have seen you pass, one generation after another, on your way to the church to ask for a baptism, celebrate a wedding, sing at a funeral.

Come May, we'd watch you arrive in procession to sing the beautiful month of Mary. When you were afflicted by epidemics, droughts, wars or natural disasters, you pressed yourselves to our feet, praying for a cure or a saving shower, for the return of a son who had gone off to war or for the departure of swarms of harmful insects. You've also erected us to celebrate an important event, a religious festival, or to thank the heavens for a favor you've received.

Outside the walls of your churches and chapels, we were a daily reminder of your burning faith, close to the places where you lived. We were sentinels marking your territory, witnesses to your race, proud of its beliefs and devotions. We brought your prayers to the celestial powers with whom we were in league, so that life wouldn't be too hard for you. You came to us with your troubles, and we relieved them.

We were just like you: straight, modest, carved from hard, resistant wood. We needed no adornment: a simple post and a crossbeam nailed two-thirds of the way up were enough to say our name. And if, by chance, the local inhabitants chipped in, or if some farmer in the area where we were growing up showed some talent for "woodworking", we could then receive a few ornaments, most often instruments of the Passion, a hammer, a ladder, a spear, a nail, pliers, sometimes a niche featuring a statuette of Mary, the holy Mother.

Illustration 22 - The simple cross erected near the Ranger 5 school in Ripon. In July 1908, in the midst of a drought, another natural plague threatened the parishioners' crops [...] a plague of locusts. The parish priest [Guay] mobilized the population and organized prayers in church, as well as processions through all the ranks, with a stop at the cross [...]. Three new crosses are blessed on this occasion: in row 6, at the corner of row 5 (where the school in row 5 will be built in 1911), in row 5, at Hubert Sabourin's, then on the site of the first chapel, near the falls [...]. Excerpt from the book Ripon, j'ai la couleur d'une rivière, Comité du patrimoine de Ripon.

We've been so much a part of your past that we're now sad to say we're not so much a part of your present. Some of us, the lucky ones, have been cited as a heritage asset by our municipality. In the process, we've been pampered, straightened and even replaced by beautiful reproductions in brand-new materials. Still others have been restored by caring citizens, by associations concerned with protecting our past. But many of us are still quietly decaying in indifference, as our paintings peel, our plinths rust, our crosspieces hang askew, our ornaments have fallen off or been eaten away, our niches emptied.

Of course, we know that society has changed, and that your life no longer takes place "in the shadow of the steeple" of which we were the proxies. But if you can't invoke "for the love of God", couldn't you, for the love of your history, out of respect for the culture and traditions of your ancestors, give us back a little of our original lustre? We roadside crosses have watched over you for so long, shouldn't it be your turn to watch over us?

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Figure 23 - Cross at the junction of Route 323 and Route des Cantons in Saint-Émile-de-Suffolk, decorated with some of the instruments of the Passion. (Photo Gérald Arbour)

A religious symbol strongly tinged with patriotic allegiance, the roadside cross is found mainly where French-speaking Catholics have spread throughout North America. The custom is said to have been imported by the first settlers in New France, starting with Jacques Cartier, who is said to have planted the very first cross at Gespeg (Gaspé) in 1534. In Quebec alone, some 3,000 crosses are said to stand by roadsides or at crossroads.

During the inventory she carried out for the Regional Municipality of Papineau in 2014, Marie-France Bertrand, Cultural Development and Real Estate Heritage Officer, counted 68 wayside crosses or calvaries scattered across the 24 municipalities that made up the MRC at the time. To this number must be added the 6 crosses in Notre-Dame-de-la-Salette, which joined the MRC in 2022. The municipality of Ripon has the most crosses, with 11.

In 2015, only 10 of them had received a heritage citation from their municipality. Since then, only one new citation has been added.

Figure 24 - Boucher family cross, Fassett. The wooden cross, originally erected in 1913, features a number of decorative elements: a large red heart at the crosspiece and, on the main post, ten smaller red hearts descending to the ground, which have been added over the years. It commemorates a dramatic event. In 1913, Ernest Boucher, 18, and his brother Émile, 16, were working in the fields; it was haying time. It smells like thunder. The thunder rumbles and lightning strikes, throwing them to the ground. Injured, the two brothers make their way home as best they can. Ernest will have a hard time recovering, the electric shock having passed through his body. He counts himself lucky, however, and believes in Divine Providence, knowing that he and his brother could have died on the spot. Toussaint Boucher père, a shy and pious man, erected a cross (the ^1st) on his land to thank God for sparing his sons. Ernest and Émile replaced the cross in 1955, and in 2009, a third cross was erected (Source: Text by Marie Josée Bourgeois, Wikipedia, Histoire de Fassett, photo by P. Turcotte).

Find out more

L'inventaire des croix de chemin et calvaires de la MRC de Papineau, by Marie-France Bertrand, January 12, 2015: mrcpapineau.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/inventaire-croix-de-chemin-et-calvaires-papineau.pdf

Les croix de chemin au Québec, un patrimoine à découvrir, by Monique Bellemare: www.patrimoineduquebec.com/ajouts/accueil/.

Vanessa Oliver-Lloyd, Les croix de chemin : Au temps du bon Dieu, Outremont, Les éditions du passage, 2007.

Figure 25 - Cross at 145 Montée Aubin, intersection with Rang Saint-Thomas, Notre-Dame-de-la-Paix. This cross is topped by a rooster, a rare sight in the Outaouais region. Photo Gérald Arbour.