Abstract
With Quebec’s croix de chemin (wayside crosses) as a jumping off point, I explore the importance of heritage creation as the province transitioned away from pre-Vatican II Catholicism in the 1960s and 1970s. I include two ‘sites of memory’: fieldwork with contemporary cross caretakers and archival materials from a major government-funded inventory of the crosses in the 1970s. Heritage professionals have generally implied that Catholic objects lose their sacred meaning to become objects of nation-building, while caretakers view them as still-active objects of devotional labour. Regardless, I find that both parties view themselves as laying claim to “modern” ways of interacting with religious objects, while also assuming that a cohesive national identity rests in part on promoting a rural Catholic past. More broadly, I argue that neither side can be fully understood without attention to the convergence of three trends in the 1960s and 1970s: Quebecois and other emergent nationalisms, Catholic liberalization, and the rise of an international heritage industry.
Highlights
Caretakers never describe themselves as the passive recipients of ideas, swept up in a sea of change. They clarify that they and their predecessors have actively labored for Catholicism and as Catholics, with God’s help
He continued: They were planted in this region a hundred years ago and [before that] by [French explorer] Jacques Cartier...so I consider it an important element to conserve from our religious heritage
Christianity, is still present among us and that there are people who want it to continue. This overlap between different institutions, as well as religious heritage and religion, comes to the fore vividly during the village celebrations held on parish anniversaries, which often incorporate wayside crosses
Summary
Writing in the shadow of the First and Second World Wars, Maurice Halbwachs developed what became a classic theory of memory. Simard developed a deep respect for the Catholic devotional artefacts he came to understand as popular art in need of government protection His training coincided with a major uptick in European efforts, following two world wars, to preserve national heritage objects Simard’s work reflected an important presupposition bequeathed to the heritage industry from its European roots: a culturally homogeneous people (French Canadians) inhabit definable territories (Quebec) and the objects they make and preserve are fundamental to national identity. Gérard Morisset’s art inventory was compiled as Barbeau and Lacourcière were collecting oral stories and songs For his own archive a generation later, Simard adopted a methodological model en vogue in Quebecois sociology of religion: sending out teams of scholars and students to conduct massive surveys of rural areas (1979, p. 2) and “find[ing] solutions to prepare for the future of a religious heritage (and ) menaced” by neglect (2004, p. 2)
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